Here are some excerpts from recent articles dealing with Trump’s growing disconnection from reality and the expansion of war in the Middle East for and by Israel:
The president responds to the rising economic and political costs of his criminal war with more unhinged threats:
If Iran does anything that stops the flow of Oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far.
Additionally, we will take out easily destroyable targets that will make it virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back, as a Nation, again — Death, Fire, and Fury will reign upon them — But I hope, and pray, that it does not happen!
The president started this disaster by making reckless threats, and he keeps digging himself and the rest of us into a deeper hole by making more of them. Many analysts like to predict that Trump will eventually back down and “chicken out,” but this misses that he frequently responds to adversity with more escalation. He caused the crisis with Iran, and when the Iranians refused to give in to his absurd demands he started a major war. Coercion and threats are his only tools, and when those inevitably fail him he tries to use them more aggressively than before.
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What is it with these “Death, Fire, and Fury” threats? What kind of a person boasts of raining death down on a people? A totally immoral one, a sociopathic one, a bully with no empathy. A murderous one.
America, this is murderous madness.
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At Zeteo, there’s a telling article that “King” Trump’s brain is dead, using his own words as proof. The article also covers Israel’s expansion of the war into Lebanon. More madness, but I suppose Israeli madness has a method to it and a goal: more land for a “greater Israel.” Here’s that article:
Donald Trump delivered remarks in Doral, Florida, last night, to House Republicans during their retreat, and then as part of a press conference. It might not seem like an appropriate time to be off the job, but, dear reader, based on Trump’s remarks, maybe it’s better if he steps away from the steering wheel. Let’s discuss, debunk, annotate, and report on his insanity – quote by quote:
Voters strongly disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy – to a record degree, according to a new Quinnipiac poll. Prices are only getting higher as a result of Trump’s illegal war in Iran.
Once again, there was no proof that Iran posed any “imminent threat” to the US, and, in fact, the country was negotiating a new nuclear deal with the Trump administration before the president decided to attack.
Trump has continued to suggest that Iran was responsible for the horrific bombing of an Iranian girls’ school, killing some 175 people, mostly children. Repeated independent reporting has found that the US was likely the culprit. Footage shows that it was a Tomahawk missile that rained down on the school – a US munition that Iran does not possess.
Now onto the really absurd, brain-addled, and racist moments:
This is one of Trump’s latest ongoing hits: using “Palestinian” as a slur – no less to suggest Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (who himself has said one of his jobs is to keep the left pro-Israel!) is actually too sympathetic to the people Trump and Joe Biden (and Schumer) have co-signed the genocide of. It’s the kind of behavior that, if any other ethnic group were used in such a way, would lead to congressional hearings and breathless media coverage.
And – “the Iranian people who are quite nasty”? The same people Trump and the pro-war establishment are supposedly “freeing”? Instead of liberatory language, even euphemistically, the so-called peace president is speaking in the same vicious register his friends in the Israeli government have spoken in to describe Palestinians – and we see what that’s resulted in.
Trump’s nonsensical riffs like this feel worse when you remember that one of the ships the US sank was an Iranian naval ship not in combat position, and was in the middle of traveling back from an exercise at the invitation of India. The US torpedoed it anyway, with no regard for survivors, leaving Sri Lanka to carry out a rescue mission. If that shocking breach of the Geneva Conventions only targeted one of the ships Trump was referring to, what are the others?
That was literally Trump’s response to a reporter who asked how he could say the war is “very complete” while his defense secretary says “this is just the beginning.” Well, apparently, it’s both! It’s complete, and it’s beginning. Genius!
Nearly 200 children killed: An Iranian official said US-Israeli strikes have killed at least 193 children, including an 8-month-old girl.
A third of 2026 offline: Internet access advocacy group Netblocks said today that at 240 hours, Iran’s near-total internet blackout is “now among the most severe government-imposed nationwide internet shutdowns on record globally, and the second longest registered in Iran after the January protests.” That means Iranians have spent a third of this year offline.
Hospitals hit: US-Israeli strikes have hit a number of civilian buildings, including hospitals and health clinics, per Iranian officials. At least nine hospitals are no longer operational, Al Jazeera quoted Mohammad Jamalian, a member of Iran’s parliamentary health committee, as saying.
WHO sounds the alarm: World Health Organization (WHO) head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that Israeli attacks on Iranian oil facilities could have negative effects on public health and “risks contaminating food, water and air.”
