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The War on Iran—and Washington’s Missing Exit Strategy
The United States has once again launched a war in the Middle East based on false claims about weapons of mass destruction. Like the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. assault on Iran rests on allegations that international inspectors have already debunked. But beyond the false pretext lies an even more pressing question that […]
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“Teaching Students to Think for Themselves” Starts with Political Self-Awareness
My nomination for the most predictable platitude invoked by university professors when describing the essence of their job is “teaching students to think for themselves.” During my 26 years at the University of Texas at Austin, where I was sometimes accused of politicizing the classroom, I repeated that phrase many times, not as a dodge […]
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Israel’s Big Lie of “Self-Defence”
Is the mass slaughter of civilians self-defence? Every person has the right to life and to self-defence, but Israel’s “right to self-defence” is constantly being used to obfuscate the non-defensive nature of its military violence in Palestinian territory. Israel’s self-defence is a lie, not just because their actions are not defensive but because Israel cannot […]
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Criminals at Large: The Iraq War Twenty Years On
The arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for Russian President Vladimir Putin came at an opportune moment. It was, if nothing else, a feeble distraction over the misdeeds and crimes of other leaders current and former. Russia, not being an ICC member country, does not acknowledge that court’s jurisdiction. Nor, for that matter, does […]
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Why Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 Was Legal
Under international law, “aggression” (or “aggressive war”) has never yet been defined so as to separate it clearly from “defensive war” (or “defense”), and this murkiness is the U.N.’s most fundamental failure to-date, because the U.N. was supposed to have been formed in order to prevent a World War Three (WW III), which is impossible […]