New Internationalism

"Putting this all on Al Qaeda as if it’s separate from the legacy of what the U.S. left behind in Iraq is a big mistake," said Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.

The idea that the U.S. should have stayed in Iraq longer remains hotly disputed. Far from preventing such attacks by keeping troops in place, the U.S. actually planted the seeds of sectarianism during the war, said Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.  

"This would have happened if the U.S. pulled out earlier or in another 10 years," Bennis said. "What we left behind in Iraq was raw sectarian identity that is playing out in absolutely brutal ways."

Nathan Thrall raises crucial issues about the failures of the "peace process." But he does not mention two critical points.

The loudest chant in Tahrir Square remains "Down, down with military rule!" Many protesters in the Square have already announced their intention to remain in Tahrir once again, reprising the 18 days of the spring uprising, until the SCAF has transferred real power to the elected civilian government. Until that happens, the status of Egypt's revolutionary transformation remains precarious, active, and unfinished. It is a reminder that no part of the Arab Spring is yet a finished revolution. These are revolutionary processes, still contested and still in formation. Revolutionary times, indeed.

Severe punishment for those responsible for Koran-burning and any equally outrageous episode is not the main question, says Phyllis Bennis, a director of the New Internationalism project at the Institute for Policy Studies. She believes the key problem is the continuation of an "illegal war" in Afghanistan, and the degree to which the number of all kinds of violations and atrocities has grown.

“Of course these troops that are responsible for these outrages should be held accountable and there should be severe punishment,” she added. “There should be severe punishment right up the chain of command, to those who have put them in those situations and set up the scenarios that have led to these actions.”

Such companies are "built to loot," as Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies says.

Phyllis Bennis, author of "Calling the Shots, How Washington Dominates the UN," says the challenge with peacekeeping troops is the same problem that exists between the Security Council and the General Assembly – a contradiction between power and democracy. "The UN has no authority over those perpetrators," says Ms. Bennis, who works at the Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank in Washington, D.C. "You can ask the leadership to bring that person home and hope they are taken to trial, but there’s no way to enforce that."

"The idea of keeping these reactors going for 80 years is crazy!" declares Robert Alvarez, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and former senior policy advisor at the U.S, Department of Energy and a U.S. Senate senior investigator. He is also an author of the book Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation. "To double the design life of these plants--which operate under high-pressure, high heat conditions and are subject to radiation fatigue--is an example of out-of-control hubris, of believing your own lies."

"I think the U.S. and its Western allies are desperate to figure out a strategy in Syria, and they don't have one," Phyllis Bennis, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think-tank in Washington, told IPS. "Athough regime change is clearly on their wish list now, it wasn't until pretty recently.

"Syria, despite its anti-imperialist rhetoric, was pretty useful for Israel. (It) kept the Golan Heights quiet. (It kept) the Israeli border relatively peaceful," although it was "a bit troublesome hosting/supporting Hamas and Hezbollah", she added.

"When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you’re a military alliance, every problem looks like it requires a military solution," argues Phyllis Bennis, an author and fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. "NATO is a giant, big hammer. The problem is, Afghanistan is not a nail, Libya is not a nail. These are political problems that need to be dealt with politically. And by empowering ... a military alliance, NATO is really serving to undermine the goal of the United Nations Charter, which speaks of the importance of regional organizations, in political terms, for nonviolent resolution of disputes, not to put such a primacy and privilege on military regional institutions that really reflect the most powerful parts of the world."