Oil prices drop: After reaching four-year highs yesterday, oil prices fell back down to $98.96 per barrel following Trump’s temporary claim that the war on Iran could end soon.
But the war isn’t over: Trump posted on Truth Social on Monday night: “If Iran does anything that stops the flow of Oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far.”
‘We will decide’: For Iran’s part, the country’s deputy foreign minister insistedTehran has “the upper hand,” and it will “decide when the war will end.”
Don’t Look Away: Israel Is Invading Lebanon
Smoke rises after an Israeli attack targeted the southern suburbs on March 9, 2026, in Beirut, Lebanon. Photo by Daniel Carde/Getty Images.
While the US and Israeli war on Iran rages on, and millions of Palestinians continue to face dismal conditions and persistent attacks in Gaza, Israel is alsoterrorizing Lebanon. Israeli forces have killed more than 450 people, including 83 children, in Lebanon just in the past week
Amid their reckless violence, Israeli forces have attacked United Nations peacekeepers and residential buildings. They killed 41 people, including children, while dressed up as Lebanese troops and searching for four-decade-old remains of an Israeli military pilot. Israel’s attacks have, according to Human Rights Watch, included the illegal use of white phosphorus, which ignites when exposed to oxygen and can light homes, farmland, and other buildings and infrastructure on fire. Some of the victims of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon include a Catholic priest and three paramedics.
All told, nearly 700,000 people in Lebanon have been forcibly displaced from their homes, including 200,000 children.
Imagine the entire population of Nashville, or Washington DC, being forced out of their homes. That is the scale of displacement Israel is inflicting, just in Lebanon alone.
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Trump also announced that America’s war on Iran won’t end until Bibi Netanyahu says it’s over. (He actually said it would be a joint U.S./Israeli decision, but it’s obvious who’s giving the orders here.)
For America, the U.S. Congress doesn’t declare war, Bibi Netanyahu does.
I saw this quip in a YouTube comments section: No matter who you vote for, you get Bibi Netanyahu as president. It makes sense. Recall Bibi’s visits to Congress and the rapturous (even stormy!) applause he always received.
Well, at least we know who’s controlling this war, and for all their posturing, it’s not bully boy Trump or punch’em when they’re down Hegseth.
Brian McGinnis, a U.S. Marine Corp veteran, was wounded in action protesting the Iran War in the U.S. Senate. Thrown down, his arm broken, McGinnis was a victim of friendly fire from the Capitol police and Senator Tim Sheehy, who decided he’d join the police in wrestling McGinnis out of the hearing room.
McGinnis’s “crime”? Using his freedom of speech to declare that no one wants to die in a war for Israel.
You can watch it all here. (You can hear the bone crack in his arm.)
This is what happens in America when you stand up and speak truth to power. The powerful already know the truth. Their response is either to ignore truth-tellers or to silence them, sometimes with extreme prejudice.
This Marine, this patriot, exercising his Constitutional right of free speech before the Senate, became yet another casualty of the U.S./Israeli War on Iran, a victim of a deliberate and unconscionable act of friendly fire. All he wanted was to have his voice heard; all he got in return was a broken arm and a most violent silencing, even as U.S. senior leaders in uniform steadfastly ignored him.
Again, this Marine was wounded in action; his action was to speak truth before the powerful, but they don’t traffic in hard or noble truths, only in easy and convenient lies.
Shame on the U.S. Senate, shame on the military’s senior leaders, and shame on the Trump administration for waging an illegitimate, unconstitutional, and illegal war against Iran and against legitimate and courageous dissent in America.
Reading NBC News this morning, I saw where the U.S. “is winning decisively, devastatingly and without mercy,” so claimed self-styled Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. “We are only four days in,” he added, and the U.S. “will take all the time we need” to prevail. He further added “We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.” (There’s nothing more honorable than punching someone when they’re down, right?)
“They [the Iranians] are toast, and they know it, or at least, soon enough, they will know it. And we have only just begun, to hunt, dismantle, demoralize, destroy and defeat their capabilities,” Hegseth boasted. As far as how long the war will last, he equivocated. Three weeks? Eight weeks? Who knows? Hegseth doesn’t.
Hegseth also doesn’t know something fundamental: You can’t do a wrong thing the right way.
The Iran War is wrong. It’s illegal, unconstitutional, immoral, and also extremely dangerous. There’s no way to prevail in a war fought for the wrong reasons, a war fought without clear goals, a war that is already beginning to spiral out of control. But Hegseth thinks if the U.S. launches enough missiles, drops enough bombs, and torpedoes enough ships, somehow the U.S. will “win.”
