The American people may not have noticed the recent attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, likely the work of Iranian proxies, but rest assured that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did, and used it as an occasion to remind us of the ongoing nature of the war that was supposed to have ended in January:

U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said Iran must be held accountable for its proxies’ attacks on American forces in Baghdad, warning that such violence can’t become routine.

“It cannot become ordinary course that the Iranians, through their proxy forces in Iraq, are putting the lives of Americans at risk,” Pompeo told reporters on his plane as he prepared to fly from Addis Ababa to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Wednesday. “There has to be accountability connected to those very serious attacks.”

Pompeo was referring to a Feb. 16 incident in which several rockets landed inside the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad, causing minimal damage and no injuries.

“Those very serious attacks.” Continue reading →

The last time the US Embassy in Baghdad was on the receiving end of rocket attacks, the mass media was too fixated on Kobe Bryant to notice. This time, they’re fixated on the coronavirus. Hardly a surprise that the same media, and same public, still regard 9/11 as an unexpected “bolt from the blue” almost twenty years after the fact. There’s always an excuse to be distracted from the wars “we’re” waging, and always a narrative ready to make it look as though every attack on us is an unprovoked “sucker punch.” Every “surprise” leads, predictably, to another war. But for now, no casualties means no worries.

The Senate just voted 55 to 45 to approve a War Powers Resolution requiring that President Trump seek congressional authorization before taking any further military action against Iran. I guess this is marginally better than doing absolutely nothing, but not by much, and in some ways, it’s a step backwards.* Continue reading →

In installment #13 of this series, “Reality Bites,” I identified four egregious falsehoods or outright lies at the heart of the Trump Administration’s case for escalation against Iran.

1. Iran is the aggressor; we’re merely responding to their aggression.
2. Qasim Suleimani was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, which obliged us to respond to the threat he posed.
3. Suleimani’s assassination was an attempt to forestall an imminent attack on American facilities.
4. There were no American casualties after the Iranian missile attack on Iraqi/U.S. bases in Iraq.

The first two claims stand as written. The second two have been reinforced since I wrote them. Re (3): An “imminent attack” took place weeks after the assassination (“imminent,” at any rate, just before it happened). Assassinating Suleimani did nothing to stop it. Re (4): there were in fact dozens of American casualties after the Iranian missile attack, not none.

In the mental fog induced by impeachment, no politician, whether Democrat or Republican, has managed even the minimal candor required to clarify the issue at stake: we face a proxy war that we must either fight or abandon; fighting it will be costly and pointless, which ought to be enough to persuade us not to try. Continue reading →

You’ve probably seen that meme of the couple in bed, where the woman suspects that the guy is thinking of other women, and the guy is lying there thinking about video games or whatever. That meme is a perfect encapsulation of the communicative relationship between Iran and the American people. The Iranians are trying to tell us, “Hey, our proxies have hit your embassy after weeks of trying!” And we’re sitting there, fixated on Kobe Bryant. The attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad took place last night, but wasn’t reported in The New York Times until 5:15 this morning. I mostly read about it in obscure foreign outlets. A helicopter crash that kills a former basketball star is a breaking story, but a direct missile attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad isn’t. Priorities.  Continue reading →