Author: Alli McCracken

President Obama should be given props for the progress made in thawing US-Cuban relations, but there’s a piece of unfinished business that he could – and should – still attend to: returning the US Naval Base in Guantanamo to the Cuban people. In doing so, he could also solve another dilemma that has plagued his administration: closing the Guantanamo prison.

In November 2015, CODEPINK brought 60 delegates to the city of Guantánamo for an international conference about the abolition of foreign military bases. To explore the impact of the Guantánamo naval base on the Cuban people, we took a trip to Caimanera – a small town of 11,000 people that abuts the US Naval Base on the southeastern coast of Cuba.

Caimanera is hot and humid. Small, colorful but dilapidated houses pack the narrow town streets. There are crowded sidewalk cafes where highly coveted WiFi is available. In the middle of town there’s an impressive central plaza, decorated by statues of Cuban revolutionary heroes, surrounded schools, a community cultural center, Committee of the Defense of the Revolution offices, and more.

Continue reading “Alli McCracken Says ‘Send Obama to Gitmo’”

Three years ago, during the height of the Occupy movement, I was ejected from a Congressional hearing for allegedly “assaulting” Leon Panetta, then Secretary of Defense and former Director of the CIA. He was testifying to the House Armed Services Committee about “lessons learned by the Department of Defense over the preceding decade.” I jumped out of my audience seat to tell him that young people were paying the price of those “lessons,” and we were sick of the government funding war instead of education. The baseless assault charges against me were ultimately dropped.

A few years and trillions of dollars later, I found myself sitting in front of Leon Panetta once again, this time for his book talk at George Washington University, where he was gunning for more war. Just when we thought the US was finally leaving Iraq alone, the world was hit with a paranoid media frenzy: showcasing ISIS beheadings ad infinitum, hysterical Congresspeople claiming that they were “coming for us all,” paving the way to more war, war, war – no questions from the public, no Congressional debate. Bombs started falling on Iraq and Syria, innocents are dying, ISIL is gaining traction, yet the White House is declaring the whole operation so far “successful.”

Don’t be fooled: this operation has indeed been a success for some. The weapons-making company Raytheon just signed a $251 million Pentagon contract to produce the Tomahawk missiles the US is dropping on Iraq and Syria. Some media pundits speculate US involvement for a few months, some a few years, but Panetta said we better count on closer to 30 years.

Despite Panetta’s reputation for being a relatively “liberal” Democrat, his legacy is now associated with the expansion of President Obama’s killer drone program – covertly bombing countries that the US wasn’t, and still isn’t, at war with, killing countless civilians with total impunity.

Continue reading “Bashing Obama To Make Way for Hillary”