Joseph Palermo Posts

Ten years ago our “leaders” in the government, the corporate media, and the “national security” establishment assured us that invading Iraq was in our national interest. They promised us everything from “democracy” breaking out in the Middle East, to progress in ending the Israel-Palestine conflict, to the reduction of “terrorism” and having access to cheap oil.

Ten years ago our “leaders” in the government, the corporate media, and the “national security” establishment assured us that invading Iraq was in our national interest. They promised us everything from “democracy” breaking out in the Middle East, to progress in ending the Israel-Palestine conflict, to the reduction of “terrorism” and having access to cheap oil.

Joseph PalermoThe unrepentant neo-cons and backbenchers on Mitt Romney’s foreign policy team, such as Dan Senor and Cofer Black, always advise their candidate to attack signs of “weakness” coming from President Obama. The Administration’s announcement of direct talks between the U.S. and Iran should be welcomed as good news by those who don’t wish to see yet another bloodbath in the Middle East but Romney can be counted on to condemn the diplomatic breakthrough as insufficiently hawkish.

The CNN reporter, Candy Crowley, who moderated Tuesday night’s presidential debate at Hofstra University has joined the ranks of journalists inside the “liberal media” that the right-wing echo chamber will forever smear, slime, and loathe. The Republicans, along with their formidable propaganda outlets, Fox News and AM Talk Radio, have their knickers in a bunch because Ms. Crowley fact-checked their beloved candidate, Mitt Romney during the night’s most heated exchange.

We must engage the world that exists, not the one we’d like to imagine (as the neocons should have learned). And in the Islamic world, like anywhere else, there are opportunistic politicians eager to exploit slights to their religion to enhance their power. Fatwas are indeed the craziest religious decrees ever devised, but might the targeted assassinations of “militants” by drones be seen as a kind of secular “fatwa?” Contrary to the views of Maher, Harris, and others the Muslim religion is not any more inherently “violent” than any other. Their riffs are entertaining and correct to ridicule fanaticism, but they ignore the more thorny questions relating to the tortured history the Islamic world has had with “the West.”