The War & Peace Newsletter from Antiwar.com

Your source for US  foreign policy.

May 21, 2020

Over a week of chaos at Bardar Abbas, a key Iranian port on the Strait of Hormuz, has been explained as resulting from an Israeli cyberattack on the port's terminal, crippling computers and bringing the port grinding to a halt.

Unnamed US officials pointed to Israel as being behind the attack, saying it was a retaliation for an Iranian cyberattack on Israeli water systems. Israeli officials hinted at involvement, but officially the Israeli government has refused comment.

- By  Jason Ditz

Americans treasure their veterans; or so it seems. Every solitary soldier's life matters, or is at least accounted for. Here the exactitude of the military's casualty statistics tells the story. Such catalogues reflect more than a simple Pentagon penchant for lists - they are imbued with meaning, a sense of valuing American troops. Nothing of the sort applies to the real - or at least far more numerous - victims of Washington's countless, and continuing wars. The suffering and costs for the mostly brown and black local victims - opponents and civilians - don't much register here in the United States.

Once again, the lists - or lack thereof - are illustrative. Yet, while altering the victim-consciousness of U.S. political leaders might be too much to expect, combat veterans do know the cost in local blood and torment, and are uniquely placed to both account for, and communicate, the toll of America's wars. And now is the time.

- By Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.)

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Ben Rhodes, who served as President Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser, labeled the nation's foreign policy elite as "the Blob." Members of this well-educated, well-connected group disagree on peripherals but agree on essentials of foreign policy. Their almost unanimous bottom line is that the U.S. government must run the world.

The result over the last couple decades has been catastrophic. Thousands of dead Americans. Tens of thousands injured, many maimed horribly. Hundreds of thousands of dead civilians in the nations Washington was supposed to be liberating. Millions of people driven from their homes. Trillions of dollars wasted. Enemy nations empowered. Terrorists created. America's reputation shattered.

- By Doug Bandow

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Trump, Wall Street Journal Spar Over Afghan Pullout

President Trump took to Twitter to angrily condemn the Wall Street Journal Monday for a weekend editorial critical of his Afghanistan policy, suggesting he was making decisions "impulsively" in the ongoing war.

- By Jason Ditz

Trump Says He Could Cut Off All Ties to China

In an interview with Fox Business on Thursday, President Trump continued to rail at China about the coronavirus outbreak, saying the ink had not dried on his trade deal with President Xi and "the plague came over," adding that the US-Chinese relationship "doesn't feel the same to me."

- By Jason Ditz

A disinformation campaign aimed to justify the assassination of Qassem Soleimani by painting him and Iran as willing enablers of al-Qaeda. The propaganda operation relied heavily on a shoddily sourced book.

The U.S. assassination of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani in January touched off a new wave of disinformation about Soleimani, with Trump administration allies branding him a global terrorist while painting Iran as the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism. Much of the propaganda about Soleimani related to his alleged responsibility for the killing of American troops in Iraq, along with Iran's role in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

But a second theme in the disinformation campaign, which has been picked up by mainstream outlets like the Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio, was the claim that Soleimani deliberately unleashed al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's campaign to kill Shiites in Iraq. 

- By Gareth Porter

Aaron Mate on the Latest OPCW Scandal

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