Ultimately, we cannot tell either the Israelis or the Palestinians what's best for them. - Obama talks to the Muslim World.
Yes We Can, President Hussein! Yes We Can. Those are our bombs, our money, our technology sustaining an apartheid, imperial state.
The drone-strikes are huge news - esp. since Gilani stood on the Parliament floor and basically guaranteed that they will not occur during the Obama administration. Well, they have. And innocents are indeed dead. A must-read is Juan Cole's Obama's Vietnam?
That is true (our bombs sustaining, and all that) but not exclusively true. It is not clear who would win if the US were to leave the locals (and locals would now include local jews) to fight it out. An Israel that was not tied to the US would presumably do whatever it could on its own. As things stand, they can actually do a whole lot more than the poor palestinians. I am not arguing for imperial intervention. I am just pointing out that after the imperial forces leave, the "barbarians" can get down to it on their own and the results may be even more blood curdling than the existing mess (as a historian, I am sure you are familiar with human being's capacity for killing other human beings in imaginative ways)....or are you arguing for BETTER imperial intervention rather than none? in which case, you and Obama differ only on details...
No, no. Not Juan Cole. Look to him for history of iraqi shia. On all other topics he is a floundering amateur hack, and his flounderings are not particularly interesting. He was against withdrawing from Iraq. Thought Afghanistan was the good war. Promoted Zardari as the savior, etc. Even the Vietnam analogy is mostly about American suffering. Want clarity of thought? Here is a note from Philip Weiss: http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/01/afghan-govt-worker-vows-to-be-suicide-bomber-.html
"Yes We Can, President Hussein! Yes We Can. Those are our bombs, our money, our technology sustaining an apartheid, imperial state." Completely, totally agree.
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2009/01/29/obama-agent-of-change-well-agent-of-somethin/
'Ours' is a pretty big group...bit simplistic to think the guns, bombs, money have a straight path to anywhere these days.