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GITMO To Be Closed In One Year

Not "crimes against humanity". Just the usual horror of war. The US has never been found guilty of "crimes against humanity" by any legal authority. The people who label US actions as such could find "comparable" actions by any nation in the world that has been at war. Just saying it doesn't make it so.

With all my respect for you, why is it so hard to admit your own nations wrongdoings? It is no shame or whatsoever.
We can always debate on what the U.S. could've done better or shouldn't have done.
Horrors of war, does that include unnecessary heavy use of force? Reminds me of the Gaza conflict.
Anyways, good to hear that gitmo is being closed, that's one step in the right direction.
 
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With all my respect for you, why is it so hard to admit your own nations wrongdoings? We can always debate on what the U.S. could've done better or shouldn't have done.

I can admit things that my country has done wrong. What comes to my mind right away is:

Should not have invaded Iraq.
Should not have funded Israel after they started settlements in the West Bank.
Should not have assisted the coup that allowed the Shah of Iran to regain the throne in 1953.
Should not have supported the Diem regime in Vietnam in 1963 and following.
Should not have sent peace keeping troops to Lebanon in 1982.
Should not have sent peace keeping troops to Somalia in 1993.
Should have joined the League of Nations in 1921.
Should not have accepted the UN headquarters in New York in 1945.
Should have outlawed slavery in 1789.

I'm sure I can think of more.

What I don't accept is revisionist history on things like Hiroshima. At the time it was the correct decision by President Truman and saved lives on both sides of the conflict. Even in hindsight you can't say that NOT dropping the A-bomb would have been better for the world and humanity.
 
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Why do you think USA have done wrong by accepting to have the UN headquarters in N.Y?

Because the UN is a royal pain is the a$$! We waste a lot of money and time on what is essentially a job creation program for ambitious job seekers from developing countries. All they do is yak, yak, yak and bite the hand that feeds them. If the UN were in Pakistan, we would be much, much better off.
 
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I can admit things that my country has done wrong. What comes to my mind right away is:

Should not have invaded Iraq.
Should not have funded Israel after they started settlements in the West Bank.
Should not have assisted the coup that allowed the Shah of Iran to regain the throne in 1953.
Should not have supported the Diem regime in Vietnam in 1963 and following.
Should not have sent peace keeping troops to Lebanon in 1982.
Should not have sent peace keeping troops to Somalia in 1993.
Should have joined the League of Nations in 1921.
Should not have accepted the UN headquarters in New York in 1945.
Should have outlawed slavery in 1789.

I'm sure I can think of more.

What I don't accept is revisionist history on things like Hiroshima. At the time it was the correct decision by President Truman and saved lives on both sides of the conflict. Even in hindsight you can't say that NOT dropping the A-bomb would have been better for the world and humanity.

I agree with almost all of your points there, but you should've added the A-Bomb factor in it aswell.
Reason why is simple, your nation dropped two incredibly powerful bombs on urban and rural areas, 2 big cities, ONLY civilians, who have absolutely NOTHING to do with the war, and your nation simply nuked them.
Even the aftermath is still seen and felt in those cities and across the region, children were born with all sorts of handicaps, people seriously suffered, if you see the damage that had been done by these bombs, you would seriously reconsider your list and add the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to it aswell because it was an outright crime towards humanity.
Nobody can justify that, there were so many other options available, your nation was simply itching to test their new toys, and they took the opportunity.
It's a disgrace, nobody can justify what happened to those people back then.
But then again, it is the U.S.A. that performed the assault, your country, now if NewYork and Chicago were nuked to "end the Iraq + Afghanistan war", you wouldn't exactly be happy and say "it was all for the best, due to that the war has ended", no, you'd be horrified.
140,000 people died in Hiroshima and another 80,000 died in Nagasaki.
You cannot say that dropping bombs on innocent civilians is no war crime.
You seriously amaze me on this, but you're most likely not the only American who thinks the bombs were the right thing to do.
 
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Because the UN is a royal pain is the a$$! We waste a lot of money and time on what is essentially a job creation program for ambitious job seekers from developing countries. All they do is yak, yak, yak and bite the hand that feeds them. If the UN were in Pakistan, we would be much, much better off.

You dont think that since the UN headquarters is in U.S, then it automatically means you fund the UN? You know every member country contriute to UN based on the BNP of each country. Countries with high BNP pay a lot more than poor countries with low BNP, some countries are very poor and cannot contribute.

