Sunday, March 22, 2026

Loose Tabs

After I posted my initial take on Trump's Iran war in my Days of Infamy Substack piece, and followed that with a Music Week, I figured I should go ahead and publish whatever I had in Loose Tabs before the next Music Week comes around. So I set the date for Sunday, March 22, and, well, this is it: very incomplete, with several usual sections completely missing, but pretty long nonetheless. I could work the rest of the night on it, then tomorrow, then the rest of next week. I probably will make some adds when I do get around to Music Week. I'm also thinking I should do a synopsis on Substack, possibly before I do my planned follow-up piece where I try to cut through all the noise and explain the Iran war by answering four basic questions:

  1. Why did Netanyahu want to attack Iran?
  2. Why did Trump go along with the attack?
  3. Why didn't Iran surrender once it was attacked?
  4. And how and when and under what conditions is this war likely to end?

You can probably find answers to these questions in the previous piece, and scattered here and there below, but I think it will help to organize them thusly. Of course, the first three answers are pretty simple, at least if I don't go into much historical detail. I don't know the precise answer to the fourth, but the basic point is simple enough: when Trump (or one of his successors) decides he's had enough, and is willing to negotiate a deal. This will depend on variables, including how much Iran is willing to concede, how little Trump is willing to settle for, and how long Israel will be able to muck up any possible deal. Those factors will vary over time, so the best we can do is to lay out a model. That will take some thought, but the factors aren't too complicated.

Meanwhile, there is nothing below on Cuba, which is heating up, and dominating my X feed tonight. Trump has said that Cuba's next, and it's not like he has the patience to do things in considered order. Most leaders dread two-front (never mind multi-front) wars, but for Trump each one distracts from the other. The conditions in Cuba are different, as are the motives — other than the absolute supremacy of American power, which seems to have become an obsession with Trump.

PS: I added a few more links on [03-25]. I'm not really trying to keep up with the news, although some creeps in. Most are actually tabs I had open but hadn't picked up. I use Firefox as a browser, running under Xbuntu with six workspaces to split out my work, with Firefox typically running 6-8 windows with well over 100 tabs, so it's easy to overlook something I meant to circle back to.

This is an occasional collection of newsworthy links and comments, much less systematic than what I attempted in my late Speaking of Which posts. The new name comes from my extensive use of browser tabs. When I get around to cleaning up, I often find tabs opened to old articles I might want to comment on and/or refer back to. So these posts are mostly housecleaning, but may also serve as a very limited but persistent record of what 20+ years ago I started calling "the end of the American empire" and nowadays feels more like "the end of civilization." I collect these bits in a draft file, and flush them out when periodically (12 times from April-December 2025). My previous one appeared 23 days ago, on February 27.

I have a little-used option of selecting bits of text highlighted with a background color, for emphasis a bit more subtle than bold or ALL CAPS. (I saw this on Medium. I started with their greenish color [#bbdbba] and lightened it a bit [#dbfbda].) I'll try to use it sparingly.

Table of Contents:

Topical Stories

Sometimes stuff happens, and it dominates the news/opinion cycle for a few days or possibly several weeks. We might as well lead with it, because it's where attention is most concentrated. But eventually these stories will fold into the broader, more persistent themes of the following section.

Last time: Epsteinmania, Melania, Washington Post, Super Bowl LX, DHS shutdown, Tariffs at the Supreme Court.

Trump Bombs Iran: On Feb. 28, Trump and Netanyahu launched a massive wave of airstrikes against Iran, opening what Wikipedia is calling 2026 Iran war. The bombing appears to have been originally designed to kill Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and thus to decapitate the Islamic Republic of Iran, but it was expanded to attack the whole nation's security structure. The bombing has continued. Iran has responded with missile and drone attacks aimed at Israel, US bases in the region, and other infrastructure related to the US and its allies. Israel has ramped up its war in Lebanon, nominally targeting Hezbollah. The following are various pieces collected on the fly, including several that I added to my previous Loose Tabs, which starts on February 19 with a link to a piece by Joshua Keating: It really looks like we're about to bomb Iran again.

PS: On Monday morning (March 23), Trump announced a short pause in the war (or more specifically, a delay in bombing power plants), citing "very strong talks" with unidentified Iranian officials. Iran issued a denial of any such talks. Trump's announcement triggered a drop in oil futures prices and a rally in the stock market, although both were muted. It's worth noting that Israel has often agreed to ceasefires (including two notable times in their 1948-49 War of Independence) which turned out to be nothing more than stalls while they rebuilt their weapons stockpiles. Israel and the US have been burning through their anti-missile defense rockets at a furious pace, so that is probably a big part of the story. I'm skeptical that either side is anywhere near willing to make the necessary concessions, especially with Israel acting as a very wild card, but a Korea-style armistice, with allowance for Iran to collect tolls through the Strait of Hormuz, could hold for long enough to allow Iran to broaden its diplomacy, organize its defenses, and develop a more effective deterrent against further attacks (possibly, like North Korea, including its own nukes — again, as with North Korea, a development which can only be prevented diplomatically).

  • Iran War Cost Tracker: "Based on the Pantagon's preliminary estimate of $1 billion per day." Also note: "Independent analyses suggest the true cost may be significantly higher."

  • Al Jazeera [2025-06-18]: The history of Netanyahu's rhetoric on Iran's nuclear ambitions: He "has warned of an imminent threat from a Iranian nuclear bomb for more than 30 years."

  • Richard Silverstein

  • Andrew O'Hehir:

    • [02-28]: Trump's war on Iran: America's shame, and the world's failure: "Trump's attack on Iran is an act of vanity and desperation, fueled by America's collective moral blindness."

    • [03-08]: Behind Trump's war fever lies profound weakness: "US wages fast-escalating war, with no clear motivation and no realistic plan. It isn't fooling anyone." I'm not sure "weakness" is the right word, but it's the sort of taunt that flies in the faces of people who value power above all else. The US always seemed more powerful when it advanced policies that were best for all, and much weaker when it tried to strong arm others into doing its self-centered will. While it is likely that the US has lost power steadily since peaking at the end of WWII, no US president has tried to flex its power to anywhere near the same degree as Trump. That he comes up short seems inevitable. That he finds this mystifying is no surprise, either.

