Bombs Away U.S. of A.

How many countries has 'the United States of America' attacked this month?

Schizophrenia as Explanation for U.S. Policy Toward Syria

7,500 miles separate the cities of Damascus and Los Angeles.  Despite the vast geographical divide the people of each region are tied together via their central state.

To summarize Washington, D.C.'s policy toward Syria:

1. A decade long regime of sanctions prohibiting the people of Syria trading for American made goods.  
2. Two years of supplying automatic weapons to Syria's "moderate Islamic militants" in order to topple the Assad-led state of Syria. 
3. Two week long bombing campaigns in Iraq in order to kill "extremist Islamic militants" (members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria).
4. Newly announced drone surveillance flights over Syria in order to spy on ISIS.   

Democracy, Hypocrisy

Saddam Hussein greeting U.S. special envoy Donald Rumsfeld

(Baghdad, 1983) 

Nearly a quarter century ago Murray Rothbard wrote* "Why the Intervention in Arabia?".  In it he ponders the contradiction of the U.S. supporting dictators in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia while Washington was claiming to be spreading "democracy":

"Saddam Hussein is a very bad man, the "Butcher of Baghdad." Absolutely, but he was just as much a butcher only the other day when he was our gallant ally against the terrible threat posed to the Gulf by the fanatical Shiites of Iran." 

...

U.S. Senator John Kerry dining with Assad

(Damascus, 2009 image The Telegraph)

Rothbard continues:

"The fanatical Shiites are still there, by the way, but they--as well as the Dictator of Syria, Hafez Assad, the Butcher of Hama--seem to have been magically transformed into our gallant allies against Saddam Hussein."

Fewer than three years after Kerry and Assad were dining together in Damascus the U.S. began allying with Syria's Muslim Brotherhood to topple Assad and his government.

According to the New York Times funding for Assad's opposition is coming from Turkey, Qatar, U.S. State Department, the C.I.A. and Saudi Arabia.

The victims of regime change in Iraq would ask if this policy of spreading "democracy" is underpinned by hypocrisy?

*Rothbard's article is published at Mises.org

Religious Freedom in Iraq?

Hundreds of Iraqi-Canadian's protested in Toronto this weekend.  Their cause: stop the mass-slaughter of Christians in Iraq.

image CBC

The CBC reports that ISIS has killed over 2,000 people over the last month in Mosul and Tikrit.

According to ISIS Christians in Iraq have three choices:

1. convert to Islam
2. be killed 
3. become a tax-paying citizen of their state  

Finally, over the last decade the Christian population in Iraq has dwindled from about 1 million under Saddam Hussein to 450,000 today.