{"id":57351,"date":"2026-02-02T07:34:50","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T15:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=57351"},"modified":"2026-02-02T07:34:50","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T15:34:50","slug":"william-astore-of-lies-and-surges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/02\/william-astore-of-lies-and-surges\/","title":{"rendered":"William Astore: Of Lies and Surges"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views<\/a> with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n

Two headlines caught my eye this AM in my email media stream.<\/p>\n

From the New York Times<\/em>: \u201cHow the Trump Administration Rushed to Judgment in Minneapolis Shooting\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

There was no \u201cjudgment\u201d displayed in the execution of Alex Pretti. The Trump administration blatantly, maliciously, and viciously lied about what happened. Video evidence incontrovertibly shows that the Trump administration lied. Period.<\/p>\n

Trump officials simply didn\u2019t and don\u2019t care about the truth. About justice. About the life of a U.S. citizen. They only care about their own petty lives and violent narratives. Anyone who gets in their way is a potential \u201cdomestic terrorist.\u201d They\u2019re sending a loud message clearly: resist us and you\u2019ll end up bloodied in the streets \u2013 and maybe dead.<\/p>\n

All governments lie, as I.F. Stone famously reminded us. But rarely can I remember lies of such obvious viciousness about regular people whose only real crime is exercising their right to dissent in democracy.<\/p>\n

The other headline was this one from the Boston Globe<\/em>: \u201cMaine and Minnesota: A tricky tale of ICE surges in two states.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maine and Minnesota: a tricky tale of ICE surges in two states<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

What had been a careful, rhetorical balancing act has begun turning to increasing anger after the shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old Veterans Affairs nurse, in Minneapolis<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s that word again: Surge<\/em>. Remember the U.S. military \u201csurges\u201d in Iraq and Afghanistan? Remember how those \u201csurges\u201d in troops and violence were supposed to win those wars for America? How did that work out for us?<\/p>\n

We know how. Both surges failed, but they did succeed in producing a lot of dead Iraqis and Afghans (\u201cforeign terrorists\u201d) along with U.S. troops killed and wounded in action.<\/p>\n

\u201cSurges\u201d are not how you win wars, whether overseas or here at home. In fact, surges in Iraq and Afghanistan were admissions of a sort that the wars were already lost; their main purpose was to show resolve and to provide political cover for dishonest leaders like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

But government officials have an amazing capacity not to learn. Their \u201csolution\u201d is always to show resolve through military and\/or police action. Nothing is \u201cwon,\u201d nothing is achieved, and the main product is more blood in the streets.<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t it nice to know that your government reflexively views you as a \u201cdomestic terrorist\u201d if you exercise your right to assemble and protest? Especially if you inconveniently get shot and killed by an ICE agent?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author\u2019s permission. Two headlines caught my eye this AM in my email media stream. From the New York Times: \u201cHow the Trump Administration Rushed to Judgment in Minneapolis Shooting\u201d There was no \u201cjudgment\u201d displayed in the execution of Alex Pretti. The Trump administration blatantly, maliciously, and viciously lied about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_social_image_id":0,"_social_image_url":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[758],"class_list":["post-57351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","_social_image_id":false,"_social_image_url":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57351"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57357,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57351\/revisions\/57357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57351"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=57351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}