Interventionists ignore 9/11 motive to our detriment

  In the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, some interventionists are ignoring the most important factor in the Afghanistan debacle: what motivated the terrorists to commit the 9/11 attacks. 

  Or, even worse, some interventionists continue to buy into the motive that U.S. officials ascribed immediately after the attacks: that the terrorists struck on 9/11 because they hated America for its “freedom and values” or because they were Muslims who were engaged in a centuries-old quest to establish a worldwide Islamic caliphate, one that would put the United States under Sharia law.

Military suicides shouldn’t surprise anyone

  The title of a recent New York Times op-ed by Carol Giacomo is an attention grabber: “Suicide Has Been Deadlier Than Combat for the Military.”

  The article points out that “more than 45,000 veterans and active-duty service members have killed themselves in the past six years. That is more than 20 deaths a day — in other words, more suicides than the total American military deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

  The article states: “Other than pointing to national trends, officials have offered few explanations for why military suicides are rising. Studies seeking more answers are underway.”

  Permit me to offer my explanation for this deadly phenomenon: Iraq and Afghanistan and other places where U.S. service members have been obeying orders to participate in military operations involving the wrongful killing of people.

Jacob G. Hornberger: The problem is foreign interventionism, not Muslims

  With Donald Trump’s accession to the presidency, the U.S. anti-Muslim crusade is going into full swing. According to an article in the November 14 issue of the Washington Post, hate crimes against Muslims hit their highest level since 2001. An article in the Post last week stated that four mosques have received letters stating that Trump will do to Muslims what Hitler “did to the Jews.”

  Ever since the 9/11 attacks, religious bigots have used that event as the excuse to go after Muslims. The problem with their mindset — or at least one problem with their mindset — is that they're letting their religious bigotry prevent them from recognizing that the root cause of anti-American terrorism is not based on religion but instead on the U.S. government’s interventionist foreign policy in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Jacob G. Hornberger: Military tribunals are un-American

  Last month New York jurors convicted Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law, a man named Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, of terrorism-related offenses in a trial in federal district court in New York City. The New York Times reported that "his swift conviction on all counts would seem to serve as a rejoinder to critics of the Obama administration’s efforts to try suspected terrorists in civilian courts, rather than before a military tribunal."

Sheldon Richman: Obama’s willful foreign-policy blindness

  Republicans are upset about President Obama’s May 23 foreign-policy address, yet politics aside, it’s hard to say why. “We show this lack of resolve, talking about the war being over,” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News Sunday.

  But four days later in his Memorial Day remarks, Obama said, “Our nation is still at war.”

Ken Sofer: Remembering 9/11

  America pauses today to remember the innocent men and women who lost their lives in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in central Pennsylvania 11 years ago. Our citizens honor the police officers, firefighters, and EMTs who entered burning buildings and dangerous conditions that day, many losing their lives in the process of saving others. We remember them even as their families mourn their loss.