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.
Last night, President Trump declared the so-called 12-Day War between Israel and Iran is over, though the president admitted this AM that both countries have already broken the ceasefire. Still, there’s a chance the war won’t escalate further, which is good news for the world. It even led the president to bless the entire world! And that’s progress, since God’s blessings are usually restricted to the USA.
GOD BLESS THE WORLD!
More than a few people have suggested we’ve been watching an elaborate form of theater as Israel, Iran, and the U.S. have traded deadly strikes. If so, even that worries me, since theater among other things requires smart actors, sound direction, plenty of rehearsal, savvy scriptwriters, and talented crews. I’m not convinced our version of war theater is in skilled hands.
Meanwhile, Gaza continues to suffer, pushed off the front page by the Iran “theater.”
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In other news, I recently got a new phone number; its previous owner, a certain Thomas, it seems, signed up for alerts from AIPAC. It’s been enlightening to see this tiny manifestation of AIPAC influence over U.S. policy. Here are a few automated text messages I’ve received:
Thomas, we are outraged and horrified by the terrorist attack & murder last night in DC. Full AIPAC statement here: https://aip.ac/78a
Emergency Alert: Israel is striking Iran’s nuclear program. Tell Congress that America must stand with our ally https://itbl.co/xlF~mjXXI
Fordow is gone! Tell Congress you support the U.S. destroying the Iranian nuclear program. https://itbl.co/xlF~eah1c
If you’re seeking to combat AIPAC, learn from them. It helps if you have loads of money and you can convince Christian evangelists that your fate is tied to the Second Coming of Christ.
Update: As of 8:00AM EST, Trump is announcing the ceasefire is back in effect:
President Trump in his latest post on Truth Social insisted that the ceasefire between Israel and Iran was in effect after earlier rebuking both sides for violating the truce by launching fresh attacks.
“ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran,” Trump wrote.
“Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect!” he added.
U.S. messaging to Iran, courtesy of President Trump, is quite simple: We slugged you (with our bombing attacks on three nuclear sites in your country), and if you don’t like it, we’ll slug you again, even harder, much, much harder.
Iran’s only real choice: “unconditional surrender,” according to the president.
Well, it’s a strategy, I suppose, the one of the abuser, the bully. Do what I want, else you’ll get slugged. Try to fight back, I’ll slug you much much harder. Oh, by the way, I believe in peace. And you can have peace by totally capitulating to me.
Another way of looking at or labeling this stategy: Bombing for Bibi. Yes, I know it’s not just Bibi Netanyahu behind it all. But he’s the chief flatterer, the skilled string-puller, the master manipulator of Trump. Not that it’s entirely hard to manipulate a narcissist who’s driven by money and consumed by his own ego.
So, we have to look to Iran to show a measure of restraint, since the U.S. and Israel won’t. If Iran chooses to fight, especially to hit back at U.S. targets in the region, all bets are off as our country stumbles into what could become World War III.
As Jimmy Dore put it today, No matter who you vote for, you get John McCain. A warmonger. Someone proud to joke about bombing Iran—and crazy enough to do it. Does it really matter if the warmonger is named Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden—or Donald Trump?
Congress, no surprise, is almost entirely behind Trump’s attack, despite some griping and sniping from the sidelines. Congress may complain, but it’s just posturing. That’s how you get reckless wars of choice that are unsupported by the American people.
Oh well. “We love you, God,” as Trump said last night as he announced the bombings. I never learned in CCD that God loves bombs and bombing; I must have been sleeping or absent for that one. Thou shalt kill, right?
I awoke to the news that Israel has bombed Iran, focusing on nuclear enrichment facilities and military targets. For the U.S. and Israel, war always finds a way.
The U.S. is claiming that Israel alone is bombing Iran, but of course Israel is using U.S. weaponry, intelligence and logistical support, and political cover at the United Nations. The planes may be Israeli, but the U.S. government is complicit in the attacks, just as the U.S. government is complicit in genocide in Gaza.
At Eunomia, Daniel Larison has an informative article on the “insanity” of the Israeli/U.S. attack on Iran. A few points come to mind here:
+ Israel is allowed to have 90-200 nuclear bombs, but no other country in the region is allowed to have any. I guess that’s because Israel is so clearly peace-loving?
