Don’t look now but, for all intents and purposes the US war machine has ceased to exist. It’s not the case for defensive purposes. If the United States were to come under attack, the Pentagon would throw everything it has at the problem from ground troops to advanced...
We Need a Coronavirus Truce
During World War I, soldiers all along the Western front held a series of informal truces in December 1914 to commemorate Christmas. It was early in the war, and opposition had not yet hardened into implacable enmity. The military command, caught by surprise, could...
Take Rights Seriously, Even During a Pandemic
"If the provisions of the Constitution be not upheld when they pinch as well as when they comfort, they may as well be abandoned." ~ Justice George Sutherland (1862-1942) In his 2008 book "Taking Rights Seriously," the late professor Ronald Dworkin...
Iraq Daily Roundup: 8 Killed
America, We Have To End the Wars Now
Can anyone think what our society might have spent six and a half trillion dollars on instead of 20 years of war in the Middle East for nothing? How about the trillion dollars per year we keep spending on the military on top of that? Invading, dominating and remaking...
Iraq Monthly Roundup: 128 Killed in March
Netanyahu Uses Coronavirus To Lure Rival Gantz Into ‘Emergency’ Government
Benny Gantz, the former Israeli general turned party leader, agreed late last week to join his rival Benjamin Netanyahu in an “emergency government” to deal with the coronavirus epidemic. Two weeks ago he had won a wafer-thin majority vote in the...
The Quiet and Lethal Wars Against Iran
Some wars are fought with bombs and bullets. These are the wars in Syria and Iraq, in Afghanistan and Yemen. Then there are quieter wars executed by drone. These cowardly wars also kill people, but not our people. These quieter wars accomplish what the more...
Iraq Daily Roundup: Four Killed
Orwellian ‘Enemies’: The Enduring Utility of ‘Axes of Evil’
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms…" ~ George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" (1946)...


