Nine years ago, on March 19, 2003, I resigned from the U.S. Department of State in opposition to President Bush's war on Iraq.
A lot of water has gone under the bridge in the past nine years, but the concerns I have about our government and its policies have only grown -- with the second four years of President Bush and now three years of President Obama.
U.S. policies continue to elicit concern/hatred around the world
U.S. continues to create and implement policies that invite concern and/or hatred from most of the people of the world while governments/heads of governments continue to be coerced, bribed, and bought-off to go along with whatever the United States decides is best for itself.
Ten and one-half years after the events of 9/11, America continues to consider itself a nation under siege by groups of non-state actors (al Qaida, Somali pirates and God know who else as we, the American public, are not cleared to know), and by the remainder of Bush's Axis of Evil -- Iran and North Korea.
The third of Bush's Axis of Evil -- Iraq -- is now free of U.S. occupation forces after eight years, but is hardly a nation of democracy and rule of laws, very similar to the United States in the past 10 years of its War on Global Terrorism where laws against torture, illegal imprisonment, assassination and entrapment have been wholesale violated by the past two Presidential administrations.
Military Justice?
The terrible Guantanamo prison is still open, military commissions rather than federal courts will adjudicate tainted evidence stained by 10 years of imprisonment for the 150 still imprisoned there.
Justice Military style with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs declaring yesterday that Bradley Manning is guilty, just like President Obama did several months ago -- so why even have a court-martial?
What military jury or judge will go against the publicly stated opinions of the President of the United States of America (a Constitutional Law professor, who must know the impact of a statement of the President -- and a law professor to boot) and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?
Iran and North Korea still are U.S. Targets
Iran
and North Korea, the other Bush Axis of Evil countries, continue to be in the
cross-hairs of U.S. targeting for regime change and destruction. The coordinated U.S. and Israeli
war-mongering against Iran and its nuclear program -- still an energy program by
estimates of all intelligence agencies -- and the crippling sanctions that follow
the same type of inhumane and illegal sanctions wrecked upon Iraq for eight years
before the US invasion of that country, will never result in an uprising against
a heavily armed government, but the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iranians,
just as in Iraq, where Secretary of State Albright said that the deaths of
500,000 Iraqi children will be acceptable to the Bush administration.
Afghanistan: Drones and Night Raids Murder Innocent Civilians
Afghanistan is suffering tremendous civilian casualties from the U.S. invasion and occupation, as did Iraq during its US invasion and occupation. Just this past week, the U.S. maintains that only one soldier massacred 16 civilians in 3 homes in two villages, hardly believable after endless years of U.S. military night raids by squads of soldiers who killed hundreds of innocent civilians, and certainly not believable to members of the Afghanistan Parliament who have visited the area and investigated the massacre.
Thousands of Afghans and thousands of Pakistani civilians have been killed by U.S. military and CIA drones in the past three years. The Obama administration has exponentially increased the number of drone attacks in both countries. The Pakistan government has refused to allow supply convoys from the port of Karachi to travel through Pakistan to resupply US and NATO bases in Afghanistan because of the drone attacks that have killed so many Pakistanis.
Israelis Are Still Attacking Palestinians, but Palestinians Refuse to Surrender
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