Month: February 2016

Misogynists have spun the old trope that what women wear is somehow the cause of what men do time and time again. But thanks to the Air Force, Muslim women are now getting a disturbingly refreshing take on the subject.

We’re used to getting blamed for the violence of men when we wear too little. Now we can also take credit for the violence of men when we wear too much.

In Countering Violent Extremism: Scientific Methods and Strategies, a recent white paper issued by the Air Force Research Laboratory, contributor Tawfik Hamid claims men join terrorist organizations because they’re sexually deprived by women who wear hijabs. Hamid, a self-described former Islamic extremist, calls the traditional head covering a form of “passive terrorism” and makes “weakening the hijab phenomenon” a pivotal piece of his plan to combat Islamic extremism.

There lies the gross generalization: Women like me who wear hijabs are terrorists.

Continue reading “Some Questions for the ‘Expert’ Who Accused Me of ‘Passive Terrorism’”

United States Secretary of Defense Ash Carter told Rachel Martin of National Public Radio, in a new interview released Sunday, that Russia behaved “completely wrongheaded” when it “came in and joined the [Syrian] civil war on the side of [Syrian President Bashar al-Assad], further fueling the civil war.” Carter’s statement is an immediately classic example of the pot calling the kettle black. The US government, including the military Carter oversees, long ago committed to supporting another side of the Syrian civil war – the side whose objective is deposing Assad.

After stating this criticism of Russian actions in Syria, Carter immediately follows up with this advice for the Russian government:

[Russia has] more influence with Bashar al-Assad than anybody else. So, the way the civil war is brought to an end and a political transition is, very importantly, the Russians persuading Assad to leave. If they are willing to use their leverage against Assad to achieve that end, that’s very welcome.

Continue reading “Pot, Meet Kettle: Ash Carter Says Russia ‘Completely Wrongheaded’ To Join in Syrian Civil War”

In a New York Times op-ed published on February 21, former CIA director, Air Force general, and “Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror” author Michael Hayden advocated for the continuing use of drone warfare. He urges the public and implicitly, the next U.S. president, to “embrace” this policy for the desired result of “keeping America safe.” After over a decade of the CIA’s and USAF’s unilateral use of this sinister weapons system, a well-documented record of their unintended consequences confronts us, if we have the courage to face it.

Killer drones have been and continue to be sold to the American people on the basis of lies, including these that Hayden, who has directed drone strikes and personally seen the killing of civilians, repeats in his advocacy piece.

Lie #1: That the policy of using drones to kill people in other countries is “warfare” and serves as a legitimate means to protect the United States.

It’s not, and it doesn’t. Warfare is reciprocal violence, or at least contains the possibility of defensive action (such as anti-aircraft guns) against violence such as that caused by either the Hellfire missiles or GBU-12 bombs named in Hayden’s novelistic portrayal of a pre-strike conversation between an operator and his commander. The US government uses Reaper and Predator drones, loaded with these devastating munitions, as its remotely piloted, high-tech tools in a policy of assassination in at least 7 countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.

Continue reading “People Die (from Drone Strikes) While Hayden Lies”

Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton both want the U.S. government to set up a “safe zone” in Syria to care for refugees from the raging civil war. You may assess their judgment by noting that Secretary of State Clinton and Sen. Rubio also pushed for bombing and regime change in Libya, which was crucial in spreading bin Ladenite mayhem far and wide, and that Rubio thinks knocking out the Sunni Islamic State would hurt Shi’ite Iran.

Ted Cruz does not call for a safe zone; he merely wants to bomb the Islamic State back to the stone age while arming the Kurds, whom the leadership of NATO member Turkey wants to destroy and the Sunni Arabs distrust. Cruz says the Kurds would be “our ground troops,” yet he does not rule out American troops as a last resort.

Where do the reputed anti-establishment candidates stand on the safe zone? Alas, Donald Trump favors it, and Bernie Sanders is ambiguous.

If this is disestablishmentarianism American-style, we are in bad shape.

Continue reading “Sanders and Trump Are Too Establishment on Syria”

President Obama has made his final effort to fulfill a campaign promise to close down the US detention facility at the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba, sending Congress a plan that would see a new facility constructed in the US to house those of the 91 remaining prisoners who were not cleared for release. The plan is dead in the water in Congress, however, as Republicans in charge of the House and Senate have signaled a refusal to even work with the president on the issue. But this political tussle over the facility is in reality just a sideshow. Neither side wants to bring up the flawed and anti-American nature of Guantanamo and the undeclared and vague “war on terror” that prompted its creation. On the Liberty Report, however, that is precisely what we are interested in:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

Washington’s hawks are already trashing the Syria ceasefire deal that the US and Russia presented yesterday. The Russians will never honor their agreement, they argue. Nevertheless the agreement offers some slight hope that the five year war might be coming to a close — but only if some of the dangerous ambiguities in the agreement are spelled out properly. What else will have to change if this deal has any chance? Tune in to the Liberty Report to find out:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.