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TGIF: Warmonger Cotton Accuses Antiwar Think Tank of Anti-Semitism

TGIF: Warmonger Cotton Accuses Antiwar Think Tank of Anti-Semitism

by | Jan 17, 2020 | , ,

If you wonder what the post-Trump Republican Party will look like, take a glimpse at Tom Cotton, one of the US senators from Arkansas (where I live). Cotton has waged a relentless campaign for war against Iran and has supported every horror produced by the US foreign-policy establishment for the last 20 years. He makes other American hawks look like pacifists. Cotton once said that his only criticism of the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where people are held indefinitely without charge or trial, is that too many beds are empty. Typical of take-no-prisoners warmongers, Cotton savages...

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The Stable Genius Is Good at Names

by | Jan 16, 2020 |

So, Trump wants to add Middle Eastern nations (so far unspecified) to NATO so that the alliance can be more involved in the region. We need another obligation to go to war there like a hole in the head. That's very peculiar for a Putin marionette who supposedly dislikes NATO, which by the way has grown already during his tenure. One always proposes larger missions for useless organizations. Such is the incoherence we've come to expect for the 45th occupant of the White House. According to Politico, Trump said to reporters while describing in a call with NATO Secretary General Jens...

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Trump Administration Flunks Trade Economics 101

by | Jan 15, 2020 |

International trade is one of the many areas in which the Trump administration has been egregiously bad. Trump himself seems to lack even the most basic knowledge about the principle of trade -- he seems to think it is always zero-sum with a loser for every winner -- and he's surrounded himself with advisers who are just as ignorant. We are indebted to George Mason University economist Donald Boudreaux for keeping a close eye on these reckless ignoramuses, who are so casual about our well-being. In the latest of a series of blog posts, Boudreaux again notes how militantly ignorant those...

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Presidential War Power

by | Jan 14, 2020 |

"It is, however, insane and intolerable that peace depends on the restraint of the Islamic Republic and an American president given to rage-tweeting war-crime threats," the Cato Institute's Gene Healy, who studies presidential power, writes in "Trump the Decider." "No one fallible human being should be entrusted with the war powers now vested in the presidency. Now, more than ever, Congress needs to do everything in its power to reclaim its authority over war and peace." By what authority did Trump order the drone-assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and key Iraqi militia...

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The Grammar of the Soleimani Assassination

by | Jan 14, 2020 | ,

By now we've heard enough official explanations of Trump's assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and others to realize they are all nonsense. (And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo now admits it.) Trump killed Soleimani because, egged on by his unsavory friends Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he has it in for Iran. So when the opportunity to pull off the murder-by-drone came along, he took it. It's not as though he thought he needed a special justification. It's good to be the king -- er, president. Most official explanations have...

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TGIF: Trump’s Escalation Imperils Innocents

TGIF: Trump’s Escalation Imperils Innocents

by | Jan 10, 2020 | , ,

While an eerie, surreal calm has fallen over US-Iranian relations, I wouldn’t assume we’re out of the woods yet. Trump had no reason to be confident that Iran’s response to his most recent escalation of violence would be little more than symbolic. Although he’s accepted that response more or less passively for now, with Trump, things can turn on a dime. Who can tell what determines his mood at any given time? Contemplating Trump’s January 3 escalation of the previously relatively low-level conflict with Iran, one might be struck by how casually the US government (and others of course) treat...

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About that Air Base in Iraq

by | Jan 7, 2020 | ,

After the Iraqi parliament (sans Sunni and Kurdish members) voted to oust US troops from Iraq, Trump said, "We will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before, ever. It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame. We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that’s there. It cost billions of dollars to build. We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it.” Trump threatens economic warfare as casually as other people announce their intention to go shopping. We couldn't count the number of times he's done so. At any rate, it seems like a strange way to treat a presumed...

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