The current discussion on the planned withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops from Afghanistan centers on a benighted belief that my former CIA analyst-colleague Paul Pillar exposed 12 years ago. Paul called it the "key tenet that Afghanistan must not be allowed to...
As Castro Rule Fades in Cuba, Americans Should Engage the Cuban People
The Castro brothers ruled Cuba for more than six decades. The results have not been pretty. An island impoverished in body and mind. Even artists have been protesting of late, punished by the security forces for having the temerity to question the communist...
Vienna Talks Reveal Biden Team’s Attachment to Sanctions That Would Torpedo Iran Deal
Reprinted from The Grayzone with the author's permission. The Biden administration signaled once again at the April 9 Vienna meeting on the Iran nuclear deal that it intends to maintain Trump-era Iran sanctions in an effort to win political and military concessions...
How To Make a Gulf Monarchy All-American
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Some things just never seem to end. What came to mind was the way in which, during administration after administration, the Saudis and other foreign powers have poured money into Washington to ensure that their governments and their...
The US Lacks Options if Russia Calls Washington’s Ukraine Bluff
Growing tensions between Russia and Ukraine are producing an surge of bluster from the Biden administration, as well as from the hawkish denizens of Washington’s think tanks. The administration keeps assuring Ukraine’s government that the United States and NATO have...
When Israel Leaves its Calling Card
On March 4, 2021, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz very publicly told Fox News that the "Israeli military is updating plans to strike Iranian nuclear sites and is prepared to act independently." He added that "If the world stops them before, it's...
Iraq Daily Roundup: 11 Wounded
Bombast From Washington: Joe Biden’s Russia Sanctions
Thursday, shortly after the White House issued its four-page Fact Sheet on the sanctions about to be imposed on Russia (“Imposing Costs for Harmful Foreign Activities by the Russian Government”), I was invited by RT International in Moscow to be a “first responder”...
US Joins Past Empires in Afghan Graveyard
An Afghan taxi-driver in Vancouver told one of us a decade ago that this day would come. “We defeated the Persian Empire in the eighteenth century, the British in the nineteenth, the Soviets in the twentieth. Now, with NATO, we’re fighting twenty-eight countries, but...
The Secret Wars of Africa’s Sahel: What Is Behind Mali’s Ongoing Strife
In a recent report, the United Nations Mission in Mali, known as MINUSMA, concluded that, on January 3, French warplanes had struck a crowd attending a wedding in the remote village of Bounti, killing 22 of the guests. According to the findings, based on a thorough...


