As Israel’s military kills and injures hundreds of civilians in Gaza—whose population Israel is legally obligated to protect as an occupying power—people around the world, including in the United States, wonder why official Washington appears so indifferent to even the most graphic instances of “collateral damage.” The primary reason is that most American policy elites still believe the United States needs to dominate the Middle East, and that Israeli military assertiveness is instrumentally...

Israel is clearly winning the David v. Goliath struggle with Palestinians in Gaza. Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, seized on the murder in June of three Jewish teenagers from a West Bank settlement to launch Israel’s third war against Gaza in six years. So far, some 230 Palestinians have been killed, 70% women and children, and one Israeli has died. Israeli bombing and shelling has made the rubble in Gaza bounce. As in the two previous Israeli assaults on Gaza, it’s unclear who...

(click to enlarge) It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when it happened, but clear evidence can be seen at least in the aftermath of World War II. Some trace the origins back to 1898 and the Spanish-American War, or even earlier to the War of 1812. And still others would say that imperial ambitions were even on the minds of some of the Founding Fathers. Regardless, there can be no doubt that today the United States of America is an empire. It is probably safe to assume that most Americans do...

The U.S. government loves to preen about its generosity to the world’s downtrodden. However, a long series of presidents and their tools have scorned the evidence that their aid programs perennially clobber recipients. Nowhere is this clearer than in the sordid history of U.S. food aid.Food for Peace was devised in 1954 to help dump abroad embarrassingly huge crop surpluses fomented by high federal price supports. The primary purpose of Public Law 480 (in which the program is embodied) has...

Ben SmithFox News reports it’s entirely legal in many jurisdictions for criminals to change their names, citing the case of an Oklahoma man convicted of impersonating a police officer – as well as a would-be school bus driver who is a convicted sex offender. It’s a problem in Australia, too, where rapists, murderers, and "fraudsters" simply reinvent themselves in order to escape scrutiny once out of prison. This practice is now spreading to the political sphere, where the ideological...

I'm confused. Jen Psaki, US State Department spokesperson, says that the Ukrainian government has "every right" to use air strikes against its opponents in Ukraine on the grounds that it "is defending the country." Yet in 2011, alleged air strikes by Libyan government forces against its opponents were used as a reason for the imposition of a “no-fly zone” which was followed by a NATO-led military intervention against Libya. We were told that the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was “killing his...

Over the past several weeks we have seen a significant increase in illegal immigration, as thousands of unaccompanied minors pour across what seems an invisible southern border into the United States. The mass immigration has, as to be expected, put an enormous strain on local resources, and it has heated up the immigration debate in the US.Most liberals and conservatives miss the point, however, making the same old arguments we have all heard before. Liberals argue that we need to provide...

The New York Times reports that American prosecutors, in the wake of the decision against French bank BNP Paribas, have shifted their attention now towards German banks. Just as in its conduct of foreign policy, the US government fails to appreciate the concept of “blowback” in its heavy-handed treatment of foreign banks.This is one of the major problems with having a banking system that is set up and controlled by the government. Unlike a true market-based banking system that is geared...

Just how independent is the European Union? Given recent events involving the United States and its European allies, one really must wonder.First, there was the US National Security Agency brazenly tapping German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s private cellphone and, very likely, many more vip’s in Germany, a key US ally and Europe’s most important nation.Washington and the NSA shrugged off this horribly embarrassing incident with the usual “well, everyone does it.”Not true. Imagine the stink if...

This week, I attended a talk here in San Francisco by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, sponsored jointly by The World Affairs Council and The Commonwealth Club.I have never heard remarks before quite like those made by Rasmussen, the former Prime Minister of Denmark.In nearly perfect English, he called for the expanded role for NATO pretty much across the world. He said there was an "arc of crisis" around the world, from north and central Africa to Iraq and Syria. From the Baltics...