Did the US Make 'Ransom Payments' to Iran? No, Of Course Not.

Just in time for Throwback Thursday, there is a fresh new Iran scandal dominating the news. And like most Iran scandals, the latest is much ado about nothing. It's not even a new event; just new details on something that happened nearly seven months ago.

The long and short of it goes something like this: As the Iran Deal neared implementation this past January, two officially unrelated events occurred around the same time. The US paid Iran $400 million and Iran released four American prisoners. Based on this timing, and because many powerful Americans love to hate Iran, this is being framed as a kind of ransom payment.

Lost in the shuffle, however, is the seemingly important fact that this $400 million belonged to Iran in the first place. In fact, the reputed ransom payment was basically a matter of the US returning stolen property. As CNN notes, the pre-revolution Iranian government moved $400 million to the US to pay for an arms deal. After the Iranian Revolution in 1979, that deal fell through, the arms were not delivered, and the US government refused to return the money. Around the same time as the Iran Deal negotiations, however, the US agreed to return this money, as well as $1.3 billion in interest.

While some could quibble about the interest calculations, these broad facts aren't really disputed. And it seems that no one could legitimately argue that the Iranian government's transition from (American-backed) dictatorship to an independent quasi-representative theocracy justifies the transfer of all Iranian government property and assets to whatever country happened to have jurisdiction over them at the time.

This is an important distinction because it was one of the major talking points over the Iran Deal generally. Opponents of the deal criticized it for "giving" billions of dollars to Iran, which might then be used to sponsor terrorism (which in the present context, largely means backing Hezbollah against Al Qaeda in Syria, but I digress). In the same way, many of those critics call the $400 million a ransom payment. In both cases, the implication is that Iran is gaining resources it had no legitimate claim to beforehand; and in both cases, it is wrong. The US (and its partners, presumably) has impounded vast amounts of Iranian assets since the Iranian Revolution, and the deal was simply designed to restore Iran's access to those resources.

To see why it is appropriate for Iran to get this money back, a quick thought experiment is in order. Imagine, as happened to me recently, that your car gets towed for (allegedly) being parked illegally. When you go to the towing lot and get the car back, you don't thank the towing company for giving you a car. It was always your car, and it still is; they just took it for a while. To believe otherwise is patently absurd. And yet, it is exactly what many of the critics of the Iran Deal are essentially arguing--that impounding someone's (or some country's) assets nullifies their property rights to those assets.

Note that it doesn't ultimately matter whether you actually parked illegally or just happen to live among vengeful neighbors with too much free time on their hands. If you did something illegal, you may be required to pay fines, but your underlying ownership of the car does not evaporate. So too, it doesn't matter whether you think Iran has been a perfect member of the international community since 1979; any transgressions or treaty violations they may have committed could open them up for penalties, trade wars, etc., not wholesale confiscation of their assets in foreign countries.

Back to the story of alleged ransom payments, we now see how mundane and uncontroversial it ought to be. The US returned money to Iran that it wrongly confiscated after 1979; and Iran released prisoners that were wrongly imprisoned. On the surface, this appears to be perfectly desirable on both counts; indeed it may be that rare instance of actual diplomacy being used by the US government in the 21st century.

In modern political discourse, that constitutes a lurid scandal of the highest order. Launching wars without Congressional approval, torture, and a global assassination program can all be tolerated, but diplomacy is beyond the pale.

Captain Khan Controversy Should Help Third Party Candidates, Not the One That Helped Get Him Killed

Source: Vocativ.com

Trump's rude remarks about Khizr Khan remain in the news cycle yesterday as they have ever since the weekend. You'll recall that Khan's son was a Muslim US soldier who died in the Iraq War, and his father gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention to condemn Donald Trump's various appalling proposals about Muslims.

President Obama spoke out against Trump's criticism yesterday, noting that "no one has given more for our freedom and our security than our Gold Star families," referring to families that have lost loved ones in the armed forces. Republican Senator John McCain took a similar tack to condemning Trump. However, given that Trump's success was not at all imperiled when he deliberately mocked McCain for being a Prisoner-of-War--which would seem to be at least as taboo as the present situation--it's not clear that McCain's comments will have much impact.

The context that remains missing in all of this, however, is that Khizr Khan's son Humayun did not die for the "freedom" and "security". He died in an aggressive, senseless war that should have never been fought--which McCain and Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton both voted in favor of. Meanwhile, Obama has resuscitated the same war, and carried out other harmful interventions in Libya and Syria.

Bottom line, this episode ought to be the clearest possible illustration that both major party presidential candidates are awful. Trump implicitly accuses a grieving father of oppressing his wife (amongst other things), and Hillary Clinton helped cause the father's grief in the first place. It remains unclear which of those is worse, but it is clear that the prominent third party candidates, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, did no such thing. That should count for something.

Afghan War Extended, Iraq Escalated, and Why Neither Will Work

President Obama will go down in history as the first president in US history to oversee two terms of perpetual war. Mind you, it's not declared war, but it is war in every other sense.

