Some empires never learn.

“A United Nations panel of human rights experts has accused Israel of war crimes through willful killing, unnecessary brutality and torture in its “clearly unlawful” assault on a ship attempting to break the blockade of Gaza in May in which nine Turkish activists died.”

If President Obama is too weak to preserve our civilian-military order, then Congress is obligated to enforce its constitutional authority over the power of war.

Classified information on the war in Afghanistan has been released by three major media sources in the world–the New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel. Nearly 92,000 documents were provided to the three sources by Wikileaks, and have been published in the form of “war logs.”

“Actually it’s a lot of fun to fight. You know it’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up with you. I like brawling.”

Legally the Israelis have put themselves and their commandos in the situation of having to choose amongst some very unpleasant alternatives.

We learnt today that the crème de la crème of the Israeli military can only manage to “win” against unarmed civilians with extreme difficulty.

Former South Carolina senator Fritz Hollings has an excellent editorial out today calling the US war in Afghanistan “Not Necessary.” It’s always good to see fiscal conservatives sticking to their beliefs and opposing the incredible cost, but Hollings also stakes his reputation and personal experience with Vietnam against the current conflict:

It’s GreenChange Blog Action Day and the theme is “war and peace.” Part of the reason I oppose the war in Afghanistan – and almost every war, for that matter – is the inherent risk to civilians. Whatever goal we’re fighting for there (getting bin Laden? getting the Taliban? getting al Qaeda? protecting women? I’m not really sure), it’s not worth the huge civilian death toll.

Not only is it completely disgusting and tragic that these people are dying, but it only works to create more enemies. Having a family member or friend killed or having your house blown to smithereens could definitely create an insurgent out of you.

So I’m just going to examine some recent news about civilian deaths, if for no other reason than to get around that terrible media bias of focusing almost exclusively on American deaths.

It was only a matter of time before military commanders began to claim that the Taliban was using “human shields” to make it difficult for U.S. and NATO to carry out their offensive without killing innocent civilians in Afghanistan.