US Foreign Policy

By Jeffrey Fields | – Relations between the United States and Iran have been fraught for decades – at least since the U.S. helped overthrow a democracy-minded prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, in August 1953. The U.S. then supported the long, repressive reign of the shah of Iran, whose security services brutalized Iranian citizens for decades. […]

China

Top Ten Ways China Looms over the Iowa Caucuses

Xiaodong Fang

Washington, D.C. (Special to Informed Comment) – The 2020 Iowa Caucuses will take place on Monday, February 3, 2020, as the first official nominating contest in the presidential races. As presidential candidates and campaign media are heading for the Hawkeye State, China, on the other side of the world, is closely watching the 2020 Iowa […]

Donald Trump

How the President Became a Drone Bomber: From Obama to Trump, from Afghanistani to Soleimani

Tomdispatch

By Allegra Harpootlian | – (Tomdispatch.com) – We’re only a few days into the new decade and it’s somehow already a bigger dumpster fire than the last. On January 2nd, President Trump decided to order what one expert called “the most important decapitation strike America has ever launched.” This one took out not some nameless […]

Donald Trump

Trump Backs Down, But Iran Conflict is Still a Landmine

Reese Erlich

( 48hills.org) – Trump blinked. After threatening to bomb military and cultural sites in Iran, President Donald Trump has apparently backed down on further escalation in his quasi-war with Iran. He tried to spin his decision as a US victory, claiming his administration had supposedly made America safer by assassinating Iranian Major General Qassem Suleimani. […]

Afghanistan

The Global War of Error: and No, that is not a Typo

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com) – Yes, our infrastructure stinks, our schools are failing, this country’s a nightmare of inequality, and there’s a self-promoting madman in the White House, so isn’t it time to take pride in the rare institutional victories America has had in this century? Arguably, none has been more striking than the triumphal success of […]

US Foreign Policy

The Miseries of being a Hyper-Power: How America Squandered its Cold War Victory

Andrew J. Bacevich

(Tomdispatch.com – Thirty years ago this month, President George H.W. Bush appeared before a joint session of Congress to deliver his first State of the Union Address, the first post-Cold War observance of this annual ritual. Just weeks before, the Berlin Wall had fallen. That event, the president declared, “marks the beginning of a new […]

Featured

Iraqi PM ‘Categorically Rejects’ Trump Admin. Strikes, as Shiite Militia Leader Pledges attacks on US Troops

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Iraqi newspaper Shafaq reports on the reaction of the Kata’ib Hizbullah, an Iraqi Shiite militia, to the US airstrikes targeting its bases on Sunday. The US maintains that Kata’ib Hizbullah (not to be confused with the Lebanese militia) is responsible for an unprecedented number of mortar and rocket attacks […]

Colonialism

When an Imperial U.S. first Tried to Crush a Muslim Movement: Massacres in the Philippines

Danny Sjursen

(Tomdispatch.com) – For a decade and a half, the U.S. Army waged war on fierce tribal Muslims in a remote land. Sound familiar? As it happens, that war unfolded half a world away from the Greater Middle East and more than a century ago in the southernmost islands of the Philippines. Back then, American soldiers […]

Pentagon

You Mean we’re at War in Somalia? The Hidden Costs of U.S. Airstrikes

The Conversation

By Bryce W. Reeder | The US is an active participant in the war against Al-Shabaab in Somalia, efforts that have increased in the last few years under the Trump Administration. The strategy involves using airstrikes to assist Somali ground forces in recapturing territory controlled by Al-Shabaab. In addition, there have been attempts to take […]