Antiwar.com Blog

In March of 2022, New York Magazine published the essay Is America to Blame for Russia’s War in Ukraine? by Eric Levitz. It’s illuminating to respond to it now, after over two years have passed and more information has come to light about what happened in the run-up to the war.

Levitz started out by seeming to acknowledge some U.S. culpability for the war. He writes:

As the “realist” international-relations scholar John Mearsheimer put the point in 2015, “What’s going on here is that the West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path, and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked.”

Continue reading “How To Think About the War in Ukraine: a Response to Eric Levitz”

On COI #597, Misty Winston returns to the show to discuss the latest updates in Julian Assange’s appeal.

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On today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:

The London High Court has ruled today the Julian Asssange may appeal his extradition to the US to face espionage charges based on the question of whether he would be granted First Amendment rights regardless of nationality. Is the US case beginning to crack? Also today,  senior Israeli and Hamas leadership faces arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court.

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

However valid the claims of oppression, Apartheid, etc., against the Palestinian people, Hamas’s October 7th attack, in which 1,163 Israelis were killed, many of whom were civilians, and 252 taken hostage, do constitute war crimes. As such, the Jus Ad Bellum criteria – International and Moral Laws–governing when States may resort to armed conflict in national defense have been satisfied. That being said, the crimes of October 7th do not provide Israel with blanket justification for its use of any and every means at its disposal even as a response to what it may interpret as an existential threat. There is a profound moral and legal distinction between national defense and national preservation.

Nor does International Humanitarian Law (IHL), Laws of Armed Conflict, and the International Law of Human Rights (ILHR), sanction acts of revenge or reprisals against civilians and civilian objects. These include “medical or religious personnel, units, transports, or material; prisoners of war; civilian persons or civilian objects; cultural property or places of worship; objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population.”

Continue reading “Moral Outrage: The Israeli War in Gaza”

On COI #596, Connor Freeman and Kyle Anzalone discuss Israel’s attack on the Palestinians.

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As humanitarian shipments began trickling into Gaza via a U.S.-built temporary floating pier, Palestinians and aid workers on Friday renewed criticism of what they called an expensive and largely ineffectual publicity stunt that is no substitute for a cease-fire and opening of more land crossings into the besieged coastal enclave.

U.S. Army Central Command said that “trucks carrying humanitarian assistance began moving ashore” at around 9:00 am local time Friday as part of “an ongoing, multinational effort to deliver additional aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza via a maritime corridor.”

The $320 million Trident Pier – which consists of a floating offshore barge and 1,800-foot causeway to the shore—is expected to eventually accommodate up to 150 trucks per day. According to United Nations agencies, an average of 200 trucks entered Gaza each day last month, far fewer than the prewar daily mean of more than 500 truckloads that U.S. and U.N. officials say are required to meet the needs of a population facing critical shortages of food, water, medicine, and other lifesaving supplies.

Continue reading “As US Aid Shipments Begin, Gaza Pier Denounced as ‘PR Move’”