Antiwar.com Blog

Longtime antiwar activist Reese Erlich passed away on April 6 after a long battle with cancer. He was 73.

Reese was most recently a bi-weekly columnist at a number of publications, including Antiwar.com. He wrote his last column two weeks ago saying goodbye to his friends and readers.

I met Reese in 1980 when we worked together in the Bay Area Mobilization Against Militarism and the Draft.

Reese was arrested in 1969 as part of the “Oakland Seven,” for organizing anti-draft demonstrations. His arrest and trial (resulting in his acquittal) are the subject of a documentary,
Movement on Trial: The Oakland Seven.

Reese worked as a staff writer and research editor for Ramparts, a national investigative reporting magazine published in San Francisco. His magazine articles appeared in Vanity Fair online, San Francisco Magazine, California Monthly, Mother Jones, The Progressive, The Nation, and AARP’s Segunda Juventud.

Erlich’s book Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn’t Tell You, co-authored with Norman Solomon, became a best seller in 2003. His book The Iran Agenda: the Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis was published in October 2007 with a foreword by Robert Scheer. In a San Francisco Chronicle book review, Ruth Rosen wrote, “Some people are treated as pariahs when they tell the truth; later, history lauds them for their courage and convictions. Reese Erlich is one of those truth tellers.”

Reese also published Dateline Havana: The Real Story of US Policy and the Future of Cuba in 2009, Inside Syria: the Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect in 2014, and The Iran Agenda Today: the Real Story from Inside Iran and What’s Wrong with U.S. Policy in 2018.

Reese worked with Walter Cronkite on four public radio documentaries. Cronkite has written, “Reese Erlich is a great radio producer and a great friend.”

His passing is a great loss to the antiwar movement. He will be missed.

If imprisoned Palestinian leader, Marwan Barghouti, becomes the President of the Palestinian Authority (PA), the status quo will change substantially. For Israel, as well as for the current PA President, Mahmoud Abbas, such a scenario is more dangerous than another strong Hamas showing in the upcoming Palestinian parliamentary elections.

The long-delayed elections, now scheduled for May 22 and July 31 respectively, will not only represent a watershed moment for the fractured Palestinian body politic, but also for the Fatah Movement which has dominated the PA since its inception in 1994. The once revolutionary Movement has become a shell of its former self under the leadership of Abbas, whose only claim to legitimacy was a poorly contested election in January 2005, following the death of former Fatah leader and PA President, Yasser Arafat.

Though his mandate expired in January 2009, Abbas continued to ‘lead’ Palestinians. Corruption and nepotism increased significantly during his tenure and, not only did he fail to secure an independent Palestinian State, but the Israeli military occupation and illegal settlements have deepened and grown exponentially.

Continue reading “From His Solitary Confinement, Marwan Barghouti Holds the Key to Fatah’s Future”

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Avoiding War in Ukraine

Dear President Biden,

We last communicated with you on December 20, 2020, when you were President-elect.

At that time, we alerted you to the dangers inherent in formulating a policy toward Russia built on a foundation of Russia-bashing. While we continue to support the analysis contained in that memorandum, this new memo serves a far more pressing purpose. We wish to draw your attention to the dangerous situation that exists in Ukraine today, where there is growing risk of war unless you take steps to forestall such a conflict.

At this juncture, we call to mind two basic realities that need particular emphasis amid growing tension between Ukraine and Russia.

First, since Ukraine is not a member of NATO, Article 5 of the NATO Treaty of course would not apply in the case of an armed conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

Second, Ukraine’s current military flexing, if allowed to transition into actual military action, could lead to hostilities with Russia.

Continue reading “Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity on Avoiding War in Ukraine”

From Scheer Intelligence:

Nearly two full decades into the Afghanistan War, with just a month left before the United States under President Trump had agreed to withdraw its remaining troops from Afghanistan at long last, it seems Joe Biden is going to backtrack on his predecessor’s promise. At his first press conference as U.S. president, Biden stated, “It’s going to be hard to meet the May 1 deadline,” citing “tactical” and safety concerns regarding the 2,500 soldiers left on the ground in Afghanistan. Maj. Danny Sjursen, a historian and veteran of America’s two longest wars, joins Robert Scheer on this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence” to discuss what he thinks about Biden’s possible delay and what this will mean to Afghanistan’s people and the American soldiers in the region.

Sjursen, who graduated from West Point and taught there, is the author of several books, including most recently “Patriotic Dissent,” suspects that the main motivation behind the hesitation to withdraw by the Biden Administration and its liberal allies in corporate media and think tanks is, put simply, that the deal to pull out was negotiated by Donald Trump. Liberal distaste for the former president seems to be fueling decisions, the veteran argues, that will cost many lives. It also reveals just how powerful the military industrial complex continues to be despite the change in the White House. The military historian lists the warmongers pulling strings in D.C. who have ties to Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors that make billions off of bloodshed. Most egregiously, Sjursen highlights that it’s not just the lives that are lost in Afghanistan that make up the cost of these ongoing conflicts, but, as President Dwight D. Eisenhower once powerfully said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.”

Continue reading “What Is It About the Democrats’ Love of War?”

Thanks to maritime engineers and salvage crews – with a lift from the full moon and the tides – that Japanese-owned container ship that was wedged across the Suez Canal for about a week has finally been freed. A backlog of 400 stranded ships has cleared and normal transit operations have resumed.

But a much longer shutdown of the 120-mile-long waterway years ago provides us a means to deconstruct one of the US Deep State’s most pernicious talking points.

In writing about the ending of the American Global Military Empire in our new book The Last Gold Rush… Ever!, my co-author Bill Haynes and I chose to make an example of this endlessly repeated but seldom questioned assertion, one used to justify a continuous, across-the-board escalation of military spending. It is applied today especially to the South China Sea: that the US Empire is required “to keep the sea lanes open.”

Continue reading “The Suez Canal: Lessons About the Deep State’s Interventionist Talking Points”

Once again, Kiev is leading a new escalation of violence in the Russian border. In the past few days, the autonomous republics of Donbass have been suffering from violations of the ceasefire agreement by Ukrainian forces, which has raised tensions and worried experts about the possibility of a return to the status of the war before the Minsk conferences. To make matters worse, Washington is acting provocatively, asserting full support for Kiev and solidarity with the aggressors in the conflict.

Joe Biden and the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, held last Friday, April 2, their first telephone conversation since the American leader took office. On the occasion, the leaders discussed several topics, including the tensions on the border with Russia. Biden and Zelensky agreed that what is happening in eastern Ukraine is a "Russian aggression" and that it must be contained by the mutual efforts of their two countries. In a statement after the conversation, a White House spokesperson said: “President Biden affirmed the United States’ unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia’s ongoing aggression in the Donbass and Crimea."

Continue reading “Kiev Leads New Escalation of Violence in Donbass and Crimea”