Sheldon Richman | The Libertarian Institute

About that Air Base in Iraq

by Sheldon Richman | Jan 7, 2020 | Blog, Foreign Policy

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...

Will Iran Choose 1,953 Sites?

by Sheldon Richman | Jan 7, 2020 | Blog, Foreign Policy

Trump tweets that he has selected 52 sites in Iran, including cultural sites, for bombing if the Iranian regime retaliates for Trump's assassination of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani. Why 52? That "represent[s] the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago," Trump noted. I wonder if that will prompt Iran to select 1,953 American targets for its own retaliation. After all, 1953 was the year that the CIA carried out a coup in Iran, overthrowing a democratically elected prime minister and reinstalling the brutal monarch (shah) Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his feared Israeli-trained...

Was Soleimani Lured into a Trap?

by Sheldon Richman | Jan 6, 2020 | Blog

Donald Trump says he had to have Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani assassinated on friendly Iraqi soil because of an "imminent" threat to Americans. (Suddenly he believes the intel agencies?) But that seems unlikely since an imminent threat would not have been prevented merely by killing Soleimani. But now we learn that, according to acting Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, Soleimani was had gone to Baghdad to deliver a response to a de-escalation proposal initiated by Iran-rival Saudi Arabia. The Daily Mail reports: Adel Abdul Mahdi, Iraq’s caretaker prime minister, told his...

TGIF: But Mr. Trump, Is Israel Lovable?

by Sheldon Richman | Dec 13, 2019 | Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Speaking before Sheldon Adelson's Israeli-American Council the other day, Trump took a shot at Jewish Americans who he says don't "love Israel enough." "We have to get the people of our country, of this country, to love Israel more," Trump said. "We have to get them to love Israel more because you have people that are Jewish people, that are great people – they don’t love Israel enough. You know that." Typical of Trump, this is scatter-brained. He begins by talking about "the people of our country," which sounds like everyone, but ends up focusing on Jews who "don't love Israel enough." In...

Jewishness Is Not a Nationality

by Sheldon Richman | Dec 11, 2019 | Blog, Foreign Policy, Justice

On Wednesday, Donald Trump signed an executive order that implicity defines Jewishness as a racial or national catetory and not as just a religious category. The order further reinforces the Department of Education's power to sanction colleges that receive federal tax dollars if they permit Palestinian solidarity activities. The Obama administration took a similar approach, which raises the question why Trump signed the order at all. The New York Times first reported the story, but it was quickly criticized for misstating the nature of the order. However, the Times was correct in reporting...

No US-Israel Defense Pact!

by Sheldon Richman | Dec 10, 2019 | Blog, Foreign Policy

One of the most harebrained ideas to come down the pike in recent years is the proposed U.S.-Israel defense pact. The Jerusalem Post reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo "made progress" on finalizing the pact while meeting in Lisbon recently. This is an idea that has absolutely nothing to recommend it. At a time when the U.S. government should be ending its "collective defense arrangements" -- NATO and the other six -- such an arrangement with Israel is an especially bad idea. But it would be just as bad were it the only such...