  • Craig Mokhiber [03-01]: Understanding the US and Israel's illegal war on Iran: "The illegal US-Israeli war on Iran continues a rampage that has devastated countries and international institutions to eliminate all obstacles to US hegemony. The US-Israeli Axis has not succeeded yet, and it is up to the world to stop them." The world, on the other hand, is hoping this war just collapses under the dead weight of its instigators' stupidity, as no one else is in a position to do anything significant about it.

  • Trita Parsi: Has a long track record of writing about Iran and how Israel and the US have attempted to deal with it, most notably in his books: Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States (2007); A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama's Diplomacy With Iran (2012); Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy (2017). The first book I regard as essential, as it makes clear that Israel's alliance with Iran survived the fever days of the 1979 Revolution, when Khomeini solidified control of a much broader-based revolt, to no small extent by building on pent-up resentment against the United States (the hostage crisis was a reflection of this) and by challenging Saudi Arabia's leadership of the Islamic World (given control of Mecca and Medina, and the annual Hajj). The US and Saudi Arabia never got over those affronts, but Israel had no problem with Iran until the 1990s, when Iraq ceased to be a credible existential threat to Israel, and Hezbollah developed in opposition to Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon. From that point, it was fairly easy to manipulate American resentment into designating Iran as part of "the axis of evil." Parsi has a critical but nuanced view of Iran that is much more credible than most of the rote (or simply regurgitated) propaganda elsewhere. I haven't read his later books (on Obama and the JCPOA negotiations), which should help update the story. Nor have I read Vali Nasr's 2025 book, Iran's Grand Strategy: A Political History, but he seems to have a similar understanding of Iran's political leadership and military strategy.

    • [03-01]: Some observations and comments on Trump and Israel's war on Iran: I scraped this off Facebook, so might best just quote it here:

      1. Tehran is not looking for a ceasefire and has rejected outreach from Trump. The reason is that they believe they committed a mistake by agreeing to the ceasefire in June - it only enabled the US and Israel to restock and remobilize to launch war again. If they agree to a ceasefire now, they will only be attacked again in a few months.

      2. For a ceasefire to be acceptable, it appears difficult for Tehran to agree to it until the cost to the US has become much higher than it currently is. Otherwise, the US will restart the war at a later point, the calculation reads.

      3. Accordingly, Iran has shifted its strategy. It is striking Israel, but very differently from the June war. There is a constant level of attack throughout the day rather than a salvo of 50 missiles at once. Damage will be less, but that isn't a problem because Tehran has concluded that Israel's pain tolerance is very high - as long as the US stays in the war. So the focus shifts to the US.

      4. From the outset, and perhaps surprisingly, Iran has been targeting US bases in the region, including against friendly states. Tehran calculates that the war can only end durably if the cost for the US rises dramatically, including American casualties. After the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran says it has no red lines left and will go all out in seeking the destruction of these bases and high American casualties.

      5. Iran understands that many in the American security establishment had been convinced that Iran's past restraint reflected weakness and an inability or unwillingness to face the US in a direct war. Tehran is now doing everything it can to demonstrate the opposite - despite the massive cost it itself will pay. Ironically, the assassination of Khamenei facilitated this shift.

      6. One aspect of this is that Iran has now also struck bases in Cyprus, which have been used for attacks against Iran. Iran is well aware that this is an attack on a EU state. But that seems to be the point. Tehran appears intent on not only expanding the war into Persian Gulf states but also into Europe. Note the attack on the French base in the UAE. For the war to be able to end, Europe too has to pay a cost, the reasoning appears to be.

      7. There appears to be only limited concern about the internal situation. The announcement of Khamenei's death opened a window for people to pour onto the streets and seek to overthrow the regime. Though expressions of joy were widespread, no real mobilization was seen. That window is now closing, as the theocratic system closes ranks and establishes new formal leadership.

    • [02-20]: No, even a 'small attack' on Iran will lead to war: "The deal Trump wants is a no-go for Tehran, which is resigned to retaliating if bombed again, limited or otherwise." This was written a week before Trump's "decapitation" strike, so nothing here should have caught Trump or his advisers by surprise. The key thing is that after last year's "12 day war" Iran's internal strategic arguments shifted from calculated appeasement to the realization that they would have to fight back to establish any kind of deterrence:

      Third, since the U.S. strategy, according to the WSJ, is to escalate until Tehran caves, and since capitulation is a non-option for Iran, the Iranians are incentivized to strike back right away at the U.S. The only exit Tehran sees is to fight back, inflict as much pain as possible on the U.S., and hope that this causes Trump to back off or accept a more equitable deal.

      In this calculation, Iran would not need to win the war (militarily, it can't); it would only have to get close to destroying Trump's presidency before it loses the war by: 1) closing the Strait of Hormuz and strike oil installations in the region in the hope of driving oil prices to record levels and by that inflation in the U.S.; and 2) strike at U.S. bases, ships, or other regional assets and make Trump choose between compromise or a forever war in the region, rather than the quick glorious victory he is looking for.

      This is an extremely risky option for Iran, but one that Tehran sees as less risky than the capitulation "deal" Trump is seeking to force on Iran.

      By not giving Iran's leaders a choice they can live with, Trump backed them into a corner, from which they had no choice but to fight back. Now the question becomes how painful that war is to Trump, and what sort of resolution can he live with? Trump may hate the idea of backing down in any respect, but Iran isn't threatening America (or even Israel) like the US is threatening Iran. The US will suffer some losses, but nothing remotely existential. Iran is not demanding that the US give up its own ability to defend itself. Iran is not even remotely a threat to the US homeland. So how much is it worth for Americans to "stay the course" just to shore up Trump's battered ego? If anyone other than Trump could make this decision, it wouldn't take a minute's thought. But this egomaniacal moron was made president, and the presidency was vested with the power to wage war without any checks and balances, so we're stuck in this situation which no one (except for Netanyahu and a few diehard hawks like Lindsey Graham) really wanted.