Congratulations, U.S. and Israel: You made him a martyr
In so many ways, the U.S. has already lost. The Ayatollah Khamenei is now a martyr. Iran is now more likely to pursue a nuclear weapon. Even more so than usual, Israel is now in the driver’s seat, calling America’s shots in the Middle East. This has all the makings of a major catastrophe for U.S. forces, but all Hegseth can see is the promise of punching a man when he’s down.
Clearly, Hegseth is intoxicated with winning “without mercy.” Think about that for a moment—war without mercy. Only the most barbaric or fanatical person would boast about waging war without mercy.
With the Iran War, the Trump administration is marching down the most perilous of paths, blinded by illusions of total victory.
A warning: More than anything, America must not allow this to become a religious war, a crusade, between a Judeo-Christian force and a Shia-Islamic force. We’re already seeing a lot of talk within the U.S. military of a God-driven mission against Iran, with (positive!) references to Armageddon. Such rhetoric is incredibly dangerous and inflammatory. (In this context, that crusader cross tattoo on Hegseth’s chest is more than alarming.)
If anything, the best outcome for the U.S. would be an immediate ceasefire before more U.S. troops are killed and wounded. But how is such a ceasefire to be negotiated? U.S. diplomacy has no credibility. None.
Among the worst outcomes would be the commitment of U.S. troops to Iran, so-called boots on the ground, which would likely create a massive Bay of Pigs-style fiasco. America can ill afford yet another land war quagmire in the Middle East. There is already talk, however, of committing U.S. Special Forces to Iran, perhaps to organize Kurdish and Iranian dissidents against the legitimate Iranian government. Such folly must be prevented.
Any commitment of U.S. troops to Iran would further accelerate escalation. If you begin to hear rumblings about Selective Service and a return to a military draft, you’ll know the Trump administration has become completely unhinged (if it isn’t already).
In just a few days of “major combat operations,” the Trump administration already has more than enough innocent Iranian blood on its hands. That toll in blood is only going to increase, as will the risk of blowback on the “homeland.”
The smartest course for America at this moment is to declare “victory” and leave. Since it’s unlikely Trump and Hegseth will see the light, Congress should immediately cut war funding. Sadly, a weak-willed Congress seems far more likely to pass supplemental funding bills to give Trump and Hegseth a blank check to wage a Judeo-Christian crusade.
We don’t live in interesting times: we live in unhinged times. Perilous times. We must find a way to seek a merciful peace. The alternative just might be World War III.
Here are some macro ideas and thoughts about America’s latest war of choice with Iran:
1. It’s a war so call it that. It’s not “strikes” or “major combat operations.”
2. It’s an unconstitutional, illegal, immoral, and potentially escalatory war.
3. The war has no clear objective other than decapitation of the Iranian leadership (achieved?) and installation of a new regime that will play ball with USA/Israel. That latter outcome is extremely unlikely.
4. It’s a war for Israel to advance its regional hegemony.
5. In the main, the war is neither supported nor understood by the American people. That fact doesn’t seem to matter to the Trump administration.
6. For all those involved, the war will prove increasingly expensive in blood and treasure.
7. Recklessly begun, the war is utterly unpredictable in its final outcomes.
8. The war does not serve the national defense interests of the U.S., as Iran posed no imminent threat to U.S. national security.
9. With no clear Congressional mandate, the war lacks the critical support of the American people. Again, the Trump administration remains unconcerned here.
10. For these reasons, among others, there should be an immediate ceasefire followed by negotiations, leading to discussion of war reparations to be paid by the aggressors. (This scenario, I realize, is unlikely in the extreme.)
Yesterday, I went on “Judging Freedom” with Judge Andrew Napolitano to discuss the Iran War.
As I said to the Judge, I am still confused about America’s true rationale, its intent, and its goals, and I have no clear idea of how this war is going to proceed, let alone end. War is inherently unpredictable, much like fire. Trying to predict its path of destruction, what it will burn and what it will leave behind, and when it will end, is nearly impossible. We must work to contain and extinguish this new fire in the Middle East before it becomes an inferno that engulfs even wider areas, leading to yet more innocents dead.
I woke to the news that Israel/USA is launching attacks (New York Times) and strikes (NBC News) against Iran. The BBC used “joint attack” for the Israeli/U.S. war plan. Three sources, and all three avoiding that useful descriptive word, war.
