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Vanden Heuvel is a Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (FERI) Board of Governors member. Others include former Senator Paul Sarbanes, former Democrat vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, and John Brademas, former New York University president and National Endowment for Democracy board member, a US foreign policy instrument funding anti-democracy groups globally.
Initially an Afghan war supporter, vanden Heuvel and Nation writers then backed humanitarian intervention to make the country and region "secure" and "stable." Yet after WikiLeaks revelations, she showed unease in her July 29 editorial (published on July 27 in her weekly Washington Post column) titled, "Could WikiLeaks Offer a Way Out of War," saying:
"The war in Afghanistan just got a little foggier - or a little more transparent - depending on how you choose to see" the WikiLeaks dump, quoting a London Guardian editorial "show(ing) a conflict that is brutally messy, confused and immediate," neither she nor the editorial writer exposing the conflict's lawlessness, mindless slaughter, daily war crimes, and shocking atrocities, including torture in America's offshore gulag. Instead, she quotes The New York Times saying:
"The documents illuminate the extraordinary difficulty of what the United States and its allies have undertaken in a way that other accounts have not," responding only that "Perhaps a new take on an old war is just what we need to extract ourselves from another quagmire. (We've seen) enough to know that (Obama's) strategy cannot work, and enough to understand that the cost of continuing the war far outstrip any conceivable benefits."
"Benefits?" Only for imperial pillagers, criminal politicians, media hacks, and war profiteers, none for beleaguered Afghans and cheated Americans, lied to and denied vital services when they most need them - she and the editorial expressing no moral outrage, no sympathy for massive suffering, and no concern for the truth, just support for winnable wars, not ones that "cannot work."
In response to Obama's Nobel Peace Prize award, vanden Heuvel was effusive in her October 11, 2009 article titled, "The Burden & The Nobel," calling it "an ingenious leap of faith - the endorsement of the hope and the promise represented by America's new President....I think those who argue that the Prize is cheapened are just plain silly. The Prize doesn't go to only those who succeeded in their efforts, nor is it a lifetime achievement award. Instead, it is often and wisely given to endorse and encourage those who are working to bring about a better and more peaceful world."
This writer's October 12, 2009 article titled, October Surprise - Peace Prize to a War Criminal expressed another view, accessed through the following link:
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