One point to make at the outset: Just as yesterday’s
release of the extremely important IPCC report on climate change added
multiple dimensions to the problem, beyond the obvious physical effects
of global warming, to include increase of poverty, competition for
scarce resources which could eventuate in war, etc., the US involvement
in the Middle East, using the continuing intervention in Iraq as a
benchmark (although in fact America is all over the place beginning at
least a half-century before the invasion of Iraq), reveals widespread
destruction, much of it deliberate, and, at home, the wholesale
perversion of the Constitution, and hardly irrelevant to that process,
the commission of war crimes with impunity and contempt shown
international law and organization. War is more than body counts and
dollar amounts; bypassing direct congressional authorization in favor of
continuing resolutions, so as to avoid discussion of war policies and
expenditures, the bipartisan dedication to obfuscation and government
opacity, so well describes the current mood. Obama’s contempt for
international law matches and is at one with his contempt for government
transparency—to which, in foreign policy especially, he walks in a sea
of near-unanimity.
-- Norman Pollack, "'American Footprint' in Iraq" (CounterPunch).