Common Dreams’ shabby, shallow condemnations of Americans about bombing of Afghanistan

Common Dreams is considered a progressive news website & reflects mostly the views of liberal Democrats (Robert Reich, Arianna Huffington, Jesse Jackson, Bernie Sanders, Katrina vanden Heuvel, & Michael Moore), anarchists (Noam Chomsky), mavericks (Ralph Nader & Naomi Klein), liberal Zionists (Michael Lerner), Assadists (Robert Fisk), & sweatshop defenders (Paul Krugman).

The website just published an article titled “What’s Worse? Trump Dropping ‘Mother of All Bombs’ or That 70% of Americans Approve?” The article is based on one shabby, shallow little poll, no scholarship, speculation & a manure pile of cynicism. Truth is, that repeated polls going back decades repeatedly show the majority of Americans strongly oppose US wars. For several reasons, they do not mobilize in protests but that has much to do with the longtime factional character of the antiwar movement now gone rogue to support Assad & Putin carpet bombing civilians in Syria.

After the US was defeated in the Vietnam War & because of massive international opposition to that war, political resistance to US interventions called “the Vietnam Syndrome” caused the US Pentagon immense problems. They began to strategize new ways of dealing with the political fallout which included embedding reporters with the military, controlling journalist access to war zones & managing media coverage, conducting covert military operations as well as CIA operations, bankrolling guerrilla forces, a misnamed “low intensity warfare” which was really high intensity war with low media coverage.

Much of the Vietnam Syndrome, which the Pentagon considers a pathological condition, has been weakened but has not been decisively reversed. Recruitment of young kids to fight US wars is at crisis low levels with parents being the strongest opposition. That’s why women are allowed to fight combat, LGBT soldiers are not dishonorably discharged, soldiers do multiple tours of duty.

Rebuilding the international antiwar movement on a principled basis remains the historic imperative of our generation.