Additionally, the next president will take office under conditions that are worse by most metrics in the foreign policy space. Even if we confine our focus to the Middle East alone, the list of heightened problems is quite robust:

• Terrorist attacks against Western targets have become more frequent
• Iraq is somehow in a state of greater chaos than it was before, having lost control entirely of large swaths of the country
• Libya, Yemen, and Syria have been added to the portfolio of failed states thanks to US policy
• Two terrorist groups (ISIS and Al-Nusra in Syria) hold enough territory to be considered mini-statelets, and
• Afghanistan remains as unstable as ever, with the Taliban holding more land than they've had at any other point since the US overthrew them.

It didn't have to be this way.

President Obama initially took office on a wave of sentiment that was at least opposed to the Iraq War. This proved to be one of the decisive issues of the 2008 election and primary. But while President Obama did follow the withdrawal timeline accidentally established by President George W. Bush (by failing to negotiate a longer status of forces agreement), he was unable to exercise the leadership necessary to prevent the US from returning only a few years later. In the interim, President Obama proved that he had learned nothing from the Iraq War, as the interventions in Libya and Syria (covert in this case) carried the same risks and were implemented anyway. In turn, these interventions helped precipitate the very problems that were used to justify renewed US military involvement in Iraq to bring us up to our present condition.

This brief history helps give us a window into Obama's most recent policy adjustments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama's use of military force has never proved helpful, and most of it has proved positively destructive. Yet in spite of this, he continues to rely on it. In Iraq, the US recently announced its adding hundreds more ground troops, still without any debate on the subject. In Afghanistan, President Obama reduced a planned withdrawal by nearly 2,900 American troops, and NATO, in a decision which must have been significantly influenced by the US, recently committed to four more years of support for the Afghan government.

What's most noteworthy about these decisions is that they stand no chance whatsoever of making a major difference in either war. Doing so would require another round of troop surges, which are politically expensive and cannot create the conditions for long-term stability in any case. The experience under President Obama proves this, as Iraq shortly descended into chaos after the "successful" surge under Bush and Obama's own surge in Afghanistan provided similarly disappointing results.

It appears that the Obama administration has finally internalized that winning these conflicts, whatever we may mean by that, is not attainable using military force. Instead, the recent decisions are just stopgap measures to ensure a full collapse doesn't happen during the remainder of the President's term in office. Like most foreign policy decisions, these actions are not motivated by a coherent strategy for addressing either conflict. They are motivated primarily by domestic political concerns. The priority here is not about protecting Afghans or Iraqis; it's just about protecting the President's legacy and his party's electoral chances in the fall.

Newly Released Drone Death Toll Lowballs Reality

Last Friday, the Obama Administration released its estimate of civilians killed in US airstrikes outside of war zones. The figures covered President Obama's first 7 years in office, and they appear to have significantly underestimated the actual civilian death toll. The Obama Administration put the range of civilian casualties between 64 and 116 over this span. Meanwhile, independent organizations place the number far higher. For example, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that between 380 and 801 civilians have been killed by US airstrikes outside of war zones over the same period.

Since the United States long-ago dispensed with the tedious business of actually declaring war, it may not be obvious what countries count as war zones these days--or countries with "active hostilities" to use the government's term. For the purposes of this data, the government has defined the relevant non-war countries to be Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. It was not immediately obvious whether Libya would have been considered a country of "active hostilities" during the NATO intervention in 2011. Based on how low the overall numbers are, however, it seems safe to assume casualties from that conflict are not included.

As a general rule, steps toward greater transparency in government tend to be a good thing. Unfortunately, these estimates are so low that it's fair to question the objectivity and thoroughness of the government's investigation. The US Government likely has access to more extensive resources and tools to gather information on these events than journalists scouring the news. This may explain some of the gap in estimates. However, it cannot explain all of it. Indeed, as a casual observer of this subject, I can think of a few isolated atrocities perpetrated by US strikes that, by themselves, eclipse the lower estimates provided by the government:

• Cruise missile strike on al Majala in Yemen, killing an estimated 41 people (on the low-end), in late 2009.
• Drone strike on a wedding convoy in Yemen, killing between 15 to 27 civilians, in 2013
• Drone strike on Pakistani tribal meeting, killing at least 40 civilians, in 2011 

I can get to nearly 100 casualties using just 3 attacks. Thus, for the government figures to be reliable, they would need to have killed no more than 20 civilians in the remaining 470 airstrikes they acknowledged. Who thinks they achieved that?

Of course, the real story here is not about numbers. Numbers matter because they help us understand the scale and scope of the injustice that US policies have perpetrated against people in other countries. Ethically, however, there isn't a number above zero that can be justified. The US should not be engaged in a continuous global assassination campaign. Full stop.

I realize this may seem like a radical position given that "even" the Nobel Peace Prize-winning President Obama has used assassination missile strikes as his tactic of choice in the War on Terror. However, this position becomes the obvious one when we attempt to place ourselves in the shoes of the countries being attacked. A quick thought experiment may be helpful to prove this point.