    • [02-28]: How does this war with Iran end? Or does it? "Trump certainly doesn't want this to turn into a civil war, though Israel has different designs." I think anything that attributes forethought and/or concern to Trump is cutting him too much slack, but Israel is another matter (and by Israel I mean Netanyahu, his coalition partners, and upper security echelons).

    • [03-09]: Trump press conference reveals a man who wants out of war: "He may be preparing the ground for a face saving declaration of victory, but I don't think Iran is going to concede that easily without something in return." A change of leader might have been enough of a cosmetic change in Venezuela to save face and avoid further polarizing warfare, the long and cruel build up to war against Iran has foreclosed those options. Trump's ambitions are higher here, Israel has veto power, and at this point the regime in Iran would be jeopardized more by surrender than by fighting back.

    • [03-13]: Trita Parsi on the hidden influences behind the pointless war in Iran: Interview by Nathan J Robinson.

    • [03-17]: Larijani's killing will destroy Iran war off-ramps for Trump: That, of course, is Israel's point: kill off anyone with the temperament and authority to make and sell a deal. Parsi offers three possible explanations, including "opportunity," which was probably decisive, but the idea of making negotiations impossible is so deeply ingrained in Israeli politico-military culture that it was always assumed. If Israel wanted to make a deal with the Palestinians that would allow for peaceful coexistence and shared prosperity, they could have done it 50-60 years ago. The only thing they really needed was credible Palestinian leadership, but they've systematically killed off everyone, all the while whining about having "no partner for peace."

    • [03-17]: Trump's window for face-saving exit may be closing now: "Escalation is only putting him in a lose-lose situation, so negotiating is the only option. However, Iran's growing leverage could prevent an easy off-ramp." Sure, the leverage is reason for searching out an off-ramp. But finding one is going to be hard for Trump to swallow. First he needs to throw Netanyahu under the bus: this was was all his idea, based on faulty intelligence and bad analysis, and to make this credible he needs to radically cut back military aid to Israel, including anything that could give Israel range to attack Iran. And he needs an intermediary to cut a deal with Iran, which the US could then agree to. I initially thought about neutrals like Turkey and India, but better still would be a separate peace with Saudi Arabia and the Perisan Gulf states which ultimately calls for demilitarization of the Persian Gulf (i.e., removal of US bases, in exchange for which Iran will limit rearmament fully normalize relations, and end all sanctions).

    • [03-19]: Facebook post: I won't quote this one in whole, but it starts:

      The developments of the past 24h may prove a turning point in this war: Israel and the US's escalation by striking the Qatari-Iranian Pars field, the strikes against Asaluyeh, Iran's massive retaliation against oil and gas installations in Saudi, Qatar and beyond, which shot up oil prices, the near downing of a F35 by Iran and Secretary Bessent's revelations that the US may unsanction Iranian oil on the waters to bring down oil prices.

      Some grasping at straws here, as it feels more to me like all sides are digging in.

  • Joshua Keating: Vox's foreign policy "expert," I've rarely been impressed by him, but I cited his pre-war piece in the introduction, and early on wrote up a comment on his [03-09] piece. I wound up deciding his whole series of articles is worth citing, partly to show evolving thinking from someone who drinks too much of the Kool-Aid but doesn't always swallow it, and because they raise interesting tangents.

    • [02-28]: Why did the US strike Iran? "And five other questions about the latest conflict in the Middle East, answered." Some useful background, but not many answers. One section starts "In fairness to Trump," then notes that he's done stupid things before and gotten away with them, so he may be feeling excessively confident, but then he both sides Iran, concluding "The confidence on both sides may end up getting a lot of people killed." What he fails to note is that over-confidence explains action, which Trump initiated, and not reaction, which is something the aggressor forces you into. Iran may have overestimated their ability to resist and strike back, but once Trump broke off negotiations and ordered the strike, what other option did they have?

    • [03-01]: How Khamenei transformed Iran: "And what could come next." Interview with Alex Vatanka ("a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and author of the book The Battle of the Ayatollahs in Iran, which examines how the Islamic Republic's backroom rivalries and leadership struggles have shaped its approach to the world"). MEI is mostly funded by the US and Arab governments. Vatanka offers little here, although this seems peculiar:

      I don't know what to make of Khamenei meeting senior folks in his office. That almost seems like he was asking for death. He had been talking a lot about martyrdom in recent speeches.

    • [03-02]: World leaders are almost never killed in war. Why did it happen to Iran's supreme leader? "The killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could usher in a new age of assassination." He ventures that "The nearest precedent for the killing of a head of state may be the KGB assassination of Afghan Communist leader Hafizullah Amin in 1979," although that was more like the US coup that killed their Vietnamese puppet Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963, shortly after the killing of Patrice Lumumba in 1961. More relevant here, Israel has a long history of assassination, going back to the killing of UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948, and extending through scores of prominent Palestinians and various others. Also Trump's killing of Qasem Soleimani, not even mentioned here. So his headline is already dated, if ever true. The bigger problem is that the only way to end wars is through negotiation, and for that to work, both sides have to have credible leaders. It would be much easier for Khamenei to sell an unpalatable deal than it will be for some unproven substitute. Even though the US had insisted on Japan's unconditional surrender, MacArthur saw the utility of leaving Hirohito in office.

    • [03-04]: Iran had a plan to fight Israel and the US. It all collapsed after October 7. "The rise and fall of the 'axis of resistance.'" One thing that's always bothered me: if "axis of resistance" really was Iran's masterplan for fighting Israel, why did they give it such a stupid (and inflammatory) name? The whole notion seems like an Israeli psych op. Perhaps Iran should have worked harder to dispel the allegations, but Israel's aggression and intimidation campaign was pushing all of them into common cause and sympathy. And given that Iran was already largely sanctioned by the West, they may have gotten an ego boost by appearing to be the ringleader. But Keating's notion that Iran's own defense was weakened by Israel's wars against Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis is imaginary — albeit of the kind that gave Israel and Trump more confidence to attack.

