Bush

Torture, Wars of Aggression, Violations of Bill of Rights: Will there ever be accountability for America’s Orgy of War Crimes in the 21st Century

( Tomdispatch.com) – America has an accountability problem. In fact, if the Covid-19 disaster, the January 6th Capitol attack, and the Trump years are any indication, the American lexicon has essentially dispensed with the term “accountability.” This should come as no surprise. After all, there’s nothing particularly new about this. In the Bush years, those […]

Bush

Donald Rumsfeld, Torturer, Serial Liar, Butcher of Baghdad, dies at 88

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s death at 88 is an occasion for me to recall some of my own writing on his sinister role in the Iraq War. Rumsfeld wanted to invade Iraq so badly he just made up shit to justify that action. In a Salon article I […]

Authoritarianism

Chickens coming home to Roost: Liz Cheney’s Father Pioneered the GOP Big Lie and Authoritarian Tactics in Iraq War

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Rep. Liz Cheney has emerged as a voice for truth-telling in Trump’s Republican Party, standing up to the Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election and denouncing her fellow representatives who sought to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory and who thus helped provoke the Capitol Insurgency. Cheney […]

Bush

How Bush’s Wars led to Trump’s Insurrection: From Occupying Iraq to Occupying the Capitol

Tomdispatch

By Andrea Mazzarino | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – “I got out of the Marines and within a few years, 15 of my buddies had killed themselves,” one veteran rifleman who served two tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq between 2003 and 2011 said to me recently. “One minute they belonged and the next, they were […]

Bush

The Republican Party’s 2-Decade-Long March toward Hungarian and Turkish-Style Illiberalism

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A study by Swedish political scientists at the University of Gothenburg’s V-Dem Institute has found that the US Republican Party has moved far to the right since 2000, and no longer looks very much like the Christian Democrats in Germany or the Tories in Britain, or the Liberal Democratic Party […]

Bush

First the Nat’l Security State Surged Baghdad, now it is Surging Portland and Seattle

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – USA Today’s headline went, “Mayors see broken trust, political agenda in Trump’s surge of federal officers to US cities.” Surge? For those of us old enough to remember George W. Bush’s Iraq War, the use of the word “surge” to describe Federal agents sent into Democratic cities to break heads […]

Afghanistan

On Memorial Day: How the US Lost its “Battle of Aqaba” to the Coronavirus

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On July 6, 1917, Auda Abu Tayy led his Howeitat tribesmen in a successful attack on the Ottoman port of Aqaba in what is now Jordan but was then the Ottoman Empire. The Arabs of the Hejaz or Western Arabia and the Transjordan had allied with the British to revolt […]

Bush

17 Years and $2 Trillion Ago, Bush and Neocons thought it would be a Good Idea to Attack Iraq

Middle East Monitor

By Nasim Ahmed | @Nasimbythedocks | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – Seventeen years ago, on 19 March 2003, the US led the western invasion of Iraq in a war many consider to be the worst foreign policy disaster in modern history. Justified under the pretext of destroying weapons of mass destruction (WMD) allegedly […]

Barack Obama

No, Trump’s Withdrawal from Syria is not Like Obama Leaving Iraq

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Some observers are likening Trump’s abrupt departure from Syria and President Barack Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq in 2011. The two events show no resemblance whatsoever, and the frequently-made charge that Obama could have stayed in Iraq is incorrect. Here’s the difference. 1. Obama did not betray America’s allies in Iraq, […]