War Is A Crime

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In early October 2016, as the most staggering presidential election campaign of our lives was nearing its end, I wrote this about the man whom, I suggested, heartland working-class whites might consider dispatching to the White House as an American version of a “suicide bomber”:

“In relation to his Republican rivals, and now Hillary Clinton, he stands alone in accepting read more

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

If Donald Trump Is the Symptom…
Then What’s the Disease?
By Tom Engelhardt

Don’t try to deny it! The political temperature of this country is rising fast. Call it Trump change or Trump warming, if you want, but grasp one thing: increasingly, you’re in a different land and, whatever happens to Donald Trump, the results down the line are likely to be ever less pretty. read more

Scientists not employed by ExxonMobil or named Neil DeGrasse Tyson have reached a universal consensus. Wanting the United States to attack Iran is the single stupidest idea yet recorded in a human brain. In the words of one, “It isn’t even close.”

In a peer-reviewed report on a controlled laboratory experiment, sample humans were presented with the following 12 items of information.

1. Iran is nowhere near the United States, has no ability to attack the United States, has not threatened to attack the United States, has not started a war in literally centuries, and spends less than 2 percent what the United States does on war preparations. Defending the United States and its “interests” from Iran just means defending the other disastrous wars that are already underway and near Iran.
2. Iran has no nuclear weapons program, yet agreed to extreme inspections never agreed to by any other country, and complied with the agreement, but Donald Trump tore the agreement up in between his morning pop tarts and viewing Fox News encouragement of separating children from their parents and locking them in cages.
3. The United States has taken countless steps to threaten and provoke Iran, including the extreme crime of threatening war.
4. A war on Iran could involve attacks on nuclear energy facilities, the use of nuclear weapons, the creation of a nuclear winter, and global human starvation, and is certain to involve large numbers of people killed, injured, traumatized, and made homeless — for which they would be blamed by those eager to spin the vicious cycle of hatred, war, and hatred forward.
5. Other benefits of a war on Iran would likely include: massive environmental and climate destruction, erosion of rights in the United States, major defunding of human needs, increased racism and xenophobia, and deadly blowback against people you’re supposed to care about in the United States, Israel, and Europe — well, that and making all the other recent wars look less catastrophic by comparison.
6. Every moment the United States spends pursuing this barbaric madness is a moment spent allowing the earth’s climate to lock in greater catastrophe in the years to come.
7. War, like threatening war, is a crime. It is the greatest crime.
8. The fact that Iran has a deeply flawed government is a truly insane thing to imagine is relevant here. Almost every nation on earth has a deeply flawed government, and the United States arms and trains most of them. The United States *is* a deeply flawed government, and few people there believe they would benefit from being bombed. None of the nations the United States has previously bombed, supposedly for having bad governments, has benefitted.
9. Speaking of Germany and Japan — which your mind has just leaped to in order to avoid thinking about Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Panama, Granada, and so forth — the millions killed cannot speak, but the current governments of Germany and Japan — voluntarily occupied nations devoid of self-respect, backing wars in violation of their Constitutions, and licking the shoes of Emperor Trump — Germany and Japan say attacking Iran would be too crazy for them.
10. We can’t believe we’re having to inform you of this, but . . . excuses for wars are not actually justifications. If Iraq had really had weapons, or Vietnam had really returned fire off its coast, or Gadaffi had really threatened a massacre and handed out Viagra, or babies had really been taken out of incubators, and so forth, exactly zero instances of mass bombings of human beings would have been actually justified. The degree of incompetence in the forming of an excuse is not the interesting question that corporate communications companies pretend. Dubya was a hack, Obama was quite skilled, Trump doesn’t even bother trying, and you and I should not care. You can’t blow up a shopping mall because someone shoplifted. And if you do, nobody is going to think all the media attention should focus on evidence of the shoplifting.
11. The following is irrelevant (see #10 above), but we accept that you have been brainwashed way past the point of being able to grasp that. The Iran-attacked-a-boat excuse is
    A) Not a justification for a war, but for a criminal investigation.
    B) Laughably incompetent, almost as bad as if they weren’t really concerned with fooling anyone. First they claimed to know Iran was guilty because of the type of mine used, and then it became clear that no mines were used — rather as in the U.S.S. Maine incident in 1898, which somebody may possibly have taken a bet he couldn’t reproduce.
12. John Bolton’s primary qualification for his job is the lies he told about Iraq. Mike Pompeo openly brags about lying as central to his career experience. Donald Trump may never have knowingly and intentionally told the truth in his life. Every past war has been based on lies, and creative lies to start a war on Iran have been generated for decades.

In certain humans, presented with these items of information, scientists were able to record, not only their read more

The constitutional ban on receiving gifts or benefits while in office from the U.S. government or state governments (domestic “emoluments” – Article II, Section 1) is absolute, not waivable by Congress, and not subject to proving any particular corrupting influence.

President Trump’s lease of the Old Post Office Building in Washington D.C. for his Trump International Hotel violates the General Services Administration lease contract which states: “No … elected official of the Government read more

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

It’s been almost 18 years of “infinite” war, carnage, the mass displacement of peoples, read more

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

I watch NBC Nightly News regularly to get a sense of what version of our world a slice of America is regularly offered. In recent weeks, most of those newscasts — which usually begin with Lester Holt exclaiming, “Breaking news tonight!” — led with unprecedented rainfall, read more

Stephen Roblin is a scholar of U.S. public opinion towards U.S. war and conflict. He is committed to using his research to support activists, NGOs and policymakers working to mitigate and prevent the human costs of war. His research examines the effect of civilian harm by the U.S. military and anti-war messaging on U.S. public opinion. He is currently a PhD candidate in Political Science at Cornell University. Prior to attending Cornell, he earned his masters at the University of Maryland School read more

According to exit polls from late May, an impressive 82% of Irish voters say Ireland should remain a neutral country in all aspects. But Ireland is not remaining a neutral country in all aspects, and there’s no indication of whether Irish voters know that, or specifically what they think of the fact that the United States military, year after year, ships large numbers of troops and weapons (and occasionally presidents) through Shannon Airport on their way to endless disastrous wars.

When peace read more