    • [03-09]: The dangerous lesson countries may take from the Iran war: "Having a nuclear weapon has never looked more appealing." The main reason Iran never developed nuclear weapons, despite having all the building blocks, was the conscience and/or shrewd political judgment of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Trump may have "set back" Iran's nuclear capabilities, but he definitely removed the one real roadblock. The result is that anyone in the regime who advised to go ahead ("just in case") is looking prescient these days, which makes them more likely to accede to power and redouble their efforts. Of course, it may be hard for Iran to progress under the current barrage, but unless the US and Israel relent and can be viewed by Iranians as benign — hard to imagine right now — sooner or later Iranians will regroup and vow to never let this happen again. (Just imagine what we would do under the same circumstances.) But the same lesson, that you actually have to have nuclear weapons ready to fire in order to deter foreign attacks, will also be learned by others, with more leeway to act. (This is, of course, the lesson North Korea drew after the US convinced Iraq and Libya to give up their nuclear programs, then toppled up their regimes.) The surprise here is that the first nation to feel the need to step up its nuclear efforts is France. But others are mentioned here, including Poland, South Korea, and Taiwan. None of those nations are likely to use their weapons against the US, but having them could give them considerable more autonomy, especially the more Trump is viewed as unreliable and unstable.

    • [03-09]: Trump might want "boots on the ground" in Iran. Just not American ones. "An Iranian Kurdish leader says his people are ready to rise up, but need more US support." Easy enough to find some Kurds willing to take American money as mercenaries, but their prospects of success are very slim. Moreover, other countries with Kurdish minorities are likely to take a very dim view of this — especially Turkey, which has intervened against American-armed Kurds in Iraq and Syria. On the other hand, Iran is the one country in the region which has never had a serious Kurdish independence movement (at least as far as I know). Perhaps because Kurdish is more closely related to Persian. Or, more likely, because Iran is a holdover from the era of multi-ethnic empires, and has never had a strong nationalist movement (unlike Turkey and Iraq).

    • [03-11]: The world doesn't have enough ammo for the Iran war: "How long can Iran keep shooting missiles? How long can everyone else keep shooting them down?" That's a good question, but Iran doesn't need a lot of weapons to tie up the Strait and frustrate Trump, nor is the US and Israel likely to compel surrender (if indeed any side has any real idea what that might entail). So this could be a long and pointless war.

    • [03-17]: How Trump's war with Iran is helping Putin: "The spiraling conflict is a lifeline for Russia's leader." I don't think Putin needed a lifeline, but this war gives him a lot of options.

    • [03-20]: Here's how Iran could become a "forever war": "'Mowing the grass,' explained." That's the term Israel has used for its periodic sieges on Gaza, which brutal as they were failed to prevent the uprising of Oct. 7, 2023, but it establishes two salient points: one is that the war never ends; the other is that the approach is fundamentally dehumanizing and sadistic. One should note that this affects both sides: the victims obviously, but also the tormentors, who must continue to live in fear that their crimes will catch up with them. The power of this fear is what ultimately turned Israelis from fear to genocide. As noted here, "the limiting factor of this strategy is the White House's tolerance for war." That's been increasing ever since Bush launched his GWOT (or maybe since WWII), but still is far from Israeli levels. I'm reminded of a story of Ben Gurion talking to DeGaulle, and offering him help with Algeria. DeGaulle replied with something like, "you mean you want us to turn into you?" DeGaulle thought better, and gave up Algeria. Israelis may feel like they're on top of the world right now, but they're up there alone, not just hated by their victims, but increasingly viewed with shame by everyone else. That's not a good way to live.

    • [03-20]: Why the US wants to protect Iran's oil and gas: "The Mideast energy truce is breaking down." Trump has some very deranged ideas about energy, which includes vastly overrating the importance of oil and underrating the fragility of an economic system which he wants to make even more dependent on oil. One weird thing is that his sanction wars (with Russia, Venezuela, and Iran until he blew it up) mostly had the effect of inflating gas prices, which also benefited his Saudi and American donors, without unduly disturbing American voters, who had no idea how cheap gas would be if all the spigots were flowing. Yet having worked so hard to prop up prices, now he's panicking that they're suddenly too high. Plus, he's a greedy bastard, so his ideal solution to Venezuela and Iran is to steal all the oil he thinks is so valuable. Yet, here both his allies and his enemies are busy blowing up the resources he wants to corner — resources that his advisers, no doubt, promised he could capture when they signed him up for the war. This is the only part of the war that's actually funny, not least because it's going to drive everyone else to renewables, while the US turns into a technological backwater.

  • Al Jazeera [03-02]: Rubio suggests US strikes on Iran were influenced by Israeli plans: This makes it pretty clear that Israel is directing US foreign policy:

    US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has suggested that a planned Israeli attack on Iran determined the timing of Washington's assault on the government in Tehran.

    The top diplomat told reporters on Monday that Washington was aware Israel was going to attack Iran, and that Tehran would retaliate against US interests in the region, so US forces struck pre-emptively.

    "We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action," Rubio said after a briefing with congressional leaders.

    "We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties."

  • Michael Hudson [03-02]: The US/Israeli attack was to prevent peace, not advance it.

  • Jonathan Larsen [03-02]: US troops were told Iran War is for "Armageddon," return of Jesus: "Advocacy group reports commanders giving similar messages at more than 30 installations in every branch of the military." This story is also reported by:

  • Vijay Prashad [03-03]: A war that cannot be won: Israel and the United States bomb Iran: Of course, I agree with this conclusion, but that's largely because I subscribe to the broader assertion, that no war can ever be won. The best you can do is to lose a bit less than the other guys, but that does little to redeem your losses. I think this is true even when you downgrade your ambitions: instead of regime destruction and regeneration, which happened in Germany and Japan after WWII, or the occupation and propping up of quisling governments that the US attempted in Afghanistan and Iraq, Trump seems to have adopted Israel's Gaza model which is that of periodically "mowing the grass," hitting Iran repeatedly in a forever war that ultimately points toward genocide.

  • Michael Arria:

  • Philip Weiss [03-03]: Rubio confirms the heresy: the US went to war in Iran because of Israel: "The heresy of Walt and Mearsheimer's Israel lobby theory was the claim that Israel and its supporters pushed the US into war. Marco Rubio has not confirmed this analysis when he admitted that Trump went to war with Iran because of Israel."

