Month: May 2017

The Iraqi military admitted to an airstrike that killed a number of people, but denied that civilians were among the casualties.l

Since FBI Director James Comey has become a kind of arbiter of the political discourse – to say his pronouncements have been decisive would not, I think, be an overstatement – his appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee was much anticipated. As Hillary Clinton and her supporters continue to re-litigate the presidential election, blaming him … Continue reading “The Triumph of James Comey”

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Our lives are, of course, our histories, which makes us all, however inadvertently, historians. Part of my own history, my other life – not the TomDispatch one that’s consumed me for the last 14 years – has been editing books. I have no idea how many books I’ve edited since I … Continue reading “Terror Is in the Eye of the Beholder”

Well, OK, I guess the president learned his American history at Trump University. In an interview with the Washington Examiner, he recently seemingly confused Andrew Jackson’s behavior during the nullification crisis in 1832 with the Civil War, which didn’t occur until 16 years after Jackson died in 1861. The two events do have some similarity … Continue reading “An Answer to Trump: Could the Civil War Have Been Avoided?”

A new report of civilians casualties in an airstrike came out of Mosul on Thursday.

News this week that 300 Marines have returned to Helmand Province in Afghanistan recalls the failed surge of 2009-10, when roughly 20,000 Marines beat back the Taliban in the region, only to see those “fragile” gains quickly turn to “reversible” ones (to cite the infamous terms of General David Petraeus, architect of that surge). While … Continue reading “America’s Endless Afghan War”

Turkish airstrikes accidentally struck civilians in northern Iraq.

Gaza is the world’s largest open air prison. The West Bank is a prison, too, segmented into various wards, known as areas A, B and C. In fact, all Palestinians are subjected to varied degrees of military restrictions. At some level, they are all prisoners. East Jerusalem is cut off from the West Bank, and … Continue reading “The Prisoners’ Revolt: The Real Reasons behind the Palestinian Hunger Strike”

Like a badly written series of romance novels, the plot template remains fixed while just the names of the characters and places rotate through the template. The story of Syria that Americans and Canadians ingest from the mainstream media is the same simplistic narrative of good and evil told by Washington about each new enemy. … Continue reading “The Syrian Side of the Story You Never Hear”

Militants staged several attacks near the Syrian border including one on a refugee camp.