Officially the US still holds that it wants a unified Iraq but as your article points out its actions point in a different direction. Even Iran talks of arming the Kurds. Perhaps it too is giving up on a centralized Iraq and will support a Shia area separate or loosely federated with Kurdish and Sunni areas.
Your comments are based upon the premise that what 4 anonymous US officials have been telling the NY Times are true statements. I doubt it. It seems incredible that the US did not already know what was happening. The first strike was a week ago. See my take on the NY Times as a mouthpiece for the Obama administration: http://kenthink7.blogspot.ca/
Surely the military is simply deciding that they now need to share a bit of power with the anti-Morsi groups rather than the Muslim Brotherhood. The army has always been an important player behind the scenes for decades and have a significant stake in the Egyptian economy.
Much of the reaction against Morsi is about the economic situation in part caused by IMF conditions re subsidies etc. Even though Morsi himself was a free market person, the The armed forces will now be responsible for seeing to it that there is stability for even more "reforms" to make things much better for international capital. As one commentator mentioned as in the ousting of the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood might not except the result. However, the more radical Islamist Salafist groups take the position that there should be early elections. This would seem to indicate they think they can prosper at the expense of the Brotherhood in a vote.
You could be right but then this means that many of the projections about the effects on the economy of the sequester are either incorrect or not all that scary. The reaction of stock markets in the US fit in with your view in that up to last Friday the markets had been rising. Profits have been good as well.
However employment growth is not matching that of profits nor is the income of the average American. This surely is not a good sign for future demand. Austerity measures such as these cuts can only make that worse.However, perhaps US global corporatios are depending on emerging markes to take up any slack.
Anyway we will soon see how much negative reaction there is to the cuts and whether they will spur Congress into a deal.
I do not think that the sequester is the US austerity program. It was a scare program with cuts that were absolutely stupid across the board slashes.
It will not take long for howls of outrage to go up as jobs are cut, local areas dependent on the military will be up in arms, education programs will suffer, and then the politicians will be forced to get together to implement the real austerity programs using the cloak of saving the nation from the cuts.
If the U.S. position on armed conflict is correct then aren't terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda also justified in self-defense. Surely a strike by Iran on Israel or the U.S. would be justified by the type of expansive logic of self defense that the U.S. uses.
Even if the armed conflict scenario is accepted it would seem that the laws of war are not followed as noted in your article.
You might mention also that the U.S. does not even officially admit to drone attacks. To do so would be a danger to U.S. security according to government lawyers in response to a suit by the ACLU. Of course all sorts of information is leaked to make Obama and the policy look good politically
This is simply a continuation of the government revealing what it wants. The official position is still the nonsense that it would compromise national security to confirm or deny the existence of the program. This is the court decision that has forced the ACLU to continue suing for information. The next hearing is in Sept.
These revelations have nothing to do with accountability and everything to do with rebranding Obama as a Hawk so he can neutralize the Republican hawks.
Officially the US still holds that it wants a unified Iraq but as your article points out its actions point in a different direction. Even Iran talks of arming the Kurds. Perhaps it too is giving up on a centralized Iraq and will support a Shia area separate or loosely federated with Kurdish and Sunni areas.
Your comments are based upon the premise that what 4 anonymous US officials have been telling the NY Times are true statements. I doubt it. It seems incredible that the US did not already know what was happening. The first strike was a week ago. See my take on the NY Times as a mouthpiece for the Obama administration:
http://kenthink7.blogspot.ca/
Surely the military is simply deciding that they now need to share a bit of power with the anti-Morsi groups rather than the Muslim Brotherhood. The army has always been an important player behind the scenes for decades and have a significant stake in the Egyptian economy.
Much of the reaction against Morsi is about the economic situation in part caused by IMF conditions re subsidies etc. Even though Morsi himself was a free market person, the The armed forces will now be responsible for seeing to it that there is stability for even more "reforms" to make things much better for international capital. As one commentator mentioned as in the ousting of the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood might not except the result. However, the more radical Islamist Salafist groups take the position that there should be early elections. This would seem to indicate they think they can prosper at the expense of the Brotherhood in a vote.
You could be right but then this means that many of the projections about the effects on the economy of the sequester are either incorrect or not all that scary. The reaction of stock markets in the US fit in with your view in that up to last Friday the markets had been rising. Profits have been good as well.
However employment growth is not matching that of profits nor is the income of the average American. This surely is not a good sign for future demand. Austerity measures such as these cuts can only make that worse.However, perhaps US global corporatios are depending on emerging markes to take up any slack.
Anyway we will soon see how much negative reaction there is to the cuts and whether they will spur Congress into a deal.
I do not think that the sequester is the US austerity program. It was a scare program with cuts that were absolutely stupid across the board slashes.
It will not take long for howls of outrage to go up as jobs are cut, local areas dependent on the military will be up in arms, education programs will suffer, and then the politicians will be forced to get together to implement the real austerity programs using the cloak of saving the nation from the cuts.
If the U.S. position on armed conflict is correct then aren't terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda also justified in self-defense. Surely a strike by Iran on Israel or the U.S. would be justified by the type of expansive logic of self defense that the U.S. uses.
Even if the armed conflict scenario is accepted it would seem that the laws of war are not followed as noted in your article.
You might mention also that the U.S. does not even officially admit to drone attacks. To do so would be a danger to U.S. security according to government lawyers in response to a suit by the ACLU. Of course all sorts of information is leaked to make Obama and the policy look good politically
This is simply a continuation of the government revealing what it wants. The official position is still the nonsense that it would compromise national security to confirm or deny the existence of the program. This is the court decision that has forced the ACLU to continue suing for information. The next hearing is in Sept.
These revelations have nothing to do with accountability and everything to do with rebranding Obama as a Hawk so he can neutralize the Republican hawks.