  • Zach Beauchamp

    • [03-03]: How does the Iran war end? "Regime change isn't likely. Here's what is." Early speculation, which inevitably leans toward optimism (hence "will end"), although the author eventually mentions "tail risk," which is a subtle way of saying "who fucking knows?"

    • [03-13]: The Iran war is not a video game: "Based memes, real blood." This starts with examples (see the article for links):

      On Wednesday, the New York Times published the preliminary findings of a US investigation into the recent airstrike on Shajarah Tayyebeh, an elementary school for girls in the Iranian city of Minab. The investigation confirmed what all public evidence had pointed to: that an American Tomahawk missile destroyed the school, killing roughly 175 people per Iranian estimates — most of whom were children. . . .

      The day after this damning news report, the White House released a video depicting the Iran war as a Nintendo game.

      The video, set to jaunty childlike music, depicts the United States as a player in various Wii Sports games — tennis, golf, bowling, etc. When the player character hits a hole in one, or bowls a strike, it cuts to real-life footage of a US bomb hitting an Iranian target. "Hole in one!" the Nintendo announcer declares, as we watch human lives being erased. . . .

      Various official X accounts have posted videos intercutting real bombings in Iran with clips from more violent video games, war films like Braveheart, sports highlights, and speeches from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth set to movie-trailer-style epic music.

      War is not hell, for this White House — it is fun.

      Beauchamp goes on to unpack this at some length, even citing Baudrillard, and concluding:

      The wartime sizzle reels are another manifestation of this ethos. Built not to persuade a neutral audience, but rather to appeal to those already-bought in, their primary service is thought-deadening: replacing any serious consideration of consequences with collective reveling in memes. "When you didn't want the US involved with Iran but the submarine kill videos are sick," one popular right-wing X account tweeted, with a GIF of an ambivalent Larry David posted below the text.

      It thus is not just collective self-deception at work for the administration and its very online supporters: It is collective exculpation. The crimes at Minab, and anywhere else, pale in comparison to sick kills.

    • [03-17]: A top Trump aide resigned over Iran. Liberals should stay away from him. "Antiwar antisemitism is still antisemitism." Well sure, don't pretend that he's a great guy — I mean, he was working for Trump, and got that job out of some kind of ideological loyalty to Trump — but why not except his gift for what it is: even Joe Kent says that Trump had no grounds for going to war, and lied when he said he did. How hard is that?

  • Mitchell Plitnick:

    • [03-04]: Debunking the lies of the Iran War. Lies include: "Iran nuclear weapons program"; "imminent threat"; "underground missiles"; Pahlavi ("a marker for the general lack of any vision of what happens as a result of this criminal attack").

    • [03-06]: The war on Iran is forcing Gulf states to reconsider regional strategy as the US and Israel lead the region into uncertainty: "Iran's retaliatory attacks on its neighbors, and the US failure to plan for them, are forcing the Gulf Cooperation Council states to reconsider their regional strategies and their relationship with Washington." The Gulf states are by far the most vulnerable targets for Iranian retaliation, which can be justified by their allowance of US bases and other military and economic ties. They have to start wondering whether their alliance is worth the costs — especially given that they have no control or influence over what the US and Israel do.

    • [03-14]: How aligned are the US and Israel's goals in Iran? That's a good question, and I suspect the answer is not very close. Israel realizes that Iran has never been a serious threat, although the token support they've provided for Hizbullah and Hamas has been good for propaganda, especially with the Americans. They'd like nothing more than for the US to fight Iran, while they focus on Lebanon and the Palestinians (especially in the West Bank). The US, on the other hand, does have interests, especially around the Persian Gulf, that are threatened, and which will make it hard to sustain a long war, or even tolerate a short one. The US also has interests in Europe and Asia, perhaps elsewhere, that will be stressed by this war. And Trump, even more than Netanyahu, is starting off with little popular support, even for war. Trump never expected a long, debilitating war. He was told this would be quick and clean, that Iran would topple, and that he'd be seen as a great liberator. He was conned by people with ulterior motives, and those aren't Trump's motives (which mostly are to make money, which means keeping his Arab allies happy, and inflating his tortured ego). It remains to be seen whether he can figure out a way to act on his doubts, but he did corner Netanyahu into a ceasefire in Gaza.

  • Robert Malley/Stephen Wertheim [03-05]: Of course Trump bombed Iran. They rightly accuse Trump, then let him off the hook:

    President Trump's attack on Iran is astonishing in its audacity, aggression and lawlessness. Mr. Trump ordered strikes in the midst of negotiations with a nation that posed no remotely imminent threat to the United States. He did nothing to prepare his country for war. Now he's offering a dizzying array of rationales and objectives, caught in a maelstrom of his own making.

    Beyond breaking with precedent, Mr. Trump also broke with himself. In three straight presidential campaigns, he criticized American military adventures in the Middle East, relying on this stance to distinguish his "America First" mantra from rival Republicans and Democrats alike. "I'm not going to start wars," he vowed on election night in 2024. "I'm going to stop wars."

    Yet for all its Trumpian characteristics, this war is the logical conclusion of how the United States has long dealt with Iran. For decades, presidents have depicted the Islamic Republic not just as a pernicious presence in the Middle East but also as an intolerable danger to the United States that no diplomatic deal could redress. When politicians inflate a threat and stigmatize peaceful means of handling it, an enterprising leader will one day reach for a radical solution.

    Trump could simply have said no, and no one would have criticized him. Attacking Iran was always bad policy, for many reasons. But while his predecessors didn't make that same mistake, they did so little to prevent it from happening that Trump figured he not only had a green light, but attacking Iran would just prove that he's the one president who has the guts to do the deed. Biden could at the very least have revived the JCPOA deal, ending Netanyahu's hysteria about Iranian nukes. Obama could have negotiated a better deal, one that Trump would have found harder to break. Bush and Clinton and/or Bush could simply have buried the hatchet — especially if they had delivered on reasonable peace proposals at the time. Carter and Reagan could have acknowledged that US support for the Shah had harmed most Iranians, and made some amends to keep the situation from deteriorating. War is always the end result of diplomatic failures, and everyone share blame for that aspect of the war on Iran. But only Trump was wacko enough to pull the trigger.