I suppose Mr. Trump doesn’t have to ask Congress for a declaration of war since it’s not a war—it’s just attacks or strikes or “major combat operations,” as Trump said today.
“All I want is freedom for the [Iranian] people,” Trump also said. Once again, “freedom” is synonymous with war and death.
So perhaps Orwell had it wrong. It’s not war is peace; it’s war is freedom.
It’s funny: I’m listening to ABC News and they keep using the words “strike” or “joint strike” or “preemptive strike.” Or even “larger-scale strike.” Trump sees it as a “noble mission,” but not apparently a Nobel Peace Prize one.
So many lies, so much dishonesty, so much illegality.
Grim times.
If you can stand it, here’s Trump talking about Iran’s terror. Iran has “soaked the earth with blood and guts,” so he claims. I’m glad the USA is innocent of death and violence. No blood and guts from our military “strikes.”
It’s not a war. It’s just “strikes” or “attacks” or something
So remember America: Don’t speak of war. You have no say anyway. Just sit back and watch the strikes and attacks ordered by two paragons of virtue, Bibi Netanyahu and Donald Trump.
Update (2/28, Noonish)
The words of James Madison resonate here:
Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debt and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manner and of morals, engendered in both. No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare …
Allegedly, we’re bombing for freedom in Iran, even as freedom in America vanishes. Is it time to drop “freedom” bombs on ourselves?
Ask Americans (or any other people) being bombed if they think it’s conducive to greater freedom.
My fellow Americans, it’s nice to think we have a semblance of a constitutional republic, but that warship has sailed. This time, to Iran.
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This AM, I read an interesting story on the Supreme Court’s repeal of Trump’s tariffs. Justice Neil Gorsuch made the point that his fellow justices’ interpretation of the law often changes based on whether the president is a Republican or Democrat. This, to state the obvious, is not how the law is supposed to work.
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Years ago, I spied a bumper sticker that read: “I’m already against the next war.” It’s on my mind again.
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I’ll support a war when Hollywood celebrities and sports stars willingly enlist. And when the sons and daughters of presidents and senators and CEOs happily join them in the ranks.
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Do you think it’s a coincidence that Bibi Netanyahu keeps visiting the White House even as the Trump administration prepares for yet another war in the Middle East?
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A great book for this moment is “Deadly Betrayal: The Truth About Why the United States Invaded Iraq” (2024) by Dennis Fritz. Fritz, a retired AF command chief master sergeant, was in the halls of power when the Bush/Cheney administration decided to invade Iraq in 2003. He identifies three main reasons for the Iraq War fiasco: U.S. leaders’ concerns about “credibility” and the perpetual fear of being perceived as “weak”; serving the security needs of Israel, especially by weakening Hamas and Hezbollah together with Iraq; and neocon fever dreams of imperial dominance in the Middle East connected to the control of oil.
In his conclusion, Fritz is scathingly blunt:
More than 4,500 [U.S. troops] made the ultimate sacrifice, and 100,000 have been wounded for life. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Saddam Hussein posed no threat to our national security. The Iraq War wasn’t an honest mistake. It was a calculated lie—a deadly betrayal. Our service members were used as pawns by the government to fulfill an imperialist ideology. Their sacrifice had no basis in national defense. All Americans should be outraged, and we should never let this happen again. The troops didn’t even know why they were going to war.
It saddens me to think that Fritz may soon need to write “Deadly Betrayal II” about the forthcoming war with Iran.
In Israel, the two defense officials said that significant preparations were underway for the possibility of a joint strike with the United States, even though no decision has been made about whether to carry out such an attack. They said the planning envisions delivering a severe blow over a number of days with the goal of forcing Iran into concessions at the negotiating table that it has so far been unwilling to make.
The U.S. buildup suggests an array of possible Iranian targets, including short and medium range missiles, missile storage depots, nuclear sites and other military targets, such as headquarters of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The ultimate decision on scope of targets is largely up to Mr. Trump, U.S. officials said.
Strangely, nowhere in this article is it mentioned that U.S. military attacks on Iran legally require a Congressional declaration of war. Apparently, it’s all up to Mr. Trump and Israel whether Iran gets hammered soon.
We the people have absolutely no say. The U.S. Constitution simply doesn’t matter.
Iran poses no direct threat to U.S. national security. There is no clear and present danger; no defensible reason to launch yet another attack on Iran. Yet it seems those attacks will soon be coming, as long as Israel has something to say about this (and that country most certainly does).
