Antiwar.com Blog

Updated below

I was happy to see an antiwar Democrat beat the establishment Joe Crowley in New York. I had read the following on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s website 6 weeks ago:

Foreign Policy:
Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States has entangled itself in war and occupation throughout the Middle East and North Africa. As of 2018, we are currently involved in military action in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. According to the Constitution, the right to declare war belongs to the Legislative body, not the President. Yet, most of these acts of aggression have never once been voted on by Congress. Alex believes that we must end the forever war by bringing our troops home and ending the air strikes and bombings that perpetuate the cycle of terrorism and occupation throughout the world.
(You can still read this on the May 16 archived version of her site at Archive.org)

However, a month later, the foreign policy section has been deleted (see here), and is still gone today.

I assume that someone in the campaign thought that she needed to avoid such a “controversial” stance against war and standing up for the constitutional position that “the right to declare war belongs to the Legislative body, not the President.”

What a shame. I hope that she doesn’t shy away from the strong antiwar positions she first campaigned on when she takes office.

UPDATE:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted this last night:

Hey! Looking into this. Nothing malicious! Site is supporter-run so things happen -we’ll get to the bottom of it.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) June 28, 2018

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

Philip Gordon and Prem Kumar explain why Kushner’s worthless “peace plan” has no chance of winning Palestinian support:

His administration has offered unconstrained support for settlements, with an ambassador who has fought against use of the word “occupation” and refers to “Judea and Samaria,” as favored by Israeli settlers, instead of traditional U.S. references to the West Bank. It is no surprise, therefore, that the Palestinians stopped talking to the administration. It is hard to see how the United States under Trump will ever be seen as an honest broker, or be able to go around Abbas, when two-thirds of Palestinians oppose the resumption of contacts with U.S. negotiators and 88 percent view the United States as biased in favor of Israel [bold mine-DL].

Reviving negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians would be difficult at the best of times, but it certainly isn’t going to succeed when an openly pro-settler, hard-line American administration is the one behind the effort. The Trump administration’s approach to this conflict is typical of the president’s warped view of diplomacy. He thinks that diplomacy amounts to issuing ultimatums and making threats, and he expects that the other side can be forced into yielding everything if enough pressure is applied. The president has no capacity for empathy with the other side’s position, and it probably wouldn’t matter if he did. Because he doesn’t think it is possible to have a mutually beneficial agreement between two or more parties, he assumes that others have to lose in order for him to get a “good” deal.

Continue reading “A ‘Peace Plan’ That Has Nothing to Do With Peace”

Our investments are funding war, guns, and militarism at home and around the world. From our personal investments to state pension plans to university trusts, the money that individuals and communities are using for retirement, long-term planning, and even higher education is subsidizing violence in our backyards and other nations. The good news is we have the power to cut our ties to war, guns, and militarism by using a new web-based tool, Weapon Free Funds.

The U.S. is engaged in endless wars around the world. For 17 years, we have been fighting in the Middle East, leading us into seven active conflict zones and countless other proxy wars. We are still fighting an invisible war on drugs that takes the war zone from Afghanistan to Mexico. Most Americans have no idea that the US maintains nearly 800 military bases around the world, or that the US supplies the weapons that wreak havoc on innocent civilians and children in Yemen, Syria, Pakistan, and more.

Continue reading “Who Is Making a Killing on Killing?”

The US government has warned its jihadist allies in southwest Syria that there would no US military rescue from their impending defeat by Syrian government forces. With one of the last pockets of ISIS and al-Qaeda cleaned out of Syria, though, what’s the point of the US presence at all? Tune in to today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

The Trump administration is pressing ahead with its worthless “peace plan” for Israel and Palestine:

Asked by the newspaper’s editor, Walid Abu-Zalaf, about an Abbas spokesman’s dismissal of Mr. Kushner’s trip as a “waste of time” that was “bound to fail,” Mr. Kushner said he believed Palestinian leaders were “saying those things because they are scared we will release our peace plan and the Palestinian people will actually like it.”

There is no chance that Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza will like anything the Trump administration has to offer. That shouldn’t have to be said, but I suppose it has to be when the press is talking about this farce of a “peace plan” as if it were a serious proposal. The U.S. has never been an “honest broker” between the Israelis and Palestinians, and Trump has made a point of emphasizing that this administration is extremely biased against the latter. From moving the US embassy to Jerusalem over Palestinian objections to covering for Israeli crimes against protesters in Gaza, the Trump administration has been very clear that it couldn’t care less what any Palestinians think about anything.

Continue reading “A Worthless ‘Peace Plan’ for Israel and Palestine”

President Trump is dropping bombs at a record pace. Even though the US is technically not at war, in the first year of the Trump Administration some 44,000 bombs were dropped overseas. In the entire eight years of the Bush Administration 70,000 bombs were dropped and under eight years of “Peace President” Obama 100,000 were dropped. Trump looks to break the record. With so much attention paid to children being taken from their parents, why no attention to how many kids overseas are permanently taken from their parents by US bombs? Tune in to today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.