Antiwar.com Blog

Best Buy’s Geek Squad has been discovered acting as undercover FBI informants, snooping on their customers’ computers and reporting anything that looks amiss to the FBI…for cash payments! And Google is teaming up with the Pentagon to help it better analyze drone footage for targeting and other purposes. While once it seemed the big tech firms would provide us protection against the ever-prying eyes of the national security state, it seems now they have become arms of the national security state. We look at this troubling phenomenon in today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

For the first time in quite a few years, direct US-North Korea dialogue seems within reach thanks to North-South Korea talks involving Kim Jong-un and top officials of the Moon Jae-in administration. Whether or not North Korea’s complete and verifiable denuclearization, which has long been the chief US demand, will actually be on the table much less be agreed upon remains to be seen, of course. Kim Jong-un surprised the South Korean delegation by apparently indicating a willingness to discuss denuclearization. But most media reports neglected to mention that Kim wants concessions in return-concessions that his father and grandfather have long sought in return for surrendering a deterrent to feared American attack.

From what I can piece together, here is the North Korean position as reported in US and South Korean publications.

North Korea wants:

• Recognition as a "serious partner for dialogue"
• Summit meeting with ROK and resumption of exchanges
• Security assurances, namely, "eliminating the US military threat to North Korea and a guarantee of its security."
• Normalization of relations with the US

In return, North Korea

• Is willing to discuss denuclearization
• Will refrain from threats to South Korea: North Korea "will not attempt any strategic provocations, such as nuclear and ballistic missile tests."
• Will not demand as a precondition for talking that US-ROK joint exercises scheduled for April be canceled.
• Will not test missiles or a nuclear weapon during talks with the US.

Continue reading “Getting to ‘Yes’ With North Korea”

Delivered to The Israel Lobby and American Policy 2018 conference March 2, 2018 at the National Press Club

The Israel Lobby and American Policy conference was solely sponsored by the American Educational Trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep). This is a rush transcript.

Delinda Hanley: Col. Lawrence Wilkerson is up next, and his bio is incredibly long. He has a lot to talk about, so I’m going to shorten it. He is going to talk about “Is the U.S. Ramping up its Military Presence in Syria and Preparing to Attack Iran for Israel?"

His last position in the government was as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff from 2002 to 2005. Okay, I’m really shortening it. Before serving at the State Department, Wilkerson served 31 years in the U.S. Army. He retired from active service in 1997 as a colonel and has taught national security affairs in the Honors Program at George Washington University. You’re currently a distinguished visiting professor of government and public policy at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, and you’re working on a book about the first George Bush administration. Welcome.

Lawrence Wilkerson: Thank you. Thank you all for being here. I’m the last speaker. I get that distinction. If this were a military audience, I’d ask you to stand up and do five minutes of calisthenics just to make sure you don’t doze off. I’ve identified myself with the remarks that were just made. Over some 400 students, graduate and undergraduate, in 12 years on two university campuses and six years with about 1,000 students at two of the nation’s most prestigious war colleges, we have determined although it would be probably difficult to prove – and that’s the reason we have covert operations – that Lyndon Johnson not only knew the gory details of the Israeli attack on USS Liberty in the Eastern Mediterranean, he also knew about what was just told you. That’s to say he knew the uranium was being diverted, he knew Israel was building a bomb, and he chose not to do anything about it.

Continue reading “Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Is the U.S. Ramping up its Military Presence in Syria and Preparing to Attack Iran for Israel?”

Most of my regular readers – indeed, all of them – know one thing by now: if you’ve come here for the usual bullshit, rah-rah for Our Team conventional wisdom, you’re bound to be disappointed. There are plenty of other places to go for that: I won’t name them, but you get the idea. Here I try to challenge my readers – and myself – and examine the underlying assumptions we’re all supposed to accept. Of course, it would be easy for me to go along with the conventional wisdom and not make any waves: but actually, it would bore me to death. And I guess it would do the same to my readers (at least, I hope it would).

It’s a privilege to be able to do this, and believe you me I don’t take it for granted. It’s made possible by the incredible dedication of the Antiwar.com staff, especially our managing editor and all-around problem-solver Eric Garris, and I don’t lose sight of that for a minute. It’s a privilege and a great responsibility to be able to write this column the way I do, i.e., without regard for what Everyone Else is saying, and often in direct contradiction and opposition to what most of my readers think and believe.