Also, just placing the headquarters in New York, do you know how much US companies i.e Hotels and airlines have earned just to accomodate transport and lodging?

Moreover, since US have a very high BNP and therefor pays a big amount of the total budget it has gained a lot of "power" behing the scenes. It was on that extent US Congress threatend UN to withdraw its contribution if UN did not make reforms and to reduce its assesments. After a agreement signes between US and UN, the congress paid the amount it owed and UN reduced its assesments.

Coming to the last point, the reason you think UN is such a pain in your ... is because of it was not designed for a unipolar world, it was designed when there was to superpowers emerging in a bipolar world. It is because now is a superpower and a hegemon and its actions are pretty much in self-interest and unilateral and therefor it clashes with the UN, i.e last Iraq war when UN was bypassed.

And even if UN headquarters was in Pakistan, it would still be a pain in your ... due to lack of co-operation and unliaterism, but Pakistani or the city its would be located in should generate a good amount of commercial and business generation due to transport, lodging and so on.
 
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You cannot say that dropping bombs on innocent civilians is no war crime.
You seriously amaze me on this, but you're most likely not the only American who thinks the bombs were the right thing to do.

It wasn't a war crime. The A-bombs were used to end the war. The alternative was an evasion of the Japanese home islands that would have cost even more Japanese lives and thousands of American lives as well. Japan was recalcitrant about surrendering, even after Germany surrendered. Truman decided to use the new weapon to see if it would frighten the Japanese military into surrendering. It did. While not intentional, another thing that was accomplished was to reveal the horror of nuclear weapons. They have never been used since. And iIam not the only American who thinks this. Americans agree with me in descending % as they get younger. That is, our WWII veterans (now in their eighties) agree 100%. As people are younger from this generation, people's understanding of the situation that prevailed in 1945 falls off, and is replaced by the rosy glasses that you are wearing at your young age.
 
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Pakistani or the city its would be located in should generate a good amount of commercial and business generation due to transport, lodging and so on.

The USA would happily give up this benefit. It's not worth much, believe me.
 
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World Beat

by JOHN FEFFER | Tuesday, January 27, 2009

GWOT's End?

Last week, shortly after being inaugurated, President Barack Obama ended the "global war on terror" (GWOT). Or so The Washington Post reported. The new president countermanded the Bush administration's extralegal approaches by mandating the closure of Guantánamo within a year, outlawing the use of torture in interrogations, and putting the CIA out of the secret prisons business. Obama announced that he wanted to "send an unmistakable signal that our actions in defense of liberty will be as just as our cause."

Sounds good. But the Post's declaration might be just as premature as President George W. Bush's infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech on the USS Lincoln that signaled the "end" of the Iraq War.

On the civil liberties front, for instance, the administration retains the right to use renditions, by which the CIA secretly abducted suspects and transferred them to third countries without trial. "I think it's a glaring hole," Vincent Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights said last week on Democracy Now! "I think that one way that the Obama administration could have dealt a more decisive blow to the illegal Bush policies and even the rendition policy, which originated under Bill Clinton, is to specifically reference this and to say that we are going to disavow this."


Also, the inmates at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan, which holds more prisoners than Gitmo, and the thousands held in Iraq won't get the case-by-case review accorded to their counterparts in Cuba. Non-military agencies like the CIA, after a six-month review, might get "additional or different guidance" on interrogations - and who knows what that means. And, as Politico points out, the guy in charge of the 30-day review of Gitmo is the same fellow who was in charge for the last two years - Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. That's not exactly a recipe for reform.

But even if Obama holds to his word on torture, closes Guantánamo within the year, applies the same yardstick to detainees at Bagram and in Iraq, and eliminates the Clinton-era policy on extraordinary rendition, the death of the "global war on terror," as Mark Twain once said of his own prematurely published obituary, is greatly exaggerated. Indeed, on the day after it published GWOT's obituary, The Washington Post reported on two U.S. unilateral air strikes in Pakistan that killed 20 suspected terrorists. Although it observed an uncharacteristic silence over these strikes, the Pakistani government has previously expressed outrage at these violations of its sovereignty.


Then there's Afghanistan, which will be the new epicenter of U.S. counterterrorism strategy. Here's the relevant excerpt from the official White House statement on foreign policy: "Obama and Biden will refocus American resources on the greatest threat to our security - the resurgence of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They will increase our troop levels in Afghanistan, press our allies in NATO to do the same, and dedicate more resources to revitalize Afghanistan's economic development."