  • James North [03-05]: Lies, distortions, and propaganda: how the US mainstream media coverage on Iran hides the truth: "Even those familiar with the biased US mainstream covers of the Middle East are shocked at how bad the reporting on the US-Israel war on Iran has been."

  • Peter Beinart [03-06]: Iran is not an existential threat: "Iran poses no significant danger to Israel, let alone [to the] the US." I think that's what he meant in the subhed. The question of whether the US could undermine Israel is a different one, and even more hypothetical. One might as well ask whether Israel could destroy the US. (If so, Trump seems to be their Trojan Horse.)

  • Brian Karem:

    • [03-06]: With Iran, confusion is the point: "The Trump administration's jumbled reasoning for war with Iran is part of the strategy."

    • [03-20]: Who still stop Trump on Iran? "As the war escalates and the president digs in, the White House says 'Nobody tells him what to do.'" Much of what I think is based on models of how I have observed people functioning. One thing I've noticed with presidents is that they usually start out cautious and tentative: the job is overwhelming, there is so much they don't understand about it, and they're worried about screwing up, so they look for consensus among their aides, and avoid moves that seem risky. On the other hand, as they settle in, they figure out what they can and cannot get away with, and everyone around them is so flattering they build up ever increasing confidence. Trump fits this model, to a rather extreme degree. Consequently, he has no aides who can question let alone challenge him, and he has many who are full or shit ideas, often ones that he is partial to. So it's hard to imagine anyone in a position to stop him, or even to nudge him into any slightly less self-destructive orbit. It's even becoming hard to see how our damaged democracy stop him. On the other hand, wars tend to impact regardless of how you try to spin them.

  • Faris Giacaman [03-06]: Israel is using the 'Gaza doctrine' in Lebanon and Iran: The "old doctrine" was simply an extension of the British version of collective punishment for any transgressions against Israeli power: each and every offense would be met by an overwhelming reprisal, not necessarily directed against whoever was responsible. (During the 2nd Intifade, Israel made a habit of demolishing parts of Arafat's headquarters every time Hamas unleashed a suicide bomber. Needless to say, that wasn't much of a deterrent to Hamas.)

    October 7 changed this equation. "Mowing the lawn" was no longer enough, and neither was keeping the population blockaded in an open-air prison. The new stage of the Dahiya doctrine became the Gaza genocide. After two years of catastrophic civilian punishment, sustained by American financial and military largesse, Israel is now seeking to apply elements of its conduct in Gaza outside of Palestine's borders. We now see this new doctrine, characterized by protracted wholesale annihilation, playing out in Lebanon and Iran.

    Whether this will be recognized as genocide remains to be seen, but the intent is largely the same. While applying the same level of destruction to Iran is probably impossible (at least without resorting to nuclear weapons), Israel sees Iran as a job for the Americans, and for now is focusing on Lebanon.

  • Layla Yammine [03-06]: Millions at risk of displacement as Israel bombards Lebanon: "After 15 months of a fragile ceasefire, Lebanon woke up on March 2 to the familiar sounds of Israeli bombs. As the violence escalates and tens of thousands are displaced, Lebanon's social divisions threaten to worsen an already dire situation."

  • Umair Irfan [03-06]: The false promise of energy independence: "The Iran war shows yet again that US oil is still vulnerable to foreign shocks."

  • Daniel Bush/Olivia Ireland [03-06]: Trump demands 'unconditional surrender' from Iran: The phrase had rarely been used before FDR adopted it as a policy goal in 1943. It was at the time widely noted that conditions were almost always terms of surrender, and were frequently necessary to gain any sort of agreement. In 1945, Japan was allowed the substantial condition of sparing and keeping its emperor. So when Trump says this, he is not only mocking American history, he is exalting himself to a level of power no Iranian leader is likely to recognize:

    Writing on his Truth Social platform, Trump said: "There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!

    "After that, and the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s), we, and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners, will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before.

    "IRAN WILL HAVE A GREAT FUTURE. MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!)."

    Trump is saying, "don't even think of trying to negotiate with me." The point was probably unnecessary, not just because he lacked the power to impose his will, but because he had proved that he couldn't be trusted to follow through on anything he agreed to. [PS: The article also reports on a phone call from Putin to Iran's president Pezeshkian, but not much on details.]

  • Benjamin Hart [03-06]: A political-risk guru's biggest worry about Iran: Interview with Ian Bremmer ("founder of the Eurasia Group," a consultancy group that "has been helping the corporate and financial worlds understand and integrate political risk into their decision making"). He doesn't strike me as all that bright, or clear — at least I have no idea what he thinks that "biggest risk" is. But he does offer this:

    I think the fundamental challenge here is that Trump really believed that this could be Venezuela redux, and Venezuela went exceptionally well on a bunch of vectors. First of all, they got the guy they were trying to get. They brought him to justice, and they didn't kill him. Now he's going to face a trial. There were no American servicemembers killed. There were Venezuelan civilians killed, but the numbers were comparatively pretty small, especially compared to the numbers the Venezuelans have killed themselves. And it was popular, not just in the U.S. but across the region. Trump has now gotten a whole bunch of support from the Mexicans, more support on going after their narco-terrorists. And the same thing with Ecuador, which we saw in the last 48 hours. The Americans now have a better regime to work with in Venezuela, with the potential for private-sector investment and support from the IMF, and an economy that might actually work for the Venezuelan people. Literally on every front, this went about as well as you could expect. So Trump was like, Great, let's do that again. And this is not going to work that way on any front.

    I think he's way too quick to count Trump wins here. Is it really true that any time Mexico or Ecuador make a move against a drug kingpin, they're doing it at Trump's behest? Or because they were so impressed by Trump's snatching of Maduro? And just because they captured or killed someone, that's a success that will stand the test of time? I don't doubt that Trump's arrogance was boosted by the Maduro escapade — just like I don't doubt that Hitler's resolve to invade Poland got a boost from Chamberlain's cave-in at Munich. But that doesn't mean that Trump, any more than Hitler, drew the right lesson.

