As Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo withdrew in the dying days of their administration, they sowed the foreign policy ground with landmines. The landmines were meant to checkmate the new administration so that, no matter which way President Biden moved, the...
Rob Malley for Iran Envoy: A Test Case for Biden’s Commitment to Diplomacy
President Biden’s commitment to re-entering the Iran nuclear deal – formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA – is already facing backlash from a motley crew of warhawks both domestic and foreign. Right now, opponents of reentering the deal are...
Coexistence or Cold War With China?
"The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States... does not challenge that position." Thus did President Nixon, in the Shanghai...
Rights Advocates Alarmed by US Spy Agency’s Purchase of Warrantless Phone Location Data
Digital rights advocates reacted with alarm to a report published Friday detailing how Defense Intelligence Agency analysts in recent years bought databases of U.S. smartphone location data without first obtaining warrants. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is...
America Adrift and Aflame: Fix the US Before the World
The Beer Belly Putsch, as the January 6 takeover of the Capitol has been called, created shock waves across the nation’s capital and around the world. It was never as serious as some observers suggested: the president had no coup plan and most of the ragtag protesters...
The Massive and Unseen Costs of America’s Post-9/11 Wars
Perhaps the strangest thing about America’s "forever wars" is how little obvious impact they’ve had here. A country – an imperial power, in fact, that liked to think of itself as the planet’s last or "lone" superpower – goes to war for so long (and...
Iraq Daily Roundup: 19 Killed; Militia Attacked
Battle Lines Drawn on Ending Yemen War
One day before the Inauguration, the Trump Administration added Yemen’s Houthi movement to a list of foreign terrorist organizations. It was just the latest, desperate attempt to hamstring President Joe Biden’s promise to end the war in Yemen. While Trump proudly...
The No Fly List: More Dangerous Than the Capitol Rioters
As I write this, the Capitol Hill riot of January 6 is enjoying its extended 15 minutes of fame, complete with straight-faced comparisons to December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001. In hindsight, it will hopefully (and hopefully quickly) shrink to its real-life...
Fearing the Palestinian Narrative: Why Israel Banned Jenin Jenin
On January 11, the Israeli Lod District Court ruled against a Palestinian filmmaker, Mahmoud Bakri, ordering him to pay hefty compensation to an Israeli soldier who was accused, along with the Israeli military, of carrying out war crimes in April 2002, in the...


