Month: June 2019

And, 163 others were wounded.

As my son-in-law Jon heads off for a six-month deployment to Iraq this week – a war President Obama supposedly ended back in 2011 – I was struck by the war lobby-employed patois in the Democratic Party "debates." The best part of Wednesday night’s in-tandem press conference was also the only point in the dog-and-pony … Continue reading “Burying My Neighbors and Slaughtering Brown-Skinned People”

The question, “Now what?” seems appropriate today. First of all, R.I.P. Justin Raimondo. As Tom Woods said, Justin was the soul of this site. Despite popular misunderstanding, he was not the editor or webmaster (that’s me, Jason Ditz and Eric Garris, all of whom remain on the job for you here), but was very much … Continue reading “Antiwar.com: Now What?”

Months back, when protests rocked Algeria and Sudan, toppling two autocratic strongmen, observers almost immediately dubbed it a “New Arab Spring.” This, of course, was a reference to the popular demonstrations that rocked the Arab World in 2011, ranging from Tunisia to Egypt, Libya and Syria, Bahrain to Yemen. The results of Spring 1.0 were … Continue reading “Backing the Bad Guys: America Is Helping To Sabotage the ‘New’ Arab Spring”

Basra protests turn violent.

Calls for the annexation of the Occupied West Bank are gaining momentum in both Tel Aviv and Washington. But Israel and its American allies should be careful what they wish for. Annexing the Occupied Palestinian Territories will only reinforce the current rethink of the Palestinian strategy, as opposed to solving Israel’s self-induced problems. Encouraged by … Continue reading “The Day After: What if Israel Annexes the West Bank?”

For the second time in a row, Turkish voters have rebuked President Recep Tayyir Erdogan’s handpicked candidate for the mayoralty of Istanbul, Turkey’s largest and wealthiest city. The secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) candidate, Ekrem Imamoglu, swamped Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) candidate Binali Yildirim in an election that many see as a report … Continue reading “A Wounded Erdogan Could Be Even More Dangerous”

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Of all the things I don’t remember anymore, here’s one I do. As a boy, I dreamt about being a foreign correspondent, a war reporter in particular – and I think that Bob Shaplen must have been the reason why. He was a friend of my family’s, perhaps because, in the … Continue reading “‘What Does War Have To Do With Me?’”

Last week, Elham Pourtaher, an Iranian graduate student at the State University of New York in Albany, wrote about how US policies cause suffering and trauma far beyond US borders. Her diabetic father, for example, is in danger of losing access to medicines because sanctions against Iranian banks make it nearly impossible to pay for … Continue reading “An Honorable Course in Iran: End Sanctions, Resume Dialogue”

"For too long our leaders have failed us, taking us into one regime change war after the next, leading us into a new Cold War and arms race, costing us trillions of our hard-earned tax payer dollars and countless lives. This insanity must end." Donald Trump, circa 2016? Nope. That denunciation of John Bolton interventionism … Continue reading “Memo to Trump: Trade Bolton for Tulsi”