9/11 Was a Disaster for the People of Iraq
The Bush administration was already planning to invade Iraq before 9/11, but the attacks supplied the necessary pretext. The catastrophic war that followed turned Iraq into an ungovernable wasteland.
Richard Lachmann is professor of sociology at the University at Albany, State University of New York. He is the author of First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline of Great Powers.
The Bush administration was already planning to invade Iraq before 9/11, but the attacks supplied the necessary pretext. The catastrophic war that followed turned Iraq into an ungovernable wasteland.
The US military has lost enormous legitimacy because of its humiliation in Afghanistan. We will need to remind people of that humiliating defeat every single time the Pentagon tries to sell us another war.
Andrew Yang presents himself as a pathbreaker with innovative solutions to social problems. But New York has already tried this kind of technocratic politics in the 1960s and ’70s, and it ended up leading to austerity and social disorder.
Universal programs and economic redistribution, far more than rhetorical moderation and identity-based pandering, are the best bet for winning over workers of all races.
Effective states can enforce discipline on elites. The United States is not one of them.
Cops in New York have responded to pressure for reform with a targeted slowdown, while they continue to dish out violence on the streets. We need to be as determined in forcing change upon the police as they are in resisting it.
Our hopes for a socialist United States are constrained as much by US empire as they are by domestic capitalists. But democratic socialist candidates like Bernie Sanders can combat militarism in the service of workers across the world.
Let’s call Amazon’s cancellation of its New York City headquarters what it was: a capital strike. It’s a demonstration of why we must overcome capitalists’ power over investment.
The United States has the most powerful military in the world. Yet it just keeps losing wars. Why?