Why war with Iran? Apparently for “regime change,” apparently for the oil, and apparently for Israel.
A diplomatic settlement appears to be a long shot here. Perhaps more like a “Hail Mary” pass.
No matter how unconstitutional, no matter how unnecessary to national defense, war always seems to find a way. I sure hope I’m wrong here.
Who the hell wants to talk about genocide and man’s inhumanity to man?
I taught courses on the Holocaust, where I came across a two-volume encyclopedia of genocide (see list of references at the end). We humans have a remarkable record of killing each other (usually couched as killing the “other,” the “bad” people). That a two-volume encyclopedia of genocide exists says something truly horrendous about the human condition.
Far too often, a chosen people, a “master race,” decides to eliminate barbarians, inferiors, primitives, race enemies, whatever words are used to demonize other humans. Often, it’s said we must kill them before they kill us, so mass murder is defined and defended in terms of safety and security. The “bad” people force us to kill them. We don’t want to do it—they make us! And we hate them all the more for making us kill.
At the same time, mass murder is often quite profitable for the killers. In the Holocaust, the Nazis systematically stole everything from the Jews they were killing. They stole their houses and apartments, their businesses, their furniture, their jewelry, their clothing: everything they could get their greedy murderous hands on. In Gaza today and on the West Bank, we see Israel stealing land and most everything else from murdered and displaced Palestinians. The Israeli government justifies mass theft and mass death as a defensive war against barbaric terrorists, just as the Nazis saw themselves as being at war with inferior Jews and other racial undesirables like the gypsies.
The Nazis claimed the Jews were an existential threat to the “master race,” thus all Jews had to be killed, even women, children, and babies. The Israeli government claims Hamas is an existential threat to Jews and that all Palestinians are, more or less, members or supporters of Hamas and therefore must be eliminated (murdered or expelled). Women, children, babies: they’re all Hamas.
America has its own history of genocide. Various Native American peoples were murdered, shunted aside onto reservations, sent to “civilizing” schools that denied them their history and identity, most of their land stolen from them. This had to be done, the white man claimed, because the Indians were brutal savages, demonically so.
Today, there is great resistance (certainly among U.S. politicians) to the idea that Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza. Most U.S. politicians prefer to think of it as a morally justifiable war against Hamas, and even if they don’t completely buy that, they give Israel everything it wants, weapons and money, to facilitate that genocide. Like Pontius Pilate, they wash their hands of blood shed in Gaza, blaming Hamas (or, perhaps for a few, quietly blaming Israel without daring to say it).
Anyhow, these musings came to me as I contemplated a short encyclopedia article I wrote on genocide about 25 years ago. What follows is that article.
GENOCIDE: Legal term coined in 1944 initially to define and condemn Nazi efforts to destroy, deliberately and systematically, Jews as well as Sinti and Roma (Gypsies) in the Holocaust. The term encompasses not only ethnic- and racially-motivated extermination but also cultural, national, and political. Although the term is fairly recent, genocidal practices are nearly as old as recorded history. Witness the Roman annihilation of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War. Yet genocide as a category is usually applied to events of more recent history, with the Turkish persecution of Armenians during World War I providing a paradigm of ruthless and wholesale murder to extirpate an entire people. Accusing Armenians of being pro-Russian and envying their domination of eastern Anatolia, Turkish officials forced them to emigrate east across mountains in winter. Hundreds of thousands died of exposure, starvation, or in massacres; perhaps 1.5 million died in total from 1915 to 1923.
Josef Stalin’s persecution of Ukrainians in the 1930s also constituted genocide, as Stalin distrusted their political loyalty. By confiscating crops and seed grain and preventing emigration, Stalin consigned five million Ukrainians to early graves. Nazi extermination policies were more racially oriented, as Adolf Hitler considered Jews and Gypsies to be irredeemable biological menaces to the purity of Aryan blood. The machinery of death employed by Nazis—railroads and cattle cars, gas chambers and ovens—and the systematic pillaging and gleeful humiliation of victims set a despicably new standard for human barbarity. Six million Jews and half a million Gypsies died at the hands of this evil regime. The post-war Nuremberg Trials prosecuted a few of the more prominent architects of the so-called Final Solution, but many others escaped judgment.
