Your source for foreign policy news.
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July 21st, 2021
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David Brooks, a onetime conservative editor at Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, long ago joined the Pretorian Guard for American progressive internationalism and backed its advance around the globe through war. "For most of the past century, human dignity had a friend - the United States of America," he argued last week.
In his view, the U.S. selflessly promoted peace, prosperity, and democracy throughout the world. But tragically, he related, "then came Iraq and Afghanistan, and America lost faith in itself and its global role - like a pitcher who has been shelled and no longer has confidence in his own stuff." Apparently, it was nothing that Washington did. A little miscue or two, a few snide comments from critics, a tragic loss of self-confidence, and the US gave up its divine mission to move humankind ever forward to nirvana.
By Doug Bandow
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The US military bombed Somalia on Tuesday, marking the first official US airstrike in the country of the Biden administration. The Pentagon said the strike targeted al-Shabaab and confirmed the bombing with several media outlets.
"The Department of Defense can confirm that in coordination with the Federal Government of Somalia, US Africa Command forces conducted one airstrike against al-Shabaab in the vicinity of Galkayo, Somalia, today," Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia King said, according to Task & Purpose.
King said that the Pentagon's "initial assessment" found that no civilians were killed in the strike. The US almost always claims no civilians are killed by its operations in Somalia, but whenever journalists or human rights organizations make it to the scene of a US airstrike in the country, they tell a much different story.
By Dave DeCamp
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"We stand with the Cuban people," US President Joe Biden says in an official White House statement, responding to protests across the Caribbean island country, "and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime."
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel disagrees as to the nature of the protests. "All this discontent, these feelings of dissatisfaction, what is the ultimate cause of all that?" he asks. "It’s the blockade. This is part of the U.S. playbook to destabilize us, to generate chaos, to break our will and spirit."
Diaz-Canel has a point.
By Thomas Knapp
A major suicide bombing tore through a crowded food market in Sadr City Monday, killing at least 35 people and wounding dozens of others. Police said more than 60 were wounded, and that the death toll could ultimately rise substantially.
ISIS claimed credit for the attack. Shoppers were buying food for the upcoming Eid al-Adha festival. Attacks ahead of this Eid are extremely common in Iraq, and usually target Shi'ite neighborhoods.
Iraq's President Salih condemned the attack as a heinous crime, and Prime Minister Kadhimi placed the police commander for the area under arrest as part of launching the investigation into the attack.
By Jason Ditz
Israeli forces fired artillery shells into southern Lebanon overnight, retaliating against a pair of rockets entering Israeli territory from Lebanon. No casualties or damage were reported on either side.
Exactly how this latest exchange started isn’t entirely clear. Lebanon is undergoing a serious economic crisis, and stability is suffering. The Lebanese Army reported finding and disabling the rocket launching pads that were used, and which were near where Israel was firing.
By Jason Ditz
As it did while attempting to build a natural gas pipeline through the region in the 1990s and during the early years of the so-called War on Terror, the U.S. government is once again courting Central Asian dictatorships in a bid to secure a military staging area from which it could launch strikes against resurgent Islamist militants in the post-Afghan War era.
The Associated Press reports US diplomats are mounting a "charm offensive" in a bid to woo leaders of nations including Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan into agreeing to provide US military forces with bases close to the Afghan border that could be used for the type of "over-the-horizon" operations that President Joe Biden and Pentagon brass say may continue after the withdrawal, as well as temporary relocation sites for thousands of Afghan translators and other collaborators with the nearly 20-year invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.
By Brett Wilkins
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