+ Iran is the latest target of Israel’s quest for regional dominance. As far back as 2003, if not earlier, Israel (and U.S. neocon “warriors”) always wanted to go to Tehran. Baghdad was supposed to be both a cakewalk and a stepping-stone. Two decades and several disasters later, these “real men” finally achieved their dream of war with Iran.
+ The success of Israel in getting the U.S. government and military to do its bidding is nothing short of phenomenal. Iraq? Greatly weakened. Syria? Greatly weakened. The same with Libya. And now it’s Iran’s turn to be “greatly weakened,” i.e. bludgeoned with bombs made in the USA.
+ Iran will likely strike back. U.S. media will frame these attacks as “unprovoked” and “anti-semitic.” See this grimly amusing article by Caitlin Johnstone about future headlines at the New York Times.
+ One thing is certain: Israel, like the U.S., has an irrational belief in the efficacy of bombing, an efficacy largely disproven by military history.
+ One might recall how the U.S. conspired with Britain in 1953 to overthrow Iran’s democratically-elected leader, replacing him with the Shah, leading to 25 years of a repressive police state until the Shah was finally overthrown. I wonder how Americans would feel if Iran conspired in 1953 to overthrow Dwight D. Eisenhower as U.S. president, replacing him with a petty dictator who ruled through secret police?
Chickenhawk Graham says “Game on.”
Here are a few responses by prominent U.S. politicians to Israel’s attacks on Iran. I just love the “game on” reference by Senator Lindsey Graham. Has there ever been a more abject and delusional chickenhawk than him?
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said, minutes after reports of the operation began, “Proud to stand with Israel.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) soon followed, saying, “Game on. Pray for Israel.”
Cotton later added that “We back Israel to the hilt, all the way,” adding that if “the ayatollahs harm a single American, that will be the end of the ayatollahs.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), said “Israel IS right—and has a right—to defend itself!”
Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said, “We stand with Israel tonight and pray for the safety of its people and the success of this unilateral, defensive action.”
“I am also praying for the brave U.S. service members in the Middle East who keep America safe — Iran would be foolish to attack the United States,” Risch continued.
U.S. members of Congress seem to think they swore an oath to Israel, not the U.S. Constitution. And, given all the money they receive from AIPAC and similar pro-Israel lobbying groups, maybe they have sold their souls to Israel.
Once again, all they are saying is give war a chance.
It remains amazing to me that a man known for overselling himself, of stiffing others, a man who became notorious for saying, “You’re fired!” to a lot of ordinary people and a few celebrities as well, is somehow seen as a champion of little guys and gals. Of course, it’s not like the Democrats offered much of an alternative (Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris as working-class champions? I don’t think so). Nevertheless, Donald Trump is about the furthest thing from a public servant to America that I can imagine. When he’s not playing golf or stirring the pot or posing and preening, he’s finding new ways to cash in as president.
Well, as Richard Nixon famously argued, if the president does it, that means it isn’t illegal. Right?
Trump is a creature of Pottersville, the nightmarish alternative to Bedford Falls if George Bailey (played by Jimmy Stewart) had decided to jump off the bridge rather than serving the humble people of his community. Lurid Pottersville, shiny and decadent and shallow, where everyone’s on the make or on the take: that’s Trump’s kind of place. It’s a wonderful life—for Trump!
Which brings me to a fine article by Juan Cole at TomDispatch, Trump of Arabia, in which Cole recounts Trump’s grasping and greedy trip to the Middle East. You gotta hand it to Trump: he knows how to party down with the sheikhs, with all the hair-flipping and exotic dancing.
One thing is certain: Trump isn’t lecturing them about democracy and human rights. It’s just gimme-gimme-gimme. Trump puts the naked back in naked capitalism. The emperor who hath no clothes.
Well, at least America got a big beautiful jet out of the deal: a “free” luxury 747 from Qatar, the new Air Force One if Trump has his way. How sad is it that the new Air Force One that America was supposed to have is years behind schedule and billions over budget? Thanks a lot, Boeing!
Maybe on his next trip to the Middle East, Trump can convince the sheikhs to help fund Medicaid and SNAP for the poor. For struggling Americans, it sure would beat luxury jets and hair-flipping.
Officially, the U.S. has the DOD, the department of defense. But when was the last time the U.S. military was primarily oriented toward defense of the CONUS? (CONUS is a military acronym for continental United States.)
