CounterPunch Op-Ed
Mel Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.
- Dangerous “War Scares” Of 1974, 1983, And 2021: What Needs To Be Done?
- The Dangerous Exaggeration of the Threat
- Is It Biden’s Turn to be Boxed In?
- “Rogue Nations” and “Failed States”: America Doesn’t Know the Difference
- Robert M. Gates: Poster Child for Bureaucratic Deceit
- Afghanistan: the Miserable Performance Of The Mainstream Media
- Ukraine: the Key to Unlocking the Russian-American Stalemate
- The Washington Post Won’t Let Go of Afghanistan
- The Continuing Horror of CIA’s Torture and Abuse
- Holding Onto the Cold War
Recent News and Latest Book
Dangerous “War Scares” Of 1974, 1983, And 2021: What Needs To Be Done?
The United States over the past five decades has had dangerous experiences with “war scares.” This demands an assessment of options for reducing the possibility of a war scare that could result in an actual war, particularly in the nuclear age. U.S. and allied military exercises are particularly dangerous because military doctrine, particularly in communist states, argues that military exercises are an effective way of hiding an actual first strike operation.
Is It Biden’s Turn to be Boxed In?
It was known as early as 2006 that additional troops would not make a difference; that the Afghan government would collapse without U.S. support; and that the Afghan government was a criminal syndicate. In private meetings with Obama, Biden dismissed the intelligence community’s view of the Taliban as nothing more than a “new al Qaeda.” It wrongly predicted that the Taliban would project a “global jihadist ideology.” The fact that Biden was so right 12 years ago probably explains his stubbornness in standing up to the Pentagon, which was still arguing for a “conditions based withdrawal.” Biden was not going to allow the Pentagon to pursue its “forever war” any longer.
