Norman Solomon

One year later: Unrest within the Obama base

On election night a year ago, celebrations across the North Bay included dancing in the streets. The voters had spoken — loudly — for Barack Obama, who won 74 percent of ballots in Sonoma County and 78 percent in Marin. Spirits were sky high, and so were expectations.

That evening, as he spoke to the nation from Chicago’s Grant Park, Obama repeated his campaign mantra: “Yes we can.” But a year later, the words are less uplifting.

“If this financial crisis taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers,” Obama declared in his election-night speech. Yet Wall Street is now doing quite a bit better than Main Street...

Read the full op-ed in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat

US media poodles

At times, long after laying the big flagstones on the path to war, mainstream US media outlets resolve to be more independent next time. And why not? As Mark Twain commented, "It's easy to quit smoking. I've done it hundreds of times."

When the president and his team set out to prepare the media ground for war, they can rely on a repetition compulsion that's widespread in the American press. Major outlets seem unable to resist White House agenda-setting for war. Cases in point span decades, from Vietnam and the Dominican Republic to Grenada and Panama, to Iraq and Yugoslavia, to Afghanistan and Iraq again - with Iran likely to join the list next year.

Along the way, beginning with the 1991 Gulf war, the better performances of the British press compared to the American media - high jumps over low standards - have not prevented the British government from requiting the worst aspects of the special relationship by supplying troops and weaponry for US-initiated war efforts based on deception...

Read the full Guardian article.

Opening the Debate on Israel

The extended controversy over a paper by two professors, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," is prying the lid off a debate that has been bottled up for decades.

Routinely, the American news media have ignored or pilloried any strong criticism of Washington's massive support for Israel. But the paper and an article based on it by respected academics John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt, academic dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, first published March 23 in the London Review of Books, are catalysts for some healthy public discussion of key issues...

The full op-ed.

In Praise of Kevin Benderman

Conscience is not in the chain of command.

    "Before being sentenced to 15 months for refusing to return to Iraq with his Army unit, Sgt. Kevin Benderman told a military judge that he acted with his conscience, not out of a disregard for duty," the Associated Press reports. Benderman, a 40-year-old Army mechanic, "refused to go on a second combat tour in January, saying the destruction and misery he witnessed during the 2003 Iraq invasion had turned him against war."

    Three weeks ago, his wife Monica Benderman wrote...

Read the full article.

This War Walks Among Us

Most of the injured in Iraq are surviving, and their homecoming could undercut Bush

In wartime, the silence of the American dead is a vacuum that the powerful in Washington try to fill. While loved ones are left with haunting memories and excruciating sadness, the most amplified political voices use predictable rhetoric to talk about ultimate sacrifices.

But the wounded do not disappear. They can speak for themselves. And many more will be seen and heard in this decade. Thanks to improvements in protective gear and swift medical treatment, more of America's wounded are surviving - and returning home with serious permanent injuries...

Read the full op-ed which was published in Newsday on March 13, 2005.

Related link: Iraq Veterans Against the War

A Global Perspective on Defeating Bush

written with Jeff Cohen

The U.S.-centric nature of American politics often affects the U.S. left. It's hard to get out of USA mindsets long enough to grasp the global implications of decisions made here at home. Yet the effects of U.S. government policies are so enormous across the planet that some people have suggested -- with more than a little justification -- that every person on Earth should get to vote in U.S. presidential elections.

On the international left, no one has more credibility as an unwavering opponent of U.S. foreign policy than Tariq Ali. Raised in Pakistan, he was a leader of Britain's Vietnam Solidarity Campaign in the 1960s, and is now a prominent London-based writer and an editor at New Left Review. His recent books include "Bush in Babylon" and "The Clash of Fundamentalisms." As progressives in the United States try to make sense out of the current presidential campaign, Ali's perspective on the global significance of Bush's electoral fate deserves serious consideration...

Read the full piece.