My old service, the U.S. Air Force, is far more open about its true aims. It boasts assertively of “global reach, global power” and notably of “global strike.” Not to be outdone, the U.S. Navy has “carrier strike groups,” what used to be termed carrier task forces when they fought real battles in World War II.
Here’s a recent official description: “A Carrier Strike Group (CSG) is a highly powerful, self-contained naval force, capable of projecting power globally, with an aircraft carrier as its core, supported by cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and an air wing, making it a formidable force capable of striking targets 1,000 miles away.”
Doesn’t sound defensive, does it? And of course the U.S. Marines are defined as “expeditionary” forces that are “forward-deployed” for all sorts of expected “contingencies” overseas.
The U.S. military is not about defense. It’s about “full-spectrum dominance.” That means dominance of the land, sea, air, space, cyber, information in all its forms, indeed just about any realm you can think of. No other military, moreover, divides the world into global commands (CENTCOM, AFRICOM, etc.) for the application of U.S. military power. This is not about defending America. It’s about dominating the world. Such a grandiose vision of defense dominance is partly what drives colossal Pentagon budgets that are climbing toward a trillion dollars a year.
SecDef Pete Hegseth, always talking warrior-tough (Doug Mills/NYT)
Consider here the recent kerfuffle about leaked U.S. strike plans for Yemen, which were inadvertently shared with the editor-in-chief at The Atlantic. Here’s an excerpt from those plans:
From Secretary of Defense Offense Pete Hegseth
“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”
“1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)”
“1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)”
“1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets)”
Note the repetition of the word “strike” and the closing prayer to America’s “warriors.” And ask yourself: Is this truly what national defense should look like? Prayerful appeals to “warriors” as they strike weak and poor countries thousands of miles away in undeclared (and therefore unconstitutional) wars?
If one side is armed with cap guns and the other with bazookas, would we call that a “war” between roughly equal powers?
I thought of this as I turned to Antiwar.com to see that President Biden has approved yet another massive arms shipment to Israel, to the tune of $8 billion. Here’s the report:
The sale includes AIM-120C-8 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, Hellfire AGM-114 missiles, 155 MM artillery rounds, small-diameter bombs, JDAM kits, and 500-pound bombs. Many of these munitions have been used by Israel during its campaign of extermination in Gaza, including in attacks on civilian targets.
In June, CNN reported that Israel used US small-diameter bombs in an attack on a school that killed 40 civilians. In October, The Washington Post noted, “The Biden administration has received nearly 500 reports alleging Israel used U.S.-supplied weapons for attacks that caused unnecessary harm to civilians in the Gaza Strip.”
Remember when human rights used to matter (just a little bit)? Remember when genocide was considered morally reprehensible—a murderous wrong? The U.S. government simply ignores human rights except when they advance a particular agenda. And genocide? It’s OK when it’s couched as Israel doing it in the cause of “defending” its “right to exist.”
If your “right to exist” involves denying millions of others their right to exist, have you not bought that “right” with blood money?
Of course, we’re all told by the “experts” that the situation in the Middle East is immensely complicated. Certainly, the history of the region is complex. But what’s happening there today to the Palestinians isn’t complex. In Israel, Zionism has run amuck as Israel grabs land, water, oil and gas rights, indeed everything it can, in the cause of creating a Greater Israel. It just doesn’t matter to most Israelis, and the U.S. government as well, that two million Palestinians will be killed, wounded, or displaced. Might makes right here, accentuated by media spin and government propaganda.
Speaking of the Middle East, I watched a superb documentary recently: “This Is Not a Movie: Robert Fisk and the Politics of Truth.” I highly recommend it. Fisk was a foreign affairs journalist for The Independent. When I lived in Britain from 1992 to 1995, I used to read his articles in that paper. He lived in Beirut and covered the Middle East, ultimately spending forty years living in and writing about the region. The documentary follows him on assignment, demonstrating what a principled and brave man he was. Fisk did journalism the old fashioned way: he got out among the people, he journeyed to the front lines, he saw the dead bodies from massacres (indeed, in one horrific moment, he was forced to climb over a “barricade” of dead bodies, a nightmarish moment for him, as one would expect).
There are very few journalists like Fisk left today. A truth-seeker, he was unafraid to criticize the powerful when they deserved it. He always sought to understand what was happening through knowledge gleaned at firsthand, carrying his trusty notebook and a pen or pencil.