Why does Obama believe that he can escape the same outcome in Afghanistan that Bush faced in Iraq? As former Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern argued in a recent appeal for a five-year "time-out" on war, "In 2003, the Bush administration ordered an invasion of Iraq, supposedly to reduce terrorism. But six years later, there is more terrorism and civil strife in Iraq, not less. The same outcome may occur in Afghanistan if we make it the next American military conflict."

So, is this a kinder, gentler GWOT? Certainly the new Obama administration is more concerned about observing international law. It's more prudent in its willingness to use diplomacy over force. But so far at least, the new president still treats terrorism as a war to be won rather than an endemic problem to be dealt with, patiently and largely by law enforcement agencies. We're still at war in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and for the time being in Iraq. We're still selling arms to Indonesia, Israel, and Colombia as part of an overall counterterrorism approach. The Pentagon's new Africa Command (AFRICOM) still looks at counterterrorism through a military lens.


Sounds to me like we haven't seen the last of GWOT quite yet.

Roll Back…the Carter Administration!

Some progressives - I'm not naming names, though the Center for American Progress does come to mind - tend to treat the recent Bush administration like an eight-year bacterial infection of U.S. foreign policy that a good dose of Obama-biotics can cure. Alas, the problems with U.S. foreign policy stretch back further into the past and share a Democratic lineage - from Clinton (extraordinary rendition) to Truman (the national security state) and even back to Wilson (double standards on self-determination).


As Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Michael Klare argues, Jimmy Carter is on the list as well for his doctrine of using military force to secure U.S. access to Middle Eastern oil. "President Obama has promised to make a substantial investment in oil alternatives," Klare writes in Repudiate the Carter Doctrine. "Such efforts are expected to be a major component of his economic stimulus package and deserve strong public backing. But this is only half of the problem. To overcome what he calls the 'tyranny of oil,' he must also repudiate the Carter Doctrine and reject the use of military force to ensure access to Middle Eastern petroleum. Only in this way can we be certain that the Iraq War will be the last time U.S. soldiers shed their blood for oil."

Meanwhile, Obama's appointment of George Mitchell as Middle East envoy is a positive sign, given Mitchell's more balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But as FPIF senior analyst Stephen Zunes points out, "balance" will not be enough to restart the peace process.


"The problem in being 'balanced' in mediating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that it fails to recognize the unbalanced nature of a conflict between an occupied people and their occupiers," Zunes writes in Is Mitchell Up to the Task? "While balance in the sense of recognizing that both Israelis and Palestinians have the fundamental right to live in peace and security is indeed critical, it should be remembered that Palestinian land is being occupied, confiscated, and colonized, not Israeli land; that Israeli military and economic power is dramatically greater than that of the Palestinians; that Palestinian civilians have been killed in far greater numbers than Israeli civilians; and that it's the Palestinians and not the Israelis who have been denied their fundamental right of statehood."

War and Art


I recently interviewed Mladen Miljanović, who won the prestigious Bell Award in 2007 as the best young visual artist in Bosnia Herzegovina. In my Postcard from…Banja Luka, I look at one of the intriguing works in his recent exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in the capital of Republika Srpska.

"The art is shaped by his experience of war, of serving in the military, of living in a society still scarred by violence," I write. "The title of the show, 'Occupational Therapy,' suggests a working out of trauma through concrete work. In the installation titled 'Re-production,' a needle passes over a turntable made of spent cartridges. From a set of speakers, clustered around the turntable like soldiers taking orders, issues forth a horrible screech. Is this the music of war? Or the sound of a traumatized society struggling to reproduce something useful from the remains of conflict?"

The new movie Waltz with Bashir, an animated documentary about an Israeli soldier's memories of involvement in the Sabra and Shatila massacres, is collecting awards here and abroad. It's also being published as a graphic novel. Check out TomDispatch for an eye-opening excerpt.

Also on the topic of war and memory: if you're in the DC area, check out our event on Wednesday, January 29 at the Peace Mural in Georgetown. "War, Memory and Representation in Art: Burma, Korea, Laos, & Vietnam" will feature panelists Kyi May Kaung, Annabel Park, Channapha Khamvongsa, and Anna Huong addressing the challenge of picturing war. FPIF co-director Emira Woods will moderate. This will be a great chance to see Huong's epic mural, which Kyi May Kaung described in this FPIF article. It's a mural, but don't worry: the art and the event will both be inside.
 
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