It’s a risky strategy, but I’ve managed – I think! – to pull it off. I’ve been right more than I’ve been wrong: I’ll stand my record up against any of the "mainstream" pundits.

I haven’t been afraid to challenge my readers and myself – but now I’m facing my greatest challenge. Most of my readers are aware of my recent cancer diagnosis: it’s been a real life-changer, to say the least. Thanks to the miracle of modern science, I’m still alive – and thriving – and able to write these words. The latest discoveries in anti-cancer research, which I’m lucky enough to have access to, have allowed me to defy Death – so far.

My diagnosis and condition have given me a whole new perspective on my work, on world affairs, and the affairs of humankind in general. Or, perhaps, they’ve sharpened views I held already but hadn’t really thought all that much about.

What I’ve come to realize is that my job, and Antiwar.com’s mission, has always been to defy Death, to fight Death to the bitter end. For the War Party is truly the Party of Death, and this has been brought home to me rather vividly in my reading of Dan Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine, his insider’s account of the nuclear "priesthood" and its rationalizations for mass murder on a scale we can hardly imagine. For what those "priests" were – and are – planning for is the virtual eradication of the human race in a nuclear holocaust initiated by the United States (we are always the initiators in their war scenarios).

We are fighting against Death itself, and its allies here on earth. And we need your help.

Yes, this is a fundraising pitch, although it doesn’t really read like one. But let me tell you: the legions of Death are not lacking in financial resources. Oh no. They have but to ask their sponsors and collaborators, and their coffers are filled to the brim.

We, on the other hand, have no such assurances. We only have you, our readers and loyal supporters, many of whom have stuck with us down through the years – as far back as the Kosovo war! And we – I – am turning to you once again for the support we need to keep going.

And we have matching funds: a group of donors has gotten together and pledged $30,000. So every dollar you give will be doubled.

So now it’s up to you. The American people are sick and tired of foreign wars: our message of peace and nonintervention has never been more popular. Yet the political class resists the popular will – and the War Party is more determined than ever to lead us down the road to perpetual conflict. We really need your support at this crucial juncture: we can win the battle for peace, the opportunity is there – but we can’t do it without you. That means we need your tax-deductible donations now – because they’ll have double the impact with our matching funds program.

If we all get together and make that final push we can make our goal. Every donation counts, no matter the amount.

Make your tax-deductible donation today.

While North and South Korea are making incredible progress toward de-escalation of tensions – with a successful high-level meeting recently in the North – the neocons are still calling on the US to launch a “preventative” strike on Pyongyang. They do not even seem deterred by North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un’s suggestion that ending his nuclear program is on the table. Will President Trump green light direct negotiations or will the neocons win out (again)? Tune in to today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

James Jay Carafano must assume that his audience doesn’t know anything about the war on Yemen:

Instead of turning our back on Yemen, the U.S. should focus on ending the war.

If US support for the Saudi-led coalition were withdrawn, that would go a long way towards ending the war by making it much more difficult for the coalition to continue waging it. Carafano frames stopping US support for wrecking Yemen as “turning our back on Yemen,” which is about as misleading as can be. The US has been turning its back on the civilian population of Yemen for the last three years by aiding and abetting the governments that have been bombing and starving them. He notably omits any mention of the coalition’s commission of numerous war crimes against the civilian population. The plight of the civilian population created by the coalition blockade is likewise nowhere to be found. If the US were no longer enabling coalition war crimes and collective punishment, that would be the first time in years that our government would be seriously paying attention to the plight of the people of Yemen.

Carafano writes:

America is there for a reason: to keep the region from falling apart. The collapse of any friendly regime there is bad for us.

The first part of this is debatable, but when applied to Yemen it is clearly not true. US involvement in the Saudi-led war has been contributing to the country’s fragmentation. The war is causing the country’s devastation and division, and by supporting it the US is encouraging those outcomes. There is no “friendly regime” in Yemen to be defended. The Hadi government has no legitimacy in the eyes of most Yemenis and has virtually no support anywhere in the country, and the coalition’s goal of reimposing him on Yemen will never be reached.

Continue reading “The Ridiculous Hawkish Arguments for Supporting the War on Yemen”