Check out the documentary on Fisk. You’ll learn a lot and be inspired by a man of considerable courage and unimpeachable integrity
Annelle Sheline Stands For Honesty and True Public Service
I caught this story first on Twitter/X, then CNN, where Ms. Sheline’s resignation letter was posted. What follows is the text of her resignation letter to the Department of State. It is well worth reading in full.
Since Hamas’ attack on October 7, Israel has used American bombs in its war in Gaza, which has killed more than 32,000 people — 13,000 of them children — with countless others buried under the rubble, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. Israel is credibly accused of starving the 2 million people who remain, according to the UN special rapporteur on the right to food; a group of charity leaders warns that without adequate aid, hundreds of thousands more will soon likely join the dead.
Annelle Sheline (Courtesy Annelle Sheline)
Yet Israel is still planning to invade Rafah, where the majority of people in Gaza have fled; UN officials have described the carnage that is expected to ensue as “beyond imagination.” In the West Bank, armed settlers and Israeli soldiers have killed Palestinians, including US citizens. These actions, which experts on genocide have testified meet the crime of genocide, are conducted with the diplomatic and military support of the US government.
For the past year, I worked for the office devoted to promoting human rights in the Middle East. I believe strongly in the mission and in the important work of that office. However, as a representative of a government that is directly enabling what the International Court of Justice has said could plausibly be a genocide in Gaza, such work has become almost impossible. Unable to serve an administration that enables such atrocities, I have decided to resign from my position at the Department of State.
Whatever credibility the United States had as an advocate for human rights has almost entirely vanished since the war began. Members of civil society have refused to respond to my efforts to contact them. Our office seeks to support journalists in the Middle East; yet when asked by NGOs if the US can help when Palestinian journalists are detained or killed in Gaza, I was disappointed that my government didn’t do more to protect them. Ninety Palestinian journalists in Gaza have been killed in the last five months, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. That is the most recorded in any single conflict since the CPJ started collecting data in 1992.
By resigning publicly, I am saddened by the knowledge that I likely foreclose a future at the State Department. I had not initially planned a public resignation. Because my time at State had been so short — I was hired on a two-year contract — I did not think I mattered enough to announce my resignation publicly. However, when I started to tell colleagues of my decision to resign, the response I heard repeatedly was, “Please speak for us.”
The Biden administration’s own policy states, “The legitimacy of and public support for arms transfers among the populations of both the United States and recipient nations depends on the protection of civilians from harm, and the United States distinguishes itself from other potential sources of arms transfers by elevating the importance of protecting civilians.” Yet this noble statement of policy has been directly in contradiction with the actions of the president who promulgated it.
President Joe Biden himself indirectly admits that Israel is not protecting Palestinian civilians from harm. Under pressure from some congressional Democrats, the administration issued a new policy to ensure that foreign military transfers don’t violate relevant domestic and international laws.
Yet just recently, the State Department ascertained that Israel is in compliance with international law in the conduct of the war and in providing humanitarian assistance. To say this when Israel is preventing the adequate entrance of humanitarian aid and the US is being forced to air drop food to starving Gazans, this finding makes a mockery of the administration’s claims to care about the law or about the fate of innocent Palestinians.
Some have argued that the US lacks influence over Israel. Yet Retired Israeli Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Brick noted in November that Israel’s missiles, bombs and airplanes all come from the US. “The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting,” he said. “Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”
Even now, Israel is considering invading Lebanon, which brings a heightened risk of regional conflict that would be catastrophic. The US has sought to prevent this outcome but shows no appetite for withholding offensive weapons from Israel in order to compel greater restraint there or in Gaza. Biden’s support for Israel’s far-right government thus risks sparking a wider conflagration in the region, which could well put US troops in harm’s way.
So many of my colleagues feel betrayed. I write for myself but speak for many others, including Feds United for Peace, a group mobilizing for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza that represents federal workers in their personal capacities across the country, and across 30 federal agencies and departments. After four years of then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to cripple the department, State employees embraced Biden’s pledge to rebuild American diplomacy. For some, US support for Ukraine against Russia’s illegal occupation and bombardment seemed to reestablish America’s moral leadership. Yet the administration continues to enable Israel’s illegal occupation and destruction of Gaza.
I am haunted by the final social media post of Aaron Bushnell, the 25-year-old US Air Force serviceman who self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington on February 25: “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”
I can no longer continue what I was doing. I hope that my resignation can contribute to the many efforts to push the administration to withdraw support for Israel’s war, for the sake of the 2 million Palestinians whose lives are at risk and for the sake of America’s moral standing in the world.
Israel Is the Tail Wagging the American Dog of War
The U.S. government is complicit in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Americans may think that “aid” to Israel is held up in Congress, more than $14 billion in death-dealing munitions and machinery of war, but in fact the U.S. has already provided massive amounts of bombs and targeting guidance to Israel, all with the tacit approval of Congress, and of course with the full-throated support of the Biden administration.
Israel is the tail wagging the American dog of war.
Guess who’s being invited to address (or, should I say, command) Congress again?
The best summary of this reality that I’ve seen came in a recent TomDispatch article written by Stan and Priti Gulati Cox. Here’s an extended excerpt:
Worse yet, the Biden administration has enabled that ongoing [Israeli] killing spree [in Gaza] by approving 100 separate military sales to Israel since the conflict began in October. As a former administration official told the Washington Post, “That’s an extraordinary number of sales over the course of a pretty short amount of time, which really strongly suggests that the Israeli campaign would not be sustainable without this level of U.S. support.”
In other words, the backbone of the war on Gaza comes with a label: “Made in USA.” In the decade leading up to October 7th, as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has reported, two-thirds of Israel’s arms imports came from the United States. (From 1950 to 2020, the U.S. share was a whopping 83%!)
In just the first couple of months of the war, the Biden administration sent 230 cargo planes and 20 ships full of military goods to Israel, a trove that included 100 BLU-109 bombs (2,000-pounders designed to penetrate hardened structures before exploding), 5,400 MK84 and 5,000 MK82 bunker-busters, 1,000 GBU-39 bombs, 3,000 JDAM bomb-guidance kits, and 200 “kamikaze drones.”
Such powerful bombs, reportedAl Jazeera, “have been used in some of the deadliest Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, including a strike that leveled an apartment block in the Jabalia refugee camp, killing more than 100 people.” And yes, such bunker-busters were widely used in the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but not in places as densely populated as Gaza’s cities. Israeli sources tried to justify that particular death toll by insisting it was necessary to kill one of Hamas’s leaders. If so, we’re talking about a 100-to-1 ratio, or a kind of collective punishment being supported by our tax dollars.
Worse yet, our military seems to have been participating directly in the IDF’s operations. According to the Intercept’s Ken Klippenstein and Matthew Petti, the Defense Department has been providing satellite intelligence and software to help the IDF find and hit targets in Gaza. An “Air Defense Liaison Team,” they report, even traveled to Israel in November to offer targeting help, adding that “for the first time in U.S. history, the Biden administration has been flying surveillance drone missions over Gaza.”
And even then, some members of Netanyahu’s government felt it wasn’t enough. Far right-wing Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich put it this way when it came to President Biden’s warning not to send the IDF into the southern Gazan city of Rafah where hundreds of thousands of refugees were gathered: “American pressure or fear of harming civilians should not deter us from occupying Rafah and destroying Hamas.”
The Israeli hostages held by Hamas are the excuse for so much of this, but the way to free them would be to negotiate, as Israel did successfully last fall, not try to “wipe Hamas off the face of the earth.” The Israelis are mostly bombing civilian sites in that campaign, because they’re reluctant to fight their way through the vast fortified network of tunnels from which the military wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, mounted a formidable resistance to the invasion, largely with weaponry they manufactured themselves, along with ammunition recycled from unexploded ordnance dropped in past Israeli attacks.
I sure wish the Biden administration and Congress could do something to stop the genocide in Gaza. Don’t you? But I guess they can’t control their own tails. Put differently, perhaps they simply can’t disobey their master’s commands.
Speaking of which, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson is currently competing with Senate Leader Chuck Schumer to see which one of them can roll over and beg more quickly and obsequiously to their master, Bibi Netanyahu. Yes, Bibi is being invited once again to wag the Congressional dog and issue his commands to a slavishly obedient pack of Washington politicians.
There’s nothing like a foreign leader coming to Congress to bark out commands to make me proud to be an American.
Bracing Views 