  • Ted Snider [03-09]: US and Iran were close to a deal before Trump chose war: This story has been fairly widely reported, and makes some sense, but with war plans clearly in the works, one doubts that Trump would have made any concessions to allow Iran to save face, and perhaps also that Israel was so much in control that any agreement would have been rendered impossible. What is certainly true is that an agreement to end Iran's uranium enrichment, which was the essential component for a nuclear weapons, could have been achieved, had the US and Israel shown the slightest interest in a peaceful resolution. But they had other points to make, and frankly weren't worried about uranium in the first place.

  • Max Boot [03-09]: There are two winners in Iran. Neither one is America. "Oil disruption benefits Russia, as does less US aid for Ukraine. And Iran distracts from China." The point about Russia and oil prices is pretty obvious. The one about China is mostly neocon fever dream. It is unlikely that China will take advantage of American distraction in Iran to attempt to seize Taiwan, because they probably realize that the real problem there isn't US deterrence but the unreadiness of the people to rejoin the mainland. Perhaps they could force the issue, but as long as reunification remains a future possibility, they have little reason to be impatient. The only thing likely to force their hand is if the US gets overly aggressive in securing independence for Taiwan — which seems to be the goal of the anti-China hawks, spoiling for a fantastical display of American omnipotence, oblivious to the risks of actual war. But note that there is nothing here about Israel as a winner. While the war certainly adds to Netanyahu's reputation as someone who can wrap Trump around his finger, it doesn't objectively help Israel at all. It just plunges them deeper into a wider war, which beyond providing cover for further "ethnic cleansing" creates more risk than reward.

  • Douglas J Feith [03-09]: Trump is trying something new in Iran. Hold on tight. "Critics demanding a 'day after' plan are confusing this presidency with that of George W Bush." Cited here in case you want to hear the latest thoughts from the guy Iraq War Gen. Tommy Franks called the "stupidest fucking guy on the planet," and who was later lampooned by Philip Weiss in [2008-07-30]: How did Doug Feith become a ridiculous figure?. Feith actually does a fairly good job of highlighting how Trump is different from Bush, and what the design is of his lose-lose-lost logic. He fails to note what the two have in common, which is a belief that they can kill their way to peace, and that God always smiles on America, so wars just always work out for the best. And he chides Democrats:

    Ironically, critics from the Democratic Party and elsewhere who are demanding to know the "day after" plan are implying that Trump should adopt Bush's outlook.

    That remark might have been clever, but he forgets that Bush didn't have a "day after" plan either. All he had was the "stupidest fucking guy on the planet" assigned to the job.

  • Kate McMahon [03-09]: Israel's goal in Iran is not just regime change, but complete collapse: "For Israel, a failed Iranian state fractured by civil war is preferable to any other outcome." That's largely because they can't imagine any better outcome. That's because they don't want peace. They just want an enemy they can strike with impunity.

  • Ron Paul [03-10]: Will the dollar be a casualty of the Iran war? I'm always curious about unseen risks of war, and don't doubt that this one will have hitherto unimagined impacts on world finance and trade. I'd be more worried if I thought Paul had the slightest idea how these things work, but he still hasn't gotten past the idea that you need enough gold to match the value of everything else.

  • Jonathan Cook [03-10]: Israel planned war on Iran for 40 years. Everything else is a smoke screen: I don't doubt that there are documents supporting this, as well as Netanyahu's testimony of dreaming of war with Iran for over 40 years, but I've long thought that Iran was the smokescreen, and that Israel's real interests scarcely extended beyond the occupied territories, specifically their eternal quest to create "a land without [Palestinian] people" for a people who wants it all."

  • Michael T Klare [03-10]: America's Gaza: "The bombing of Tehran." The population of the Tehran metropolitan area is 16.8 million, about 18% of Iran's total population of 93 million.

  • Benjamin Hart [03-11]: Israel doesn't want to beat Iran. It wants to break it. Interview with Danny Citrinowicz ("senior researcher in the Iran and Shi'ite Axis Program at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies"), who previously summed up Israel's position as:

    If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people in the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future . . . [or] the stability of Iran.

    He also adds, "In Israel, there is no opposition on the Iranian issue. . . . But people think Iran is the country that wants to destroy us, and you can always justify war with Iran regardless of the price we're going to pay." And Netanyahu is loving this:

    He's considering pushing the election a little bit earlier because he thinks he can build on this. You don't hear the opposition leaders talking about the war. Politically, it's a win-win situation from all sides: He's working with the U.S., so there are amazing operational opportunities. Nobody's challenging him, nobody can counter him, and he's not going to trial because there's a war. And none of this will hurt him in a very close and tight election.

    So look, as long as President Trump will continue this war, whether Trump is there a week, a month, a year — it doesn't matter. We will be there.

  • Eli Clifton/Ian S Lustick [03-12]: How the Israeli tail wags the American dog: "The US attack on Iran may be less about American security than about the priorities of Israel's government." Objectively that's certainly true. The only real security is in having others have no reason to attack you, which is the opposite of what one would expect after you attack them. Note also that we're not talking about security for Israel here, just interests. Israel's (or Netanyahu's) is to keep American military and financial aid flowing so Israel can keep operating their war machine, and using the threats they generate as cover for dispossessing Palestinians in their occupied lands.

  • Sasan Fayazmanesh [03-13]: It's Israel, stupid!:

    As I have written in my academic works, and in CounterPunch, Netanyahu, Israel's chief devil incarnate and the butcher of Gaza, did not take no for an answer and kept pushing every US administration to attack Iran. He had no success, until a deranged man, surrounded by conduits for Israel, including his son-in-law and a real estate friend, took control of the US government.

    A man who to this day, cannot even pronounce the name of the Iranian general he ordered to be assassinated in 2020, or the name of the "supreme leader" of Iran whom he helped to be murdered in 2026, finally did what Netanyahu wanted to be done: attack Iran on behalf of Israel. The first attack, as I wrote in my July 2025 essay for this journal, did not accomplish Netanyahu's goal of a "regime change" and restoration of monarchy in Iran. So, Netanyahu kept up the pressure. He visited the White House multiple times since July 2025 to plan death and destruction in Iran.

  • Mike Lofgren [03-14]: Why the Iran was was inevitable: "There were many reasons behind Trump's decision to attack — but none of them were about US national security."

