Think of it as the most momentous military planning on Earth right now. Who’s even paying attention, given the eternal changing of the guard at the White House, as well as the latest in tweets, sexual revelations, and investigations of every sort? And yet it...
We’re helping fight someone else’s war in Yemen — and the blood is on our hands. Since March 2015, the United States has supported a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that’s intervening in a civil war in Yemen. The war has...
Donald Trump has now assembled a cabinet of men that have elevated violence to a supreme virtue at home and abroad. Men like Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, and Trump himself. They are all firm believers in armed domination. In this respect, they share an unlikely bond with...
This commentary was originally published by The Progressive. It is nothing short of tragic that the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4 arrives during a presidential administration containing some of the most overtly...
Political reporters have a saying: There’s always a tweet. That is, for nearly every political moment or presidential decree, there’s an uncannily on-point comment buried somewhere in the presidential Twitter feed. Often it features the president expressing a past...
This article is a joint publication of Foreign Policy In Focus and In These Times. It was a lot to take in, even in these whipsawed media moments. In one 24-hour news cycle, President Donald Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, appointed the war and...
Five hundred years ago, a popular test to flush out witches was called "ordeal by water." Dunk an alleged witch into a lake. If she sinks, she’s innocent. If she floats, her guilt is plain for all to see and she can be safely burned at the stake. By this ancient form...
This March marked the 15th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. In 2003, President George W. Bush and his advisers based their case for war on the idea that Saddam Hussein, then dictator of Iraq, possessed weapons of mass destruction — weapons that have never...
In January, three residents from the U.S. territory of Guam visited Japan to express their solidarity with Okinawans struggling to block construction of new U.S. military facilities on their island. During their 10-day stay, the members of Prutehi Litekyan: Save...
In a surprise announcement in early March, President Donald Trump said that he would meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un within two months. The preparations for the meeting were hampered by the lack of North Korea expertise within the administration, the...