Antiwar.com Blog

I beseech you, sir, to consider the possibility that the supposed chlorine gas attack at Douma, Syria may have been a carefully constructed propaganda fraud on the part of the rebels encircled in Douma. Such a fraud would have as its purpose the elicitation of exactly the kind of response that we are seeing in the Western media. The rebels have been defeated in East Gouta Their fighters and families are being evacuated to Turkish occupied Jarabulus by air-conditioned bus. How would it benefit the Syrian government to make such an attack in this situation?

I hope that you will determine the exact facts of what occurred at Douma before any action is taken.

I recommend that you send someone competent to Syria to make an on the ground investigation.

W. Patrick Lang
Colonel (Ret.) US Army

Reprinted from Sic Semper Tyrannis blog.

After the pro-rebel White Helmets claimed over the weekend that Syria’s Assad has “again” gassed his own citizens, President Trump is threatening massive retaliation. Russia has stated that it would strike any source of incoming missiles into Syria. Will President Trump listen to his neocon advisors and ignore Russian warnings? Are we about to blunder into WWIII without even any evidence? Tune in to today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

From Resisters.info

The “National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service” has announced that the second of its “open-mike public hearings" throughout the US on whether registration for a military draft should be ended or extended will be in Denver, Colorado, on Thursday, April 19th, from 3-5 p.m.:

Open-Mike Public Hearing
National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service
Thursday, April 19, 2018, 3-5 p.m. (doors open at 2:30)

Denver Museum of Science and Industry
Schlessman Lobby, Entrance 5 (Evening Entrance)
2001 Colorado Blvd., Denver, CO

Matt Nicodemus (phone 720-979-9967) of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center in Boulder is organizing local folks to attend the Denver hearing. Please let Matt know at if you plan to attend or can help with local activities. Some readers of this blog will remember Matt’s public refusal to register for the draft in 1980, and his work as an organizer with the National Resistance Committee and as co-editor of Resistance News.

Continue reading “Hearing on the Draft and Draft Registration, Thursday, April 19th in Denver”

From the Archives: As President Trump faces opposition from his generals to pull U.S. troops from Syria, here’s a look back to a similar fix another new president had gotten himself into, as Ray McGovern reported on March 28, 2009.

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I was wrong. I had been saying that it would be naïve to take too seriously presidential candidate Barack Obama’s rhetoric regarding the need to escalate the war in Afghanistan.

And surely he would be fully briefed on the stupidity and deceit that left 58,000 U.S. troops – not to mention 2 million to 3 million Vietnamese – dead in Vietnam. I kept thinking to myself that when he got briefed on the history of Afghanistan and the oft-proven ability of Afghan “militants” to drive out foreign invaders – from Alexander the Great, to the Persians, the Mongolians, Indians, British, Russians – he would be sure to understand why they call mountainous Afghanistan the “graveyard of empires.”

John Kennedy became President the year Obama was born. One cannot expect toddler-to-teenager Barack to remember much about the war in Vietnam, and it was probably too early for that searing, controversial experience to have found its way into the history texts as he was growing up.

Continue reading “Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President”

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

To get some idea of what John Bolton will tell Trump about Syria, it is useful to revisit an old Bolton op-ed from a few years ago. It may give us some clues about the position he’ll take on Syria today, and it is a helpful reminder that he is remarkably wrong about virtually everything he writes about. Bolton wrote this back in 2015:

Today’s reality is that Iraq and Syria as we have known them are gone. The Islamic State has carved out a new entity from the post-Ottoman Empire settlement, mobilizing Sunni opposition to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and the Iran-dominated government of Iraq. Also emerging, after years of effort, is a de facto independent Kurdistan.

If, in this context, defeating the Islamic State means restoring to power Mr. Assad in Syria and Iran’s puppets in Iraq, that outcome is neither feasible nor desirable. Rather than striving to recreate the post-World War I map, Washington should recognize the new geopolitics. The best alternative to the Islamic State in northeastern Syria and western Iraq is a new, independent Sunni state.

Continue reading “Bolton’s Terrible Ideas for Syria”

Within the U.S. “defense” establishment there’s an eagerness to refight the Cold War with Russia and China, notes Michael Klare at TomDispatch.com. The “long war” on terror, although still festering, is not enough to justify enormous defense budgets and traditional weapon systems like aircraft carriers, bomber and fighter jets, and tanks and artillery. But hyping the Russian and Chinese threats, as Defense Secretary James Mattis is doing, is a proven method of ensuring future military growth along well-trodden avenues.

Hence an article at Fox News that I saw this morning. Its title: “Here’s why Russia would lose a second Cold War — and would be unwise to start one.” The article happily predicts the demise of Russia if that country dares to challenge the US in a Cold War-like binge of military spending. Bring it on, Russia and China, our defense hawks are effectively saying. But recall what happened when George W. Bush said “Bring it on” in the context of the Iraq insurgency.

Continue reading “William J. Astore on Refighting the Cold War”