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From the category archives:

American exceptionalism

After September 11: our state of exception

by News Source 09.26.2011

Mark Danner writes:
We are living in the State of Exception. We don’t know when it will end, as we don’t know when the War on Terror will end. But we all know when it began. We can no longer quite “remember” that moment, for the images have long since been refitted into a present-day fable [...]

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News roundup — May 9

by News Source 05.09.2011

Bin Laden’s death doesn’t end his fear-mongering value
Glenn Greenwald writes: On Friday, government officials anonymously claimed that “a rushed examination” of the “trove” of documents and computer files taken from the bin Laden home prove — contrary to the widely held view that he “had been relegated to an inspirational figure with little role in [...]

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9/11 is not the axis around which the world revolves

by Paul Woodward 05.05.2011

You can’t talk like a five-year old without ending up thinking like a five-year old, yet this is the mentality many Americans bring to bear when they look at the world through the prism of 9/11.
America is at war with “bad guys” and on Monday morning “we got him” — the baddest guy of all.
To [...]

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The gun — preeminent symbol of the impotence of the American citizen

by Paul Woodward 01.09.2011

A paradox embedded in many popular symbols of power is that their greatest appeal is often found among those who perceive themselves as the most weak. Nowhere is this marriage of power and weakness more evident than in the American fetish of the handgun.
Jared Lee Loughner is apparently none too enamored with the US Constitution [...]

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‘Disappeared’ Pakistanis — innocent and guilty alike — have fallen into a legal black hole

by Paul Woodward 12.31.2010

Without a single reference to President Obama’s drone war in Pakistan, extrajudicial detention of prisoners at Guantanamo, the torture of suspected terrorists, CIA-run secret prisons, rendition, presidential authorization to assassinate US citizens, or the United States’ long history of supporting governments that use their power to suppress political dissent by making their opponents “disappear,” the [...]

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American supremacy

by Paul Woodward 11.19.2010

Matt Miller writes:
Does anyone else think there’s something a little insecure about a country that requires its politicians to constantly declare how exceptional it is? A populace in need of this much reassurance may be the surest sign of looming national decline.
American exceptionalism is now the central theme of Sarah Palin’s speeches. The supposedly insufficient [...]

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An empire decomposed: American foreign relations in the early 21st century

by Paul Woodward 04.16.2010

A must-read speech on the militarization of American diplomacy, by Chas Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and the first casualty in the Israel lobby’s efforts to rein in what in its early days might have looked like a dangerously independent Obama administration.
Americans are accustomed to foreigners following us. After all, for forty years, [...]

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A presidential death warrant

by Paul Woodward 04.08.2010

American soldiers have to be trained how to kill, but for American presidents killing comes naturally.
Anyone who aspires to become president must surely ask themselves: am I willing to end someone else’s life, be that an individual or perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands or even millions of people? After all, even though it’s not [...]

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Genuine American exceptionalism on due process

by Paul Woodward 03.02.2010

Glenn Greenwald on America’s disregard for due process:
If there’s any country which can legitimately claim that Islamic radicalism poses an existential threat to its system of government, it’s Pakistan. Yet what happens when they want to imprison foreign Terrorism suspects? They indict them and charge them with crimes, put them in their real [...]

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The myth of “America”

by Paul Woodward 10.12.2009

The myth of “America”
By Dahr Jamail and Jason Coppola, Truthout, October 12, 2009
Catholic priest Bartolome de las Casas, in the multi-volume “History of the Indies” published in 1875, wrote, “… Slaves were the primary source of income for the Admiral (Columbus) with that income he intended to repay the money the Kings were spending in [...]

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NEWS & OPINION: Overcoming America’s fear of the world

by Paul Woodward 12.22.2007

The power of personality
By Fareed Zacharia, Newsweek, December 15, 2007
I never thought I’d be in this position. There’s a debate taking place about what matters most when making judgments about foreign policy— experience and expertise on the one hand, or personal identity on the other. And I find myself coming down on the side of [...]

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NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Moral clarity on torture

by Paul Woodward 12.11.2007

CIA spy calls waterboarding necessary but torture
By Richard Esposito and Brian Ross, ABC News, December 10, 2007
A leader of the CIA team that captured the first major al Qaeda figure, Abu Zubaydah, says subjecting him to waterboarding was torture but necessary.
In the first public comment by any CIA officer involved in handling high-value al Qaeda [...]

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OPINION: A candidate for the world

by Paul Woodward 11.16.2007

Obama in orbit
By Roger Cohen, New York Times, November 15, 2007
Little that is certain can be said about the U.S. election a year from now, but one certainty is this: about 6.3 billion people will not be voting even if they will be affected by the outcome.
That’s the approximate world population outside the United States. [...]

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NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: An American awakening?

by Paul Woodward 11.07.2007

Picking up after failed war on terror
By Andrew J. Bacevich, Los Angeles Times, November 6, 2007
Given that Bush’s version of global war has proved such a costly flop, what ought to replace it? Answering that question requires a new set of principles to guide U.S. policy. Here are five:
* Rather than squandering American power, husband [...]

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NEWS: Romney: “A world without America as the leader is a very frightening place”

by Paul Woodward 10.31.2007

Mitt Romney: I won’t let U.S. go the way of U.K.
By Toby Harnde, The Telegraph, October 31, 2007
The United States is in danger of becoming a “second-tier” nation like Britain and other European countries if Hillary Clinton wins the White House, according to Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential contender.
Although he gave a Hallowe’en warning of [...]

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OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: America’s shadow

by Paul Woodward 10.14.2007

The ‘good Germans’ among us
By Frank Rich, New York Times, October 14, 2007
We can continue to blame the Bush administration for the horrors of Iraq — and should. Paul Bremer, our post-invasion viceroy and the recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts, issued the order that allows contractors to elude Iraqi law, [...]

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OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Human values transcend American values

by Paul Woodward 10.07.2007

On torture and American values
Editorial, New York Times, October 7, 2007
Lawmakers, who for too long have been bullied and intimidated by the White House, should rewrite the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Act to conform with actual American laws and values.
For the rest of the nation, there is an immediate question: Is this [...]

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INTERVIEW: James Carroll interviewed by Tom Engelhardt

by Paul Woodward 09.17.2007

American fundamentalisms
James Carroll interviewed by Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch, September 17, 2007
He’s a man who knows something about the dangers of mixing religious fervor, war, and the crusading spirit, a subject he dealt with eloquently in his book Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews. A former Catholic priest turned antiwar activist in the Vietnam era, [...]

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