Portside

It’s important to understand that the current crisis in Iraq is rooted in the destruction of Iraqi society brought on by the U.S. invasion and occupation.

If you want to understand why it's the case that on the one hand, the U.S. public and the majority of Congress turned against the war in Afghanistan a long time ago, and yet on the other hand, it's been so hard to end the war, this week's warmonger media storm against the diplomatic rescue of U.S. prisoner of war Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has been very instructive.

Drone warfare is based on the lie that war can be made more exact, limited and humane through technology.

“Today, President Obama showed once again that he doesn’t get it.”

Reader Comments - Flashmob for Mandela; The Progressive 'Left"; War and Christmas Truce of 1914; Socialist Origins of the Pledge; Radicals in City Hall; Fidel Castro on Mandela's Death and Who Supported Apartheid; Korea; MSNBC; Announcements - "No Separate Justice" Launch in New York City Jan. 7; Esperanza Spalding Protest Song & Video Calling For Guantanamo Bay

Military chaplains seem to be another cog in the apparatus of making war maximally effective. Christian chaplains seem to not pay much attention to the Ten Commandments either, especially the ones that say "thou shalt not kill" or "thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's oil". 99 years ago one of the most unusual aberrations in the bloody history of warfare - never allowed to be repeated again - occurred.

War, for those who actually experienced it ... is hell. Those who saw combat do not return whole. Their dreams reek of death, of comrades torn apart, of foreign children shot by accident.