New Clear Vision

What We Do to the World, We Do to Ourselves

by Robert C. Koehler

At a sports bar in downtown Minneapolis called Sneaky Pete’s, “Young men fueled with alcohol begged Boogaard to punch them, so they could say they survived a shot from the Boogeyman.”

I’m thinking, wow, we power our society as much on adolescent energy as we do on fossil fuels. And the consequences are probably even more devastating.

The quote is a small moment in an excellent story in the New York Times the other day by John Branch called “A Brain Going Bad,” about the National Hockey League’s onetime premiere enforcer/tough guy, Derek Boogaard, who died last May at age 28 of an alcohol and painkiller overdose. His addiction to them was likely due to unrelieved, untreated brain trauma.

After his death, brain researchers discovered the presence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, an Alzheimer’s-like condition most likely caused by repeated blows to the head. Boogaard had become just one more used-up hero.

“More than 20 dead former NFL players and many boxers have had CTE diagnosed,” Branch wrote. “It generally hollowed out the final years of their lives into something unrecognizable to loved ones.” (more…)

The Empire Sticks Around; Will Democracy Strike Back?

by Robert C. Koehler

“Mr. Obama and his senior national security advisers have sought to reassure allies and answer critics, including many Republicans, that the United States will not abandon its commitments in the Persian Gulf even as it winds down the war in Iraq and looks ahead to doing the same in Afghanistan by the end of 2014.”

I pluck a paragraph from the New York Times and for an instant I’m possessed by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, aquiver with puzzlement down to my deepest sensibilities. I hold you here, root and all, little paragraph. But if I could understand what you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what empire is, and hubris . . . and maybe even, by its striking absence, democracy. (more…)

Public Pressure Is Slowly Ending the War in Afghanistan

by David Swanson

Charting a New Course, a Decade After 9/11

by Ian Harris

September 11, 2011, marked the tenth anniversary of a terrible tragedy, when almost 3,000 Americans were killed by coordinated attacks by 19 Al-Qaeda terrorists. Within a month the Bush administration declared war on Afghanistan, “Operation Enduring Freedom,” even though the terrorists involved in the attack did not come from Afghanistan. Seventeen months later the Bush administration invaded Iraq, supposedly to remove the threat of weapons of mass destruction from that country. Ten years later the American people, while commemorating the tragedy wrought by the terrorists, would do well to examine the morality and utility of such militaristic responses to crises.

The 10-year war in Afghanistan has cost more than 2600 U.S./Coalition lives (and rising weekly, often daily), more than $439 billion, and we’ve killed more than 8,000 Afghan civilians — two and one half times the number killed in the initial attacks in this country. (more…)

Shifting from Rhetoric to Reality

by Brian J. Trautman

President Obama addressed the nation on June 22 to explain his strategy for troop withdrawal in Afghanistan. Of the 100,000 U.S. troops currently deployed there, the announced drawdown of 10,000 soldiers by year’s end and another 23,000 by September 2012 does little to end the longest war in U.S. history.

Under this plan, approximately 70,000 troops will remain in the country, roughly twice as many as when Mr. Obama took office in January 2009. According to the President, these troops will be removed “at a steady pace” through 2014. In the meantime, the human and financial costs of this war will continue to grow. (more…)

Out of Darkness Comes Light

by Ahmed Afzaal

Last year, a small crisis was created by Mr. Terry Jones, pastor of a nondenominational church Gainesville, FL, when he announced his plans to burn a copy of the Qur’an on the anniversary of September 11, 2001. Public outcry, not to mention the disapproval of General David Petraeus, eventually persuaded Mr. Jones to abandon his plan.  Those of us who thought that the story had reached its conclusion have just been proven wrong, as Mr. Jones has once again found his way back into the news after he actually carried out what he had threatened to do last fall.  This time around, the pastor conducted a mock trial of the Qur’an in which the jury, consisting of twelve members of his church, found the Islamic scripture guilty of “crimes against humanity,” including the promotion of terrorism.  (more…)