Imagine a suspected terrorist is identified in Topeka, Kansas and the guy's house happens to be located next to an elementary school. Let's further assume that the government actually has very compelling evidence to support the idea that this individual truly is a dangerous terrorist. And explosions being what they are, it's not possible to hit the house without also damaging the nearby playground and school buildings. In this circumstance, would it be okay for the government to launch a drone strike on his house to neutralize the threat? What if the government did it on a weekend, so they could be nearly certain that no children would be around to be killed at the adjacent school? Then would it be okay?*

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that most Americans would reflexively oppose missile strikes on Topeka. But why do we feel that way? Most likely, it's because the concept of collateral damage, even when it's accidental, becomes instantly toxic when it is changed from an abstract phrase to a real world policy that is close to home. This is particularly true when we're discussing places that do not have active hostilities (at least not with the US).

But if we can't justify a missile strike on Topeka (or any other Western city), how can we justify such a strike in Yemen? Practical distinctions can be made here, but ethical distinctions cannot. Unless your concept of justice involves preferential treatment to certain nationalities, races, religions, etc. we must conclude the hypothetical drone strike on a Kansas school is essentially equivalent to the very real assassination strikes carried out in Yemen and elsewhere.

Returning to our main story, the Obama Administration's new civilian casualty disclosures are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it appears to be a step toward transparency. On the other, the data appears to clearly underestimate the casualties, and it fails to provide a sufficient level of detail that would allow different reports to be reconciled. It is important to keep an eye on the bigger issue--namely whether America can or should be entitled to assassinate people in other countries. We may never determine exactly how many civilians have been killed in America's global assassination strike program, but we can know how many such deaths would be acceptable. None at all.

*And yes, I realize that no likely US government would seriously consider such a tactic. It could be argued that this hypothetical is invalid since the US justifies its assassination decisions partly on the idea that it cannot conceivably capture the individual, due to the lack of a strong / friendly enough government to assist us. In a US context, this clearly would not be true.

I would argue that the capture alternative technically exists in the foreign context as well, even if the host government will not do so. The US has set a precedent (just or not) that this option is on the table, after it engaged in a cross-border night raid to capture Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan, without the Pakistani government's permission. Additionally, the US also has the resources to do it since special forces are deployed throughout the Middle East. The resulting cost might be higher than a local SWAT raid, but it is an option.

Iraq's Impending Collapse and the Man Behind the Protests

If you've followed the news much lately, then you'll know that the Iraqi government is on the brink of collapse. This may sound a bit odd at first, given that the country is currently known three less-than-desirable things:

• Having an openly sectarian government that has disenfranchised Sunnis to the point where a group like the Islamic State could take root
• Enjoying endemic governmental corruption and political patronage systems that include thousands of "ghost soldiers"
• Being a constant reminder of the spectacular failure of US military intervention to create stability, over any time horizon

Iraq hasn't been a success story for quite some time. But lagging oil prices and the war with the Islamic State have matters even harder for the struggling central government. Now the increasingly desperate people in Baghdad are calling for change, and things are likely to get worse before they get better. Indeed, protesters in Iraq's capital recently managed to push their way into the heavily fortified Green Zone.

You could be forgiven if this all seems a bit familiar. Two years ago after the major city of Mosul fell to the Islamic State, Iraq's government found itself in a similar leadership crisis under then-Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki. Leading members of the Obama Administration and other world leaders made it known that they were dissatisfied with the Iraqi government and ready for a change. In combination with domestic unrest, this led Al-Maliki to step down in August of 2014.

Al-Maliki's replacement, Haider Al-Abadi was supposed to be the solution. Despite being from the same party, he had a reputation for being a moderate, and it was hoped he would finally be able to end some of Iraq's corruption and incompetence in the face of the Islamic State. Two years later, the war rages on and the corruption has not been cured. Al-Abadi's efforts have been sincere, by most accounts, but they have proved insufficient. Iraq is as unstable as ever.

Given Iraq's rather arbitrary national origins at the hands of the British after World War I, this instability might have been inevitable after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. But even so, it's worth noting how US policy sabotaged any chances for Iraqi nationalism during the early days of the occupation.

Shortly after the invasion, the US found itself waging a counterinsurgency campaign against Sunnis in the northwest and Shiite factions in the southeast. Since Iraq's population is overwhelming Shiite, it was clear that the new leadership of the country would eventually be drawn from the ranks of the Shiite leadership. Broadly speaking, there were two dominant factions. One was led by cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr, the same man who is leading today's protests, and who, at least rhetorically, tried to bridge the Shia-Sunni divide. The other faction was more explicitly sectarian in nature and heavily influenced by Iran.

Then as now, the US's relationship with Iran was quite openly hostile. Thus, Al-Sadr would seem to be the obvious favorite. The problem was that Al-Sadr seemed to really believe in Iraqi nationalism--which meant he wanted the US out of Iraq and refused to work with the occupation. So the US went with the Iranian-backed faction that was willing to work with them instead. In effect, the US chose to empower a sectarian, subservient client state instead of allowing a (potentially) unified and independent Iraq to emerge in the post-Saddam era. Today, as Al-Sadr leads throngs in protest of a defunct Iraqi regime, the destabilizing effects of this fateful choice are hard to miss.

For more on Al-Sadr and his outsized role in recent Iraqi history, read Dan Sanchez today at Antiwar.com:

Who is the Man Leading Iraq's Green Zone Protests?

