Author: Daniel Larison

Originally appeared at The American Conservative.

As Rod Dreher has already observed, Warren destroyed Bloomberg in the debate last night with her attacks on him. She has shown would-be Bloomberg voters what a terrible candidate he is, and that does everyone a great service. I have no idea if Warren’s passion and energy will be rewarded by voters, but it was refreshing to see some genuine righteous indignation from her instead of her making corny appeals to “unity.” That passion is what she built her political reputation on, and it is why many people respect her. Virtually everyone seems to think this was her best debate, and I agree with that.

Bloomberg wasn’t just out of practice at debating. He was unprepared to defend his record despite all the negative coverage it has received in the last few weeks, and he gave Democratic voters little reason to trust him or believe that he had learned anything from his past errors. Bloomberg was stiff and clumsy in his delivery, and he was so disengaged for long stretches of the debate that one could be forgiven for forgetting that he was there. Where Warren was bursting with energy and passion, he had none. It was a lifeless performance that was also light on substance.

Continue reading “Foreign Policy? What’s That?”

Originally appeared at The American Conservative.

The Saudi coalition struck and killed dozens of civilians in response to the apparent downing of one of their jets:

Thirty-one people were killed in air strikes on Yemen Saturday, the United Nations said, the victims of an apparent Saudi-led retaliation after Iran-backed Huthi rebels claimed to have shot down one of its jets.

The Tornado aircraft came down Friday in northern Al-Jawf province during an operation to support government forces, a rare shooting down that prompted operations in the area by a Saudi-led military coalition fighting the rebels.

The deadly violence follows an upsurge in fighting in northern Yemen between the warring parties that threatens to worsen the war-battered country’s humanitarian crisis.

“Preliminary field reports indicate that on 15 February as many as 31 civilians were killed and 12 others injured in strikes that hit Al-Hayjah area… in Al-Jawf governorate,” the office of the UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen said in a statement.

This latest attack on Yemeni civilians by the Saudi coalition is typical of how they have waged this cruel and atrocious war. Whenever they suffer a setback from a Houthi attack, they take out their frustration on the civilian population. They have made a habit of attacking civilian targets, and ongoing U.S. support and diplomatic cover have enabled them to avoid facing any consequences for their many war crimes.

Continue reading “Dozens Killed in Another Saudi Massacre in Yemen”

Originally appeared at The American Conservative.

Iraqi military and intelligence officials claim that the original December 27 attack that led to U.S. strikes on an Iraqi militia and Qassem Soleimani was probably not carried out by Kata’ib Hezbollah at all, but was instead the work of ISIS:

American officials insist that they have solid evidence that Khataib Hezbollah carried out the attack, though they have not made it public.

Iraqi officials say their doubts are based on circumstantial evidence and long experience in the area where the attack took place.

The rockets were launched from a Sunni Muslim part of Kirkuk Province notorious for attacks by the Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist group, which would have made the area hostile territory for a Shiite militia like Khataib Hezbollah.

Continue reading “The Trump Administration May Have Blamed Iran for an ISIS Attack”

Originally appeared at The American Conservative.

Tom Friedman’s latest column obviously wasn’t fact-checked before it was published:

And then, a few weeks later, Trump ordered the killing of Suleimani, an action that required him to shift more troops into the region and tell Iraqis that we’re not leaving their territory, even though their Parliament voted to evict us. It also prompted Iran to restart its nuclear weapons program [bold mine-DL], which could well necessitate U.S. military action.

Friedman’s claim that Iran restarted a “nuclear weapons program” is completely false. That isn’t what the Iranian government did, and it is irresponsible to say this when it is clearly untrue. Iran has no nuclear weapons program, and it hasn’t had anything like that for more than sixteen years. The Iranian government took another step in reducing its compliance with the JCPOA in the days following the assassination, but contrary to other misleading headlines their government did not abandon the nuclear deal. Iran has not repudiated its commitment to keep its nuclear program peaceful, and it doesn’t help in reducing tensions to suggest that they have. Trump’s recent actions are reckless and dangerous, but it is wrong to say that those actions have caused Iran to start up a nuclear weapons program. That isn’t the case, and engaging in more threat inflation when tensions are already so high is foolish. Friedman is not the only one to make this blunder, but it is the sort of sloppy mistake we expect from him.

Continue reading “Tom Friedman’s Hapless Fear-Mongering”

Originally appeared at The American Conservative.

John Kerry supports Biden for the Democratic nomination, and he has been acting as a campaign surrogate to defend Biden’s vote for the Iraq war authorization in 2002. Kerry also voted for the 2002 AUMF, so he has his own reason for wanting to spin Biden’s record as something other than what it was. NBC News quoted Kerry as saying this:

“It was a mistake to have trusted them, I guess, and we paid a high price for it,” Kerry added. “But that was not voting for the war.”

Kerry appeared on Face the Nation today to defend Biden against Bernie Sanders’ criticism of the former vice president’s support for the war:

NEW: @JohnKerry punches back at @BernieSanders criticism of @JoeBiden’s Iraq War vote:

"I think Bernie regrettably is distorting Joe's record…" he says from the Biden campaign bus in Iowa. @CBSNews w/@margbrennanpic.twitter.com/xd0vs2uu5m

— Bo Erickson CBS (@BoKnowsNews) January 12, 2020

Kerry’s argument is ridiculous. He and other hawkish Democratic senators that voted for the 2002 AUMF want to spin their votes as voting for “leverage,” but in fact they were voting to give the president the authority to order attacks on the Iraqi government. That is voting for war, and there is nothing else that it could be. Biden’s public statements about the war show that he didn’t turn against it after the invasion happened, because in the end he wasn’t opposed to Bush’s decision to invade. Months after the invasion, Biden said, “I, for one, thought we should have gone in Iraq.” This isn’t something the Sanders campaign is making up. This is Biden’s record, and Kerry’s weak spin just compounds the problem.

Continue reading “Kerry Makes Weak Excuses for Biden’s Iraq War Vote”

Originally appeared at The American Conservative.

Trump’s remarks this morning show that his Iran policy remains as blinkered and reckless as ever. Following the Iranian retaliation last night that caused no casualties, the president does not appear to be escalating the conflict further for the moment. Then again, there would have been no conflict at all were it not for the president’s excessive and illegal actions over the last week. Trump’s remarks were representative of his Iran policy: dishonest and blinkered.

The speech began with his bizarre statement that “Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon,” but then there is currently no danger that Iran will develop a nuclear weapon. The main reason for that is still the JCPOA that he has worked overtime to destroy. This first line sets tone for the propaganda that follows. The president’s Iran policy is founded on a lie that one of the most successful nonproliferation agreements of all time is “defective,” and that misinforms and warps everything else. It is not possible for a policy to be effective or sound when it is based on such a ridiculous falsehood.’

Trump’s justification for assassinating Soleimani leans heavily on describing him as a terrorist, but this ignores that he was a state actor serving in a branch of the Iranian military. This erases the very important distinction between targeting non-state terrorists and members of another country’s military, and choosing to ignore that distinction is what so dangerously escalated tensions with Iran over the last few days. The president doesn’t even attempt to offer a legal justification for what he did, because it was plainly illegal and the president obviously couldn’t care less about the law in any case.

Continue reading “Trump’s Awful, Dishonest Iran Speech”