Nicolas J. S. Davies

As the recent PBS documentary on the American War in Vietnam acknowledged, few American officials ever believed that the United States could win the war, neither those advising Johnson as he committed hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, nor those advising Nixon as he escalated a brutal aerial bombardment that had already killed millions of … Continue reading “How America Spreads Global Chaos”

The Western media has been awash in speculation as to why, about a year ago, North Korea’s “crazy” leadership suddenly launched a crash program to vastly improve its ballistic missile capabilities. That question has now been answered. In September 2016, North Korean cyber-defense forces hacked into South Korean military computers and downloaded 235 gigabytes of … Continue reading “Why North Korea Wants Nuke Deterrence”

Iraqi Kurdish military intelligence reports have estimated that the nine-month-long U.S.-Iraqi siege and bombardment of Mosul to oust Islamic State forces killed 40,000 civilians. This is the most realistic estimate so far of the civilian death toll in Mosul. But even this is likely to be an underestimate of the true number of civilians killed. … Continue reading “Covering Up the Massacre of Mosul”

This is the state of war in the United States in July 2017. The US bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria is now the heaviest since the bombing of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in the 1960s-70s, with 84,000 bombs and missiles dropped between 2014 and the end of May 2017 That is nearly triple the … Continue reading “The US State of War – July 2017”

The recent news from Kabul (in Afghanistan), from Manchester and London (in England), from Mosul (in Iraq), from Raqqa (in Syria), from Marib (in Yemen) and from too many devastated and traumatized communities to list makes it only too clear that the world is trapped in an unprecedented and intractable cycle of violence. And yet, … Continue reading “Will the Neocons’ Long War Ever End?”

April 2017 was another month of mass slaughter and unimaginable terror for the people of Mosul in Iraq and the areas around Raqqa and Tabqa in Syria, as the heaviest, most sustained U.S.-led bombing campaign since the American War in Vietnam entered its 33rd month. The Airwars monitoring group has compiled reports of 1,280 to … Continue reading “The Silent Slaughter of the US Air War”

The Airwars.org U.K.-based monitoring group reports that 41 U.S-led air strikes targeting ISIS in Iraq and Syria killed at least 296 civilians during the week after the chemical weapons incident on April 4. US cruise missiles reportedly killed another nine civilians in villages near the Shayrat airbase that was targeted on April 7th. But the … Continue reading “Through the ‘War on Terror’ Looking Glass”

Rep. Alcee Hastings has sponsored a bill to authorize President Trump to attack Iran. Hastings reintroduced H J Res 10, the “Authorization of Use of Force Against Iran Resolution” on Jan. 3, the first day of the new Congress after President Trump’s election. Hastings’s bill has come as a shock to constituents and people who … Continue reading “Democratic Ex-Dove Proposes War on Iran”

As President Obama leaves office, much of his foreign policy record remains shrouded in the symbolism that has been the hallmark of his presidency. The persistence of Obama’s image as a reluctant war-maker and a Nobel Peace Prize winner has allowed Donald Trump and his cabinet nominees to claim that Obama has underfunded the military … Continue reading “Obama’s Bombing Legacy”

Across the political spectrum, US leaders insist that they will only go to war “as a last resort.” They want us to believe that they will try every peaceful means to resolve differences with other countries before resorting to war. But if those “peaceful means” mean only ultimatums that are unacceptable to the target country, … Continue reading “America’s Deceptive Model for Aggression”