Although the United Nations’ Genocide Convention (1951) made genocide a crime under international law, lack of military forces and international criminal courts to enforce the convention has crippled efforts to deter or punish perpetrators. Acts of genocide continued, whether by the Khmer Rouge in the Cambodian “killing fields” in the 1970s, where one million perished, or by Hutu extremists in 1994, who massacred 800,000 Tutsis in a matter of months as the international community wrung its hands. Events closer to Europe that endangered Western stability drew greater scrutiny. Thus in 1993 the UN created a War Crimes Tribunal to prosecute practitioners of “ethnic cleansing” in the former Yugoslavia. Despite a handful of convictions, prosecution and prevention of genocidal crimes remain serious challenges facing the international community in the twenty-first century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bartov, Omer. Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity, Oxford, 2000.
Charny, Israel W. Encyclopedia of Genocide, 2 vols, Santa Barbara, CA, 1999.
Power, Samantha. “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide, New York, 2002.
Rosenbaum, Alan S., ed. Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide, Boulder, CO, 1998.
The scary part is that the official death toll of 76,134 is an undercount. So many bodies remain under rubble or just plain obliterated by bombs.
Of course, the so-called cease fire in Gaza is anything but as Israel continues its policy of not-so-selective killing and slow strangulation. If you suggest genocide is wrong, the predictable response from the Israeli-U.S. government is that you’re a Hamas terrorist sympathizer and probably an anti-Semite as well (the latter is true even if you’re Jewish).
Coincidentally, I just took a drink after typing that and started choking. OK, maybe that wasn’t a coincidence.
I remember during Catholic service we’d sing the hymn: “Whatsoever you do to the least my brothers, that you do unto me.” I guess they’re just empty words to all those avowed Christians in the government.
It’s been a busy week of news. Here are four items that stood out.
A group of Democratic members of Congress released a short video addressed to the U.S. military, reminding service members that they may refuse unlawful orders. President Trump denounced the video as “seditious behavior” and said such behavior was “punishable by death,” even resharing posts calling for the lawmakers to be hanged. The Democratic message itself was partisan and thin on specifics, but Trump’s response was far more troubling. U.S. troops already know they can and should refuse unlawful orders—though determining what is lawful in practice is rarely simple. What struck me most was the timing: Democrats issued this warning to the troops in response to Trump, but I don’t recall a similar concern when President Biden continued military support to Israel amid mounting accusations from human-rights bodies of grave—indeed, genocidal—violations in Gaza.
In sum, Congress should confront questionable executive actions directly rather than shifting responsibility to Lieutenant Smith or Corporal Jones.
The Trump administration has floated a 28-point plan to end the Russia-Ukraine War. Reports indicate the plan involved Russian input but did not include Ukraine or key European partners. Unsurprisingly, many provisions cross Ukraine’s stated red lines. Diplomacy is still preferable to endless war—jaw-jaw over war-war is a sound motto—but it’s hard to see this plan gaining real traction, especially when it seems designed more to satisfy Washington and Moscow than Kyiv.
One thing is certain: Ukraine is learning that when you dance with elephants, you’re likely to get trampled.
Marjorie Taylor Greene has announced her resignation from Congress, effective January 5, 2026. This surprised me. I read her resignation letter and, despite disagreeing with much of her politics, I respected her consistent opposition to regime-change wars and her outspoken criticism of Israel’s genocidal effort in Gaza and of the undue influence of AIPAC and similar lobbies. She is also right to highlight how far our government has drifted from serving America’s working and middle classes.
MTG, as unlikely as it sounds, is a viable candidate for the Republican nomination for President in 2028, assuming Trump obeys the Constitution and steps aside.
The UN Security Council has approved a U.S.-sponsored Gaza resolution, with Russia and China abstaining. Their decision not to veto suggests a calculation: let Washington bear responsibility for the consequences of its own neocolonial proposal. The plan itself looks like a thinly veiled endorsement of a murderous status quo—one that provides political cover as Gaza remains strangled and devastated. If the United States is now the guarantor of this “peace,” then it also owns the moral and political fallout. If anything, this “peace” plan will only provide cover for Israel’s ongoing genocide in slow motion.
Which brings me back to unlawful orders. Any U.S. service member asked to support actions that clearly violate international law has a duty to refuse. Yet the Democrats who admonished troops about unlawful orders seemed focused only on hypothetical abuses under Trump, not on real-world concerns about U.S. support for Israel’s genocidal operations in Gaza. For too many in Washington, unwavering support for Israel overrides legal, moral, and humanitarian considerations.
Readers, what did you make of this week’s events? One thing seems certain: we continue to live in “interesting times.”
Bracing Views 