It’s the rare retired general to whom the national security establishment will listen.
When Old Hawks Retract Their Talons
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War & Peace
U.S. Thinks Road to Bahrain’s Heart Is Through Its Appetite for Weaponry
Still, the situation on the ground has not changed much in the past week, with continuing mass arrests of demonstrators.
How to Forget on Memorial Day
It’s the saddest reading around: the little announcements that dribble out of the Pentagon every day or two — those terse, relatively uninformative death notices: rank; name; age; small town, suburb, or second-level city of origin; means of death (“small arms fire,” “improvised explosive device,” “the result of gunshot wounds inflicted by an individual wearing an Afghan National Army uniform,” or sometimes something vaguer like “while conducting combat operations,” “supporting Operation Enduring Freedom,” or simply no explanation at all); and the unit the dead soldier belonged to. They are seldom 100 words, even with the usual opening line: “The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.” Sometimes they include more than one death.
Okinawa’s Nature Groaning
May 15 marks 40 years since Okinawa “reverted” from US military administration to Japan, but the celebrations in 2012 will be muted. While few Okinawans regret the fact of reversion, there is widespread resentment over the fact that the national government continues to insist the prefecture serve US military ends first and foremost. Newspaper opinion surveys taken on the eve of the commemoration found that 69 percent of Okinawans believed they were the subject of inequitable and discriminatory treatment because of the heavy concentration of US military bases, and nearly 90 percent took the position that the Futenma Marine Base should either be unconditionally closed and the land simply revert to Ginowan township or else be moved away, whether elsewhere in Japan or beyond it. That figure exceeds even the opposition of the time of the Hatoyama government (84 percent) less than two years ago. A similar 90 percent oppose the deployment within Okinawa of the accident-plagued MV22-Osprey VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft that the Pentagon, backed by the government of Japan, promises to deploy in Okinawa from July.1
The Award for Most Inventive Use of a Nuclear Weapon Goes To…
Nuclear weapons: not just a force multiplier, but a force sweetener.
Honduras Coup Delivering a Bloody Return on Washington’s Military Investment
The United States has significantly scaled up its military presence in Honduras in recent months.
Arrest of Mexican General for Cartel Connections May Be Purely Political
Not only are the charges old, but he supports President Felipe Calderon’s opposition.
Supporting MEK a Lose-Lose Proposition for Israel
Removing the Mujahedin-e Khalq from the U.S. Department Terrorism list doesn’t bring the Iranian scientists it killed back to life.
Asia’s Mad Arms Race
Asia is currently in the middle of an unprecedented arms race that is not only sharpening tensions in the region but also competing with efforts by Asian countries to address poverty and growing economic disparity. The gap between rich and poor—calculated by the Gini coefficient that measures inequality—has increased from 39 percent to 46 percent in China, India, and Indonesia. Although affluent households continue to garner larger and larger portions of the economic pie, “Children born to poor families can be 10 times more likely to die in infancy” than those from wealthy families, according to Changyong Rhee, chief economist of the Asian Development Bank.
The Book About Terrorism Crying Out to Be Written
Somewhere, there must be an investigate journalist who will link the violence of the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to abuse they may have suffered as children.