Tag: USA Politics, War Zones,

“You Are What They Eat.” Illustration by Mr. Fish. America is a stratocracy, a form of government dominated by the military. It is axiomatic among the two ruling parties that there must be a constant preparation for war. The war machine’s massive budgets are sacrosanct. Its billions of dollars in

Illustration by Carlos Latuff (2007) US imperialism is the greatest threat to life on the planet, a force of ecological devastation and disaster impacting not only human beings, but also our non-human relatives. How can we organize to dismantle the vast and complicated network of US imperialism which includes US

Soldiers salute the American flag at Camp Taji, Iraq, March 18, 2020. Photo by Caroline Schofer/US Army. Every day we gather evidence of the pathetic performance of the Russian military in Ukraine. There was the inability to deal with Ukraine’s primitive air defense; the loss of the flagship of the

“Raft of Doom.” Illustration by Mr. Fish. The Cold War, from 1945 to 1989, was a wild Bacchanalia for arms manufacturers, the Pentagon, the CIA, the diplomats who played one country off another on the world’s chess board, and the global corporations able to loot and pillage by equating predatory

Art by Mr. Fish/Scheerpost America’s defeat in Afghanistan is one in a string of catastrophic military blunders that herald the death of the American empire. With the exception of the first Gulf War, fought largely by mechanized units in the open desert that did not–wisely–attempt to occupy Iraq, the United

US President-elect Joe Biden during a campaign stop in Michigan. Photo from Flickr. In this mystifying moment, the post-electoral sentiments of most Americans can be summed up either as “Ding dong! The witch is dead!” or “We got robbed!” Both are problematic, not because the two candidates were intellectually indistinguishable

A mural depicts the Iranian national flag in Tehran on September 19, 2019. Photo by AFP. The tensions that emanated from the US assassination of General Qassam Soleimani on January 3 led the world to believe, for a terrible week, that it was on the brink of a Third World

Trump’s assassination of Iran’s general and senior diplomat, Qassim Suleimani, was a clear provocation by the United States, designed to produce an escalated military response by Iran. That did not happen. Iran did not take the bait. It responded minimally and appears to have done so in a way to

History repeats itself, as they say. But in the age of American empire, not just twice. Or even three times. But with disturbing regularity. The past half century shows two things about how America goes to war. First, it creates a provocation based on a lie. Second, it then makes

The streets of Tehran and other cities across the country were flooded with protesters early Friday morning, January 3, as mourners grieved the death of Qassem Soleimani. Photo by Tauseef Mustafa/AFP. The assassination by the United States of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, near Baghdad’s

A Syrian government soldier holds up a portrait of President Bashar al-Assad while another stands by a Kurdish YPG flag. The recent leak of a sensitive email, written by an investigative team member of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ (OPCW), has shed new light on disinformation surrounding

One interesting and completely undeniable fact that we don’t talk about nearly enough is how Syria has been a target for regime change by the US-centralized power establishment since long before the uprising in 2011. Proponents of US military interventionism in Syria will avoid addressing this known fact like the

As the U.S. prepares to send more troops to Afghanistan to combat ISIS and the Taliban, and the specter of a war hangs over every tweet the President writes about North Korea, it’s important to remember that the U.S. has been fighting in and bombing several countries in the Middle

One of the most hyped “events” of American television, The Vietnam War, has started on the PBS network. The directors are Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Acclaimed for his documentaries on the Civil War, the Great Depression and the history of jazz, Burns says of his Vietnam films, “They will

The current PBS series on the war in Vietnam is stirring discussion throughout the country on the U.S. war in Vietnam; the longest war in Afghanistan; and now Donald Trump’s threat to use nuclear weapons to annihilate the people of North Korea. Portside readers have responded to posts about the

Illustration by Greg Groesch The past week has been an immensely clarifying — and profoundly demoralizing — one in American politics. It has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that the country’s foreign policy establishment, along with its leading center-right and center-left politicians and pundits, are hopelessly, perhaps irredeemably,

Photo by Gage Skidmore In just three months, those who vowed to oppose the president are eating out of his hands. A man who backs torture and castigated his predecessors for not stealing Iraq and Syria’s oil is being rehabilitated by the liberal pundits: as a man of compassion, a

Photo by the United Nations “Now the U.S. believe that they are investigators, they are attorneys, judges and they are the executioners,” the Bolivian ambassador said. Lambasting the United States’ aggression against Syria, Bolivian Ambassador to the United Nations Sacha Llorenti compared the basis for the unilateral move to former

A coalition force member provides security for Afghan soldiers deploying within Afghanistan on March 4, 2013 • Photo by Sgt. Matthew Freire To examine the political histories of Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Israel-Palestine after 1950, is to observe the United States engaged in the intrigues, wars,

Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Robert J. Fluegel The November election of Donald Trump raised serious questions about the direction of US foreign policy. Would the president seek better diplomatic relations with Russia? Would he step up, or deescalate, conflict in the Middle East? How would he handle