  • Deepa Parent [03-14]: 'You are all worse than each other': anti-regime Iranians turn on Trump: "Mood among some in Iran shifts from hope of being rescued to dismay at destruction of infrastructure, culture and lives." I doubt if anyone in Iran ever looked to outsiders for "hope of being rescued. The best thing outsiders can do for the beleaguered people under a regime they despise is to leave them alone, or short of that limit their efforts to peripheral issues, like limiting trade and foreign investments, while reporting on human rights abuses. That is roughly what happened in the ending of the regimes in the Soviet Union and its East European satellites. On the other hand, vigorous sanctions against Cuba and North Korea, and Iraq before the invasion, only strengthened harsh regimes. This piece quotes someone foolish enough to think that Trump's strikes might help topple the regime, but that person's already disillusioned. It shouldn't have taken actual strikes to realize that Trump and Israel have their own reasons for war, and the welfare of the people of Iran has nothing to do with them.

  • Alfred W McCoy [03-15]: How the past whispers to the present in Iran: Good historical review of US mishandling of Iran, comparing this new war to the 1956 Suez Crisis, what he calls an instance of "micro-militarism," which is really just a vote for violence without thinking through how much you are risking.

  • Bassam Haddad [03-15]: How might the US-Israeli war on Iran fail?: "Every week the US-Israeli war grinds on without a decisive conclusion becomes a lesson in the limits of US power. A campaign initially meant to reinforce US and Israeli supremacy may instead signal its decline." This doesn't go beyond the obvious, other than to stress that the attacks have only consolidated the regime's power in Iran.

  • Richard Florida [03-16]: Could this be the end of Dubai?

  • Lauren Aratani [03-18]: Trump waives US shipping law for oil and gas in bid to lower prices: "Trump issued a 60-day waiver of the Jones Act, a law passed in 1920 as a way to protect the US shipping industry. The law prevents foreign-flagged ships that carry commodities like oil and gas from traveling through US waterways."

  • Michelle Goldberg

    • [03-18]: Joe Kent's resignation letter is dangerous because it's half true: Kent was Trump's director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He resigned, admitting that there was no imminent threat from Iran, and blaming Israel for spreading misinformation that led to Trump's decision to attack. Kent is a former Green Beret, who moved into counterterrorism (and politics) after his wife was killed by an ISIS suicide bomber. He could be called a right-wing nut case, but he's also "half-right," which Goldberg admits while worrying that "it taps into old antisemitic tropes about occult Jewish control," and "the more [the war] drags on, the more I worry about a full-blown American 'dolchstoßlegende,' a modern version of the stab-in-the-back myth that German nationalists used to blame Jews for their humiliation in World War I." I'd note that those tropes only persist on the right, where they are outnumbered by neocons and Christian Zionists who envy and/or worship Israeli power. Still, dispelling them will be difficult given how Netanyahu brags about his manipulation of Trump, the obvious dissembling of Israel lobbyists (Jonathan Greenblatt, head of ADL, is quoted here), and their insistence that opposition to Israel's caste system and genocide equates to antisemitism (let's call this the power of suggestion to otherwise naive people). Also that no matter how bad the Iran war goes for the US, it won't result in the degree of defeat Germany suffered in 1918 (or France in 1871, where a similar myth led to the Dreyfuss Affair).

    • [03-16]: Trump is trying to bully America into supporting his war. It won't work.

  • Eldar Mamedov [03-18]: Israel's assassination game: Take all the pragmatists off the board: "The killing of Ali Larijani paves the way for more hardliners to fill the void, and conveniently for some, less chance to end the war peacefully."

  • Naman Karl-Thomas Habtom [03-18]: Iran war shows perils of America's Mideast bases: "US outposts are sitting targets for Iranian strikes." I imagine they are fairly well protected, but they open their host countries up for attacks against softer targets. Iran is going to be looking for some kind of assurance that they won't be attacked again. The most reassuring proof I can think of would be the the US to remove its bases. This would have to be initiated by the host countries, who should be having second thoughts about allowing aggressive militarists to camp on their lawns. This could be combined with normalized relations and armament limits that would build trust and benefit all. And if this happened, Trump could hardly refuse to leave.

  • Kelley Beaucar Vlahos [03-18]: Vast number of Trump voters want him to declare victory and get out: "A new poll showing cracks in MAGA support and no interest in boots on the ground."

  • Arron Reza Merat [03-18]: Israel has nuclear weapons. It may use them. Worse, Netanyahu may trick Trump into using them. The prospect I can imagine is that Iran can resist conventional bombing indefinitely, while keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed, inflicting sporadic damage on Gulf targets, while Trump (not Israel) grows frustrated and impatient. Iran tries to hide its arms factories, moving most of them deep underground. This includes its stockpiles of uranium, any centrifuges that have survived, and parts for repairing or making more ones. The US supply of conventional "bunker buster" bombs proves inadequate, but they've developed nuclear warheads specifically as "bunker busters." They may feel that aiming them at remote targets can be justified, and go ahead. Global opinion condemns them, but doesn't stop them from launching another, and another, by which point someone proposes that they threaten a small city if Iran doesn't surrender. (My first thought was the holy city of Qom, but I was surprised to find it has amassed 1.2 million people, so they might want to pick somewhere a bit smaller for a demonstration.) Of course, if/when Iran develops their own nuke, the shoe will be on the other foot, at which point US and/or Israeli panic could very well ensue (and this is where Israeli panic could race ahead of American).

  • Robert Kuttner [03-18]: Israel's manipulation of Trump on Iran: "The worse the Iran war goes, the more blame is likely to be directed at Israel, and by association the Jews."

  • Blaise Malley [03-19]: Tulsi Gabbard distances US war goals further from Israel's: "In the congressional hot seat Thursday, the DNI and CIA director John Ratcliffe insisted Tel Aviv was focused on regime change but Washington was not."

  • Jason Wilson [03-19]: West Point analysis warns that strait of Hormuz blockade will strangle US defense industry: "Report shows how minerals critical to defense readiness have seen 'near total' disruption in seaborne trade." Take sulphur, for instance, which is used to extract copper and cobalt from low-grade ores. "The current sulfur shock is becoming a copper problem, and that