Author: Thomas L. Knapp

On August 2, 1990, the Iraqi army invaded Kuwait, a tiny Persian Gulf emirate. Three days later, US president George HW Bush fielded questions from reporters on the South Lawn of the White House. The key line from, and substance of, those remarks: “This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait.”

Two days after that, Operation Desert Shield commenced with the arrival of US troops in Saudi Arabia. Desert Shield transitioned into Desert Storm – a short, sharp, successful air and ground attack resulting in the ejection of Saddam Hussein’s troops from Kuwait.

The early days of this military adventure were marked by spirited debate on its merits and trepidation over the possibility of large-scale chemical warfare and mass US casualties.

But by late May of 1991, when I returned home from my tour of duty as a Marine infantry NCO, the war seemed an unqualified success. Saddam’s forces had been routed with fewer than 300 Americans killed and only 800 wounded.

Parades were held. Medals were awarded. Returning troops in uniform got free beer at airport bars. Yes, really – I drank my Budweiser on layover at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. And I drank the Kool Aid that followed, too: Desert Storm had blown away the dark cloud cover of Vietnam and looked set to go down in history as a “good war” not unlike World War II.

Continue reading “Twenty-Five Years Later: A Look Back at ‘The Other Good War’”

Paul Waldman nay-says comparisons of the Lausanne nuclear talks to UK prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler with respect to Czechoslovakia ("No, the Iran nuclear negotiations aren’t Munich in 1938," Washington Post, April 1).

I get where Waldman’s coming from – it’s annoying to hear American hawks on both sides of the aisle draw that analogy – but I disagree. Not so much because he gets it wrong as because he gets it backward.

The nuclear talks ARE a lot like Munich in 1938. But it’s Iran acting out the role of Chamberlain in response to a US strategy that’s textbook Hitler. There’s little doubt the Iranians will regret going to the trouble of hammering out the just-announced "framework."

The Hitlerian method is this: Invent a "controversy" (for example, "ethnic Germans in Czech Sudetenland are oppressed"). Make a set of demands. If the demands are met, add new conditions. When you’ve pushed things as far as they can go and the other party finally refuses, accuse that other party of acting in bad faith and claim justification for doing what you wanted to do anyway (invade and occupy Czechoslovakia).

The Iran "nuclear weapons controversy" is an invented crisis of that Hitlerian type.

Continue reading “Yes, Mr. Waldman, the Iran Nuclear Negotiations Are Munich in 1938″

When I tuned in to US president Barack Obama’s televised speech on his plans for war against the so-called “Islamic State,” I expected exactly what we got — a bland sundae of pseudo-patriotic drivel topped off with some whipped cream of big bucks for the military-industrial complex and the cherry of regime change in Syria. What I didn’t expect was a bon mot homage to a previous era:

“[W]e are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.” — US president Lyndon Johnson, October 21, 1964

“[W]e cannot do for Iraqis what they must do for themselves …” US president Barack Obama, September 10, 2014

A curious inversion: LBJ’s remark came near the end of the “advisor” era in Vietnam and prior to the massive, direct US military intervention there. Obama’s reprise comes after nearly a quarter century of massive, direct US military interventions in Iraq and proposes to make history run backward into an “advisor” scenario. Curious, but clearly not accidental.

We all remember how Vietnam ended. After two lost ground wars in Asia in the last 12 years, after recourse to the history book accounts of the post-WWII era, you might expect Obama to have learned a lesson by now. And you’d be right.

Continue reading “ISIS and Ukraine: They’ll Say Anything”

I’m shocked – shocked! – that Colonel Denise Lind, the military judge who ruled in February that Bradley Manning could be tried on various charges even after being held prior to arraignment for more than five times the absolute longest time specified in the US Armed Forces’ “speedy trial” rules, has now also ruled that Manning can be convicted of aiding an enemy that does not exist. Yes, you read that right: There’s only an “enemy” to aid, in any legal sense, if the United States is at war, a state created by a congressional declaration. There’s been no such declaration since World War II.

Lind had only one legal duty as judge in this case: To dismiss all charges due to the government’s failure to meet the “speedy trial” deadline. If the United States was, as John Adams put it, “a government of laws, not of men,” that’s exactly what she would have done.

Lind’s superiors had a clear duty as well – to remove her from the bench after that first illegal ruling and charge her under Article 98 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice:

Any person subject to this chapter who –

(1) is responsible for unnecessary delay in the disposition of any case of a person accused of an offense under this chapter; or

(2) Knowingly and intentionally fails to enforce or comply with any provision of this chapter regulating the proceedings before, during, or after trial of an accused; shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

No, I’m not really shocked that none of this happened. It’s par for the course. Laws, including the “supreme law of the land,” aka the US Constitution, are for us little people. The US government doesn’t need or want them, except for use as camouflage. It does whatever it wants to do (or rather whatever the ruling members of the American political class tell it to do).

The only reasonable takeaway from the Manning trial is that American “rule of law” is a sham. The US government doesn’t operate within the Constitution’s constraints on state power, nor does it honor that Constitution’s list of enshrined individual rights. It never has done so absent extreme compulsion and it never will do so on anything like a regular basis.

The corollary: If the US government isn’t bound by its own alleged rules, why on Earth would anyone else be?

Reprinted from the Center for a Stateless Society under Creative Commons license.