Author: Daniel Larison

Justin Logan criticizes Harris’ silly threat inflation regarding Iran:

The best defense that can be mounted of Vice President Harris in this context is that she seemed to be groping around for an answer with the least political downside and the least offense to the foreign policy Blob, and she probably found it. The problem is that she is wrong on the substance. Should her extemporaneous remark influence her policy, it could push the United States further down the road to ruin in the Middle East.

Harris’ answer on 60 Minutes was a bad one, and Logan is right that it is absurd for her to say that Iran is America’s “greatest adversary.” I discussed that in one of my columns last week. My concern is that it wasn’t just an extemporaneous remark or a politically safe pandering response. It was another example of the very hawkish position that she has been taking on Iran since she became the Democratic presidential nominee. For whatever reason, Harris has been determined to paint Trump as too soft on Iran. Given how reckless and confrontational Trump’s Iran policy was, this has alarming implications for what her Iran policy might look like.

Continue reading “Harris’ Bizarre Hawkishness on Iran”

The Biden administration must want to demonstrate how absurd the ongoing illegal war in Yemen is by using strategic bombers to attack Houthi targets:

The U.S. military conducted airstrikes in Yemen against the Iranian-backed Houthis, targeting five underground weapons storage sites, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement late Wednesday. The strikes were carried out by B-2 Spirit bombers, marking the first use of these strategic stealth bombers against the Houthis.

The war that the U.S. has been waging in Yemen since January has been an extravagant waste of military resources. The U.S. has been burning through a limited supply of expensive munitions in a failed attempt to compel the Houthis to halt their attacks on shipping. Now it is wasting even more resources to send B-2s across the world to blow up weapons caches. Our government has impressive firepower at its disposal, but it is frequently employed in the service of brain-dead policies like the one the administration is pursuing in Yemen right now.

Continue reading “Biden’s Absurd War in Yemen Continues”

The Biden administration is putting U.S. troops in Israel as it continues to provide unconditional support for Israel’s wars:

The United States is sending one of its most advanced missile defense systems and about 100 U.S. troops to Israel, deepening U.S. involvement in the escalating war in the Middle East amid U.S. expectations of an imminent Israeli assault on Iran.

The deployment of the missile defense battery and American personnel illustrates just how heavily Israel depends on the U.S. Far from being the self-reliant state that hawks like to celebrate, Israel has overreached so much in the last year that it has to rely on the U.S. to bail it out. Like clockwork, Biden has chosen to side with the war criminals in the Netanyahu government rather than let them face the consequences of their reckless actions. The president said he is doing this to “defend Israel,” but in reality he is providing their government with cover so that they can launch more attacks against other countries. Deploying defensive systems can be very destabilizing when those defenses reduce the costs of escalation.

Continue reading “Don’t Send US Troops to Israel”

Israel has begun its third invasion of Lebanon:

The Israeli military announced early Tuesday that its troops had begun crossing into southern Lebanon, saying that they would destroy Hezbollah military infrastructure in villages close to the Israel-Lebanon border.

The immediate consequence of Israel’s continued escalation in Lebanon is displacement of the civilian population on a massive scale. According to the United Nations, there are already a million people displaced from their homes because of the war that Israel is waging on Lebanon. There are now more displaced Lebanese civilians than there were during the 2006 war, and that number will only increase as the war drags on. The vast majority of the displaced have fled their homes in the last week since the start of intense Israeli bombing. The Third Lebanon War is already as destructive as the second war and it hasn’t even been two weeks yet.

Continue reading “The Invasion of Lebanon”

Israel launched a new wave of airstrikes on Lebanon today. According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, the strikes have killed at least 182 people and wounded more than 700 others. This appears to be the first stage in a major assault on Lebanon. The Israeli government is choosing a larger war, and the Biden administration has done nothing to stop them.

The latest attacks followed a toothless warning from Washington against further escalation. The NSC spokesman John Kirby said that “ we don’t believe that escalating this military conflict is in their best interest,” but this sort of appeal is useless when dealing with a government that has been eager to escalate for months. The president said that the administration was “going to do everything we can to keep a wider war from breaking out,” but we already know that they won’t do the one thing – cutting off arms transfers – that might make the Israeli government think twice about this.

Continue reading “A New Wave of Israeli Attacks on Lebanon”

Van Jackson read the Harris campaign’s new “policy” page and he was not impressed:

It pains me to observe this because I want better, we need better, and I’m very invested in her beating Trump. But we are well and truly in the territory of HBO’s Veep and nobody wants to say it for fear of harshing the vibes that appear to be central to the current strategy.

The foreign policy section was notable for saying very little about anything. Most of the text on foreign policy issues seems to have been lifted verbatim from Harris’ acceptance speech, complete with the same hollow words on Gaza that we have seen before. Like the foreign policy remarks in the speech, this “policy” page comes across as a box-checking exercise to satisfy the party’s hawks. It talks about having “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world” and reaffirms Harris’ willingness to bomb Iranian allies, but there is precious little about non-military policy tools and there is no mention of climate, migration or pandemics in the foreign policy section. If you didn’t know that the Harris is the Democratic nominee, there wouldn’t be much in the foreign policy section to let you know. Put another way, there is nothing in here that would make Dick Cheney uncomfortable.

Continue reading “Harris’ Missing Foreign Policy Vision”