Obama's Most Important Legacy: Endless, Limitless War

As President Obama prepares to hand over the White House to a successor that will almost certainly be even worse on most issues, it is important that this doesn't cloud our judgment of his presidency. Compared to the likely replacements, he could seem like a preferable alternative to many people, particularly those on the left who despise Hillary Clinton. But the lesser of evils is still an evil, as they say.

Many a fawning piece have and will be written about President Obama as his tenure draws to a close. And to his credit, he generally comes off as more polished and thoughtful than either of his two recent predecessors or his likely replacements.

But this is only one measure of a president, and it is in no way the most important. Rather than judging them by their rhetoric, vocabulary, personal life, or any other trifling matter, we should judge them by their policies. And since modern presidents have almost total power to control US foreign policy, this area deserves the most consideration.

In line with this thinking, a new piece from Gene Healy at the Cato Institute suggests that one of the most important features of Obama's legacy is endless war. In support of this case, Healy writes the following:

..as president, Barack Obama’s most far-reaching achievement has been to strip out any remaining legal limits on the president’s power to wage war. 

Obama’s predecessor insisted that he didn’t need approval from Congress to launch a war; yet in the two major wars he fought, George W. Bush secured congressional authorization anyway. By the time Obama hit the dais at Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, our 44th president had already launched more drone strikes than “43” carried out during two full terms. Since then, he’s launched two undeclared wars, and—as Obama bragged in a speech last year defending the Iran deal—bombed no fewer than seven countries.

Of course, none of these facts are likely to be new to readers of this blog or casual followers of news. But the point can scarcely be reiterated enough. President Obama, after being elected on the most explicitly antiwar platform in recent history, proceeded largely down the same destructive foreign policy path that George W. Bush helped blaze in the first place. Rhetoric may have improved, but the policies did not follow suit.

By now, we should all be used to politicians not fulfilling their campaign promises--or to borrow Horton's Law, to not fulfill the policy promises that are any good. But in some ways, what Obama did was considerably worse. With his victory in 2008, he quickly converted much of the ostensibly antiwar left back into complicit partisans, willing to defend expanded executive powers and a litany of constitutional abuses and violations of international law as long as "their guy" was the one in charge. To be sure, libertarians and a small, principled contingent on the left remained to keep up the antiwar cause, but most of the movement quickly dissipated. And so it proved insufficient to stop the War in Libya or the subtle mission creep back into Iraq and Syria. Technically, the movement did manage to stop an immediate and full-scale intervention Syria in 2013. But Obama learned his lesson in that episode, and has since abstained from getting approval from Congress to avoid any such limits on his discretionary power.

As the prospect of a Trump Presidency looms, and his actual foreign policy remains anyone's guess, it is an open question whether Democrats will be able to turn on a dime once more and start opposing the policies that Obama has advanced when they are pursued by Trump. But whatever the long-term effect on public opinion is, it is certain that Obama's precedent will make it harder for public opinion to stop any war. No president was ever intended to have this power, and instead of rolling it back, Obama made it normal.

If President Bush broke new (and terrible) ground in the realm of foreign policy, then President Obama consolidated and intensified the losses. More American soldiers got killed, more innocent civilians got killed, more refugees exist, more nations in the Middle East have descended into violent chaos, and now we're contemplating sending even more troops back into Iraq. Fifteen years into the failed War on Terror, and the strategy remains as bad or worse than when it started. That's why Obama's most important legacy is endless, limitless war.

Check out the rest of Gene Healy's write-up here:

President Obama's Legacy Is Endless War

*Also, hat tip to Tate Fegley for recommending this piece.

Obama Administration Breaks Ground on Breaking Promises

You don't have to observe American politics for very long to understand that politicians routinely break their promises. This is especially true and obvious when it comes to US Presidents. In some cases, the promises seem to be sincere and the president may have even really tried to get them implemented, only to be blocked by political obstruction in Congress. In other cases, it's more clear that the promise was nothing more than a rhetorical flourish in the first place.

Of course, our political campaign system is very much structured to produce this effect. In the primary, Democrats usually run to the left on everything; in recent years, this has meant advocating more for peace and civil liberties. Then in the general election, they walk many of these ideas back and try to prove they're just as tough as the Republicans are. For Republicans, this works in the opposite direction. The primary typically sees them take more extreme and awful positions on foreign policy, torture, etc., and then they try to pretend to be a little less inclined toward violence in the general election. The inevitable result is that the same candidate will often take different, and contradictory, positions as they move from the primary to the general election. And if they get to the White House, they often change their another time, either in response to political realities they confront or because they no longer need to appeal to the American people, at least for the time-being.

So campaign promises get broken all the time, and it's pretty much par for the course at this point. Ambitious declarations immediately upon winning an election or taking office can basically be seen in the same way. Thus, although President Obama declared that Guantanamo Bay would be closed within a year of taking office, this went the way of most promises--unfulfilled.

Recently, President Obama has taken the usual political art of breaking promises to an entirely new level. Back in 2013, the Obama Administration suffered a devastating defeat in its first push for initiating a major war with Syria. They intended to let Congress weigh in on the proposal, and when it became clear that the pro-war side was going to lose that vote, it was promptly canceled.

In the aftermath of this, the Administration realized it needed a better and more subtle approach to get the American people to accept another military intervention. The rise of ISIS certainly helped provide a more compelling rationale for US involvement than President Assad of Syria ever could. But that alone probably wouldn't be sufficient to justify another US war in the Middle East, when none of the others have worked.

Thus, to mollify American fears of an extended conflict and more Americans getting sacrificed for an obviously counterproductive policy, Obama pledged that there would be "no boots on the ground". With each escalation in Iraq and Syria, this refrain was offered. And now, with the regular announcements of more troops in Iraq and Syria, it's been proven false.

It's tempting, of course, to see this as just another broken promise from a politician. And in some ways, it is. But it's also different and worse in two important respects.

First, this wasn't a campaign promise. President Obama made this pledge repeatedly while he was president. He knew all of the political realities. And since it's in the realm of foreign policy, where the president has near-complete discretion (in the modern era), this was entirely within his own power. Congress barely has enough initiative to pass a budget; it certainly doesn't have the wherewithal to start (or even declare) a new war. Thus, this is an area where President Obama basically cannot be forced to take an action he disagrees with. Yet, he did it anyway. And he did it in spite of no ISIS- or Syria-directed plot on American soil. (The reader will recall that the San Bernardino attack occurred relatively recently, after the pledge had already been broken, and was not organized by ISIS anyway, though the attackers did sympathize with their cause.)

The second way that the Obama Administration's conduct is now unique and tragically worse is the way it has tried to deny their dishonesty. At first, this meant trying to change the meaning of "no boots on the ground" to mean no large battalions on the ground. And now, they appear to have pivoted to outright denying the pledge ever occurred in the first place.

In a recent press conference, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby denied that anyone ever said there would be "no boots on the ground" in spite of the fact that this can be disproved in all of three seconds with a Google search. It's tough to imagine John Kirby actually believes this, given that it's his whole job to know and defend the Administration's / Pentagon's talking points. So instead, we must assume it's a deliberate PR decision to openly troll the American media and public to see just how quickly we are all willing to forget things that even the most casual observer has to still know. Every President and politician tries to rewrite history in their favor, but the Obama Administration appears to be breaking new ground by trying to do it so quickly and blatantly. It remains to be seen whether many people will notice and care. Given that it's on an issue as important as war and peace, let's hope the answer is yes.

For more on this, and to read the funny-if-it-wasn't-sad exchange where Kirby tries to deny reality, check out Justin Raimondo's write-up at Antiwar.com:

Orwell's Ghost Is Laughing

Donald Trump's Surprising Service to Humanity - Destroying Neoconservatism

In this deeply depressing Presidential Election, it is important to highlight the few bright spots. And as odd as it sounds to say, Donald Trump has provided one of the most important ones.

Of course, I don't mean his candidacy as such. To the extent that Trump has expressed consistent positions on specific issues, they are mostly bad--trade, immigration, free speech, torture, etc. But even so, Trump has made a powerful contribution to American politics by breaking the hold of neoconservatism over the Republican Party--and possibly destroying the party altogether.

The neoconservative movement is a group that has dominated American foreign policy circles since at least the reign of George W. Bush. It has been the leading proponent of all of our recent wars, and basically sees no problem that can't be solved by American military power. Amongst other horrible ideas, the neoconservatives have been highly influential in supporting the following:

• Expanding NATO, which inevitably led to colder relations with Russia.
• In line with the above, strongly supporting the US-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014.
• Overthrowing the Taliban regime and occupying Afghanistan after 9/11 (apologies for the crazed stream-of-consciousness block text in that link)
• Lying to the American people to justify invading Iraq in 2003
• Bombing Iran, which reached a fever pitch around 2007
• America's torture program (and not prosecuting any of the perpetrators)
• America's massive NSA spying apparatus, and prosecuting whistleblower Edward Snowden
• Military intervention in Libya in 2011
• US intervention in Syria to overthrow Bashar al Assad (by backing jihadist groups)
• Opposing the Iran nuclear negotiations
• Supporting Israel's occupation of Palestine under all circumstances
• Hatred of Muslims generally

So while that list isn't quite everything that's wrong in the world, it's a good start.

In any case. what's unique about Donald Trump is that he is a leading presidential candidate, and he is not owned by them. As best as anyone can tell, he doesn't appear to hold that many of their core views. In recent debates, for example, he made explicit statements that don't usually appear in a Republican Presidential debate:

• Supporting an even-handed approach to the Israel-Palestine question
• Accusing the second Bush Administration of knowingly going to war with Iraq on a false pretense
• Saying the world would be better if the US had not overthrown Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Qaddafi in Libya

Whether Trump actually takes these views to heart or not is irrelevant. The point is that he made these arguments and still managed to dominate the competition on Super Tuesday. And so the spell of neoconservatism appears to have been broken. Whatever you think of Trump in general, this is a service to humanity.

With that, we'll let Justin Raimondo elaborate on this theme at Antiwar.com. I don't share all of Raimondo's optimism for what a Trump Presidency would look like in practice, but his survey of Trump's impact on the neoconservative movement is delightful. Here's the piece:

Super Tuesday Funeral: Neoconservatism, An Obituary

Why We Should Prioritize Foreign Policy Over Domestic Policy

Yesterday, I argued that Bernie Sanders is a nationalist and that his nationalism is inherently at odds with his belief in equality. It was partially intended as a philosophical discussion on equality, but of course it was also a direct criticism of Bernie's candidacy. In response to this attack, one reader offered a very interesting defense that is worth discussing at length. Essentially, he applauded Bernie's focus on domestic policy in the US and argued that this offered the surest path to benefit people around the world. And accordingly, it would not be appropriate to dismiss Bernie as a nationalist.s

This is an interesting point because it raises the critical question of priorities. And although we may disagree on the specific policies involved, this is an important question for liberals and libertarians alike. Today, it will be our purpose to argue that foreign policy should be the top priority if you care about equality and alleviating human suffering. (I would use the term "humanitarian" to describe this emphasis and be less grandiose, but now that "humanitarian intervention" has become commonplace, it kind of feels like a dirty word.)

Let's begin by properly characterizing the commenter's position. He offered several points, but the key aspect we'll be considering today read as follows:

[Bernie's] platform is largely domestic as a foreign policy, meaning that as he pursues his agenda to improve the plight of all people in the US (because he has clearly stated that immigrants - illegal or otherwise - enemy combatants, and all non-citizens in US custody deserve equal treatment under the law) the US will then be in a healthy enough position to improve the plight of all people. We must lead by example. If we are not the pillar of equality and justice how can we advocate for equality and justice across the globe? If we are not a stable and secure nation of opportunity for all how can we help other nations become stable and filled with opportunity?

Though he and I would likely disagree on the best means for achieving these ends, no one should question the merits of the goals expressed. In some ways, it is a modern edition of the "City upon a hill" vision offered by the founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop (and cited by many politicians since).

And it makes perfect sense as far as it goes. Obviously, no one likes to take advice from a hypocrite. If the US is to be a positive leader, it must do so by leading by example.  I completely agree with that sentiment, and I sincerely hope that I live to see the day when America's role in foreign policy will be confined to only leading by example. But that day is a long way off.

Today, the United States is not a neutral actor in global affairs. On the contrary, the US government is directly or indirectly responsible for much of the suffering that exists in the world today. As President Obama recently bragged, the US has dropped bombs on seven countries during his Presidency. And since most humans tend not to idolize those that bomb them (or other innocent people for that matter), my argument is simple: Before we can consider leading by example, we have to stop causing and enabling direct harm around the world.

It's fair to say that the US policy is hypocritical in domestic affairs as well as foreign ones. Thus, US credibility is unlikely to be restored until both issues are remedied. So in the short run, our priorities must be decided on where we can do the most good (or stop the most harm, if you prefer). And since we have already explained yesterday why we can't intellectually justify prioritizing the interests of Americans over other people, we have to consider each of them equally. So let's consider the numbers.

First, let's look at the likely beneficiaries of positive domestic policy. Let's set aside economic questions, and presume for the sake of argument that Bernie's policies would work precisely as hoped and have no negative unintended consequences. In this light, the primary beneficiaries of Bernie's policy would likely be the following:

• 2 million Americans currently incarcerated. According to Wikipedia as of 2013, the full prison population in 2013 was actually 2.2 million, and we're assuming the overwhelming majority (~90%) were incarcerated for marijuana possession or given preposterously long sentences thanks to mandatory minimums. Bernie has campaigned on addressing both of these issues.
• 11 million illegal immigrants, which Bernie would offer a path to citizenship.
• 45 million Americans living in poverty. Of course, it's unlikely poverty would be fully eradicated by a Sanders or any other presidency. And one could quibble with the definition of poverty, since US poverty isn't quite as bad as say, Yemeni poverty. But again, let's just assume all of these people receive significant benefits for the purpose of the argument.

Adding all these up, a deeply optimistic outlook for a Sanders presidency focused domestically would suggest he could help 59 million people. Not too bad.

Now let us consider the number that could be helped by a radical change in US policy abroad. Apologies in advance for the long list:

• 32 million - Afghanistan
• The population of Afghanistan as of 2014. Last year, a record 11,000 civilians were reported killed in Afghanistan, and it's fair to say that essentially the entire country has been destabilized by the ongoing fighting. The US bears responsibility for this by first overthrowing the government of that country in 2001 and continuing to occupy it, bomb it, and support a government that lacks popular support (or any meaningful control outside of the capital city). If the US left Afghanistan, the country would have a chance at self-determination and things could finally start to stabilize.
• 17 million - Syria
• The population of Syria proper was around 17 million. By now, this number is probably much lower due to casualties and more refugees fleeing the country. The US was not the only catalyst of this crisis, but our actions, and those of our allies, have prolonged it. If the US were to withdraw support for the not-so-moderate rebels in that country and (ideally) attempt to convince allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia to stop fueling the flames, an enduring ceasefire could be reached much sooner. 
• 1.6 million - Iraq
• The population of Anbar province in Iraq circa 2011, which is now mostly controlled by the Islamic State and likely less populous. Obviously, the entire country of Iraq has been disastrously destabilized by the US invasion of 2003 and the brutal sanctions regime before that. But as of right now, most of the suffering is occurring in territories held by the Islamic State. And as the past year and a half of bombings suggest, the Islamic State, like any other insurgency, cannot be defeated by airstrikes. Instead, the US is its greatest recruitment tool.
• 26 million - Yemen
• The approximate population of Yemen. Fully 80% of Yemenis are now in need of humanitarian aid after nearly a year of war and blockade by US ally Saudi Arabia, and the entire country has been destabilized. While Saudi Arabia initiated this crisis, it is fully enabled by the US government, which permits the sale of weapons, refuels the Saudi planes, and reportedly even helps select the targets. Without US support, the War in Yemen could not persist. It's true that Yemen was exceedingly poor before the recent war as well, but the US bore a share of the blame for that as well by backing a despotic government in the name of, of course, counterterrorism.
• 6 million - Libya
• The approximate population of Libya, as of 2013. Like Iraq, this country was also destabilized by a military intervention pushed by the US. France was a major driver as well, to be sure, but it couldn't have happened without US support. The country remains in chaos as ISIS has gained a foothold and two separate governments are competing for control.
• 4.4 million - Palestine
• The approximate number of Palestinians living in Gaza, East Jerusalem, or the West Bank. The much-hyped two state solution is no longer possible. But the blockade of Gaza, the continued theft of land from Palestinians in the West Bank, restrictions on freedom of movement, and the two-tiered legal system would not endure long without diplomatic cover and the ever-reliable American veto on the UN Security Council.

The above is not a complete list; these are just the most obvious crises occurring at present. It omits a share of the blame for the current plight of Egyptians, Ukrainians, Iranians, Somalis, Pakistanis, Cubans, Sudanese, and Bahrainis,  and probably others I'm neglecting. It also omits the numerous refugees that have been driven from all of these countries. But even without explicitly including these groups, the total people that stand to benefit would be 87 million, far higher than the maximum conceivable figure domestically.

And it's worth noting a key difference here. For people to be helped domestically, a president would have to pass and implement radical policies that may or may not work as intended. To make positive change in the realm of foreign policy, we just have to stop doing the wrong thing. That is much easier, especially since the president has much more control over foreign policy than domestic. Stop bombing countries, stop overthrowing governments, and stop imposing sanctions that only hurt civilians and never actually change policies. (And no, Iran is not a case where they "worked.")

When you really think about it, there's no contest between foreign and domestic policy. Foreign policy affects more people, most of whom are more desperate, and there is a clear path to stop causing harm. For all these reasons, foreign policy should be the top priority for anyone that cares about human suffering, regardless of what their politics are. Bringing it back to Bernie, this makes it difficult to understand his focus on domestic policy if he really cares about equality as he seems to. It also makes it impossible to defend his rather disappointing record on foreign policy issues. To me, the only plausible explanation is that he's a nationalist. It's surely not a unique vice among politicians, but we should still recognize that reality.

And ultimately, it would be great if the US got its house in order and could lead the world by example. But before we get there, we should probably stop destroying other people's houses.

Two Consecutive Debates with Antiwar Moments?

If you support peace, modern presidential debates tend to be a pretty depressing experience. On the Republican side, outright advocacy of war crimes is commonplace. On the Democratic side, the frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, is an experienced warmonger and her opponent tends to stick to domestic issues whenever possible.

So when you watch these debates, you're looking for a needle in a haystack. Amidst all the talk of torture, carpet-bombing, "smart power", Internet censorship, and no-fly zones, we're just hoping that at some point something sensible will make it into the discussion as well. Occasionally, there's something worthwhile, but thus far even the best statements have mostly stayed at the surface. Yes, we were grateful when Rand Paul or others made the obvious point that overthrowing dictators often has very negative consequences. But skepticism alone isn't enough to change minds or even make many headlines. For that, you need something more. You need something that confronts the conventional foreign policy wisdom directly.

In some ways, the last two presidential debates have given us precisely that. 

Bernie Sanders

First up, we had Bernie Sanders give us a brief history lesson on some of America's foreign policy disasters after World War II. He specifically mentioned the case where the US and British overthrew the first democratically elected prime minister of Iran in 1953 and replaced him with a brutal dictator. He mentioned the disastrous overthrows in Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011, both of which are now increasing filled by radical terrorist groups. He also went on an apparently planned attack former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whom Hillary Clinton describes as a kind of mentor. Here's the relevant discussion of Kissinger from Bernie:

"Where the secretary and I have a very profound difference, in the last debate — and I believe in her book — very good book, by the way — in her book and in this last debate, she talked about getting the approval or the support or the mentoring of Henry Kissinger. Now, I find it rather amazing, because I happen to believe that Henry Kissinger was one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country. I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger. And in fact, Kissinger’s actions in Cambodia, when the United States bombed that country, overthrew Prince Sihanouk, created the instability for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to come in, who then butchered some 3 million innocent people, one of the worst genocides in the history of the world. So count me in as somebody who will not be listening to Henry Kissinger."

Bernie was absolutely right about Kissinger--a man who successfully advocated for war crimes while in office. And it was great to hear someone to discuss the disastrous foreign policy history of the US, particularly after World War II. It was also surprising because it means that Bernie actually does know and acknowledge the history of US intervention.

But if he does know this history, then why has he been so inconsistent on issues of war and peace? A liberal author I respect, attempted to cast Bernie's Kissinger attack as a sign of the clear difference between Hillary and Bernie on foreign policy. And when the issue comes up, Bernie certainly conveys a much more peaceful note. But in reality, the difference between Bernie and Hillary is really one of degree rather than principle as a new article makes clear.

Donald Trump
Like Bernie, Donald Trump is also very far from a principled noninterventionist. But in Saturday night's GOP debate, he offered probably the best antiwar statements of the entire campaign season. Here are the main highlights (I've just omitted the parts where the moderator attempted to interrupt.):

Quote 1: Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake. All right? Now, you can take it any way you want, and it took -- it took Jeb Bush, if you remember at the beginning of his announcement, when he announced for president, it took him five days. 

He went back, it was a mistake, it wasn't a mistake. It took him five days before his people told him what to say, and he ultimately said, "it was a mistake." The war in Iraq, we spent $2 trillion, thousands of lives, we don't even have it. Iran has taken over Iraq with the second-largest oil reserves in the world... 

George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East... 

You do whatever you want. You call it whatever you want. I want to tell you. They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction. 

Quote 2: How did he [Bush] keep us safe when the World Trade Center -- the World -- excuse me. I lost hundreds of friends. The World Trade Center came down during the reign of George Bush. He kept us safe? That is not safe. That is not safe, Marco. That is not safe.

In short, Donald Trump took on the Republican orthodoxy head on. And while the audience was apparently full of Rubio and Bush supporters that booed at every turn, the fact is that what he said was true. Yes, the Iraq War was sold on a deliberate lie, and it's also true that everyone else is expected to start doing their job sooner than 9 months after they take a position. Just as important, this is the kind of aggressive truth that can get people to rethink their position. Not his fellow candidates certainly, but maybe their voters.

Of course, none of the above should be taken as support for Bernie or Trump. They're still bad on foreign policy in severe ways. But while they may be deeply flawed messengers, part of their message this past week supported the cause of peace. It's nice to have something to cheer for.

Towards a Peaceful Narrative in the War on ISIS

In modern politics, virtually every issue appears in a binary contrast. You are either for something or against it, yea or nay, up or down. This is a natural feature of a two-party system. To be sure, there are generally more than two relevant positions on each issue, but two narratives tend to dominate the discussion. We see this on all sorts of topics from gun control to abortion to gay marriage. Conservatives / Republicans tend to believe in one thing; liberals / Democrats tend to believe in the dominant alternative. Of course, all of the above issues actually have a considerable degree of nuance--if you support abortion, to what point in the cycle do you support it? Till the fetus leaves the womb, or some prior point? If you support gun control, does that mean you want Australian-style gun confiscation or just a modest expansion of background checks. You get my point.

Yet in spite of this nuance and lack of clear definitions, people still typically identify with the specific issue label, one broad set of positions or the other. That means labels and bumper-sticker narratives, however imprecise, really do matter.

Another interesting fact about our binary politics is that both issues are almost invariably framed in positive terms. On abortion, the debate is cast as pro-life vs. pro-choice; these are the labels the two camps have chosen for themselves, and they have stuck. For obvious reasons, calling yourself either anti-life or anti-choice would surely prove to be a disastrous PR decision. We see this on guns as well. People support either pro-gun control or pro-Second Amendment rights. The anti-Constitution and pro-gun chaos folks are nowhere to be found.

However, when it comes to issues of war and peace, this well-established trend of positive political messaging partially breaks down. The camp that supports war has adopted appropriately vague euphemisms. Virtually no one is "pro-war" as such but a great many are "strong on national security," "tough on terror," or else believe that America has a "responsibility to protect." But on the other side, we just find the antiwar movement--ever debunking justifications for intervention, accurately predicting disasters before everyone else, and yet somehow, still marginalized.

The problem is not the antiwar label. Given the alternatives--peace (hippies, Woodstock, etc.) or noninterventionism (7 syllables? Are you kidding me?)--I think antiwar is probably pretty solid. But it may be a problem that the antiwar movement is seen as advocating against war but for nothing. On this and many other issues, doing nothing is probably the best policy, but it's not an inspiring narrative.

Thus, the two narratives that dominate in the debate over Syria and Iraq is whether we need to bomb the whole region aggressively or just continue to gradually expand the war as Obama has done. Obviously, both narratives are decidedly pro-war. And while it is easy to rebut the arguments in favor of each, a negative narrative is not enough.

Enter, a great new piece at Antiwar.com by author Ira Chernus, which is aimed to change the dominant narratives. Just as the proponents of other causes have an affirmative story that explains their position, so the antiwar movement needs to tell a better story about the conflict in the Middle East.  In particular, Chernus argues that broad conflicts raging in the Middle East are part of a broad civil war in the Muslim world. There are bad guys and competing interests all around, and there's no compelling reason for the US to try to pick a winner. We have tried that many times before after all, and it never goes well.

Regardless of whether you agree on the particulars mentioned in the article, Chernus is certainly right that we need to tell a better story to effectively oppose war. And this article is a great first step.

The Peace Movement's War Story