War in Context

Pentagon is left scrambling to pay for war
By Gordon Lubold, Christian Science Monitor, November 19, 2007
Congress’s failure last week to agree whether and how to fund the war puts the onus on the Pentagon, at least for now, to find a way to cover expenses in Iraq, potentially forcing the Defense Department to close dozens […]

‘Hidden costs’ double price of two wars, Democrats say
By Josh White, Washington Post, November 13, 2007
The economic costs to the United States of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far total approximately $1.5 trillion, according to a new study by congressional Democrats that estimates the conflicts’ “hidden costs”– including higher oil prices, the expense […]

Division of the U.S. didn’t occur overnight
By Michiko Kakutani, New York Times, November 13, 2007
During President George W. Bush’s first term, one of his senior political advisers summed up the prevailing philosophy at the White House like this: “This is not designed to be a 55 percent presidency,” he said. “This is designed to be […]

Will wou attack Iran?
By Ezra Klein, The American Prospect, November 8, 2007
In the last few weeks, the Democratic field has settled on an attack against the frontrunner: Doublespeak. “I believe Senator Clinton should be held to the same standard that every one of us should be held to,” says John Edwards. “Tell the truth, no […]

The trap that is Iraq
By Tom Oliphant, The Guardian, October 24, 2007
Hidden in plain sight is the one issue still capable of blowing up the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
It isn’t Iran, outsider-insider, lobbyist relations or healthcare.
It’s the war in Iraq.
The mass media illusion - and also delusion - is that the Democrats, generally, […]

Preemption, Israeli style
By Joshua Muravchik, Los Angeles Times, October 14, 2007
Last month, one of the more mysterious episodes in the history of the Arab-Israel conflict began to leak slowly into the news. Although the facts are still unconfirmed, what seems to have happened has major implications not only for the region but even more for […]

Putin: no proof Iran is trying to make nuclear weapons
By Mark Tran, The Guardian, October 10, 2007
There is no proof Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons programme, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said today.
But he said Tehran should make its atomic activity “as transparent as possible”.
“We do not have data that says Iran is trying […]

How Congress forgot its own strength
By Mario Cuomo, New York Times, October 7, 2007
Senators Jim Webb of Virginia and Hillary Clinton of New York are right to demand that the president go before Congress to ask for a “declaration of war” before proceeding with an attack against Iran or any other nation. But there is […]

How the Democrats blew it
By Gary Kamiya, Salon, October 2, 2007
The fact that Democrats have eagerly participated in Bush and the neocons’ campaign to demonize Iran shows that they have learned nothing from Iraq. The Democrats know that Bush lives in his own world outside the “reality-based community,” one in which rational behavior is not […]

The future of democracy depends on abandoning the war metaphor
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, August 3, 2007
If presidential candidates can’t come up with some intelligent foreign policy positions, it’s time that they followed State Department advice: shut up — at least for a while.
In just three days we’ve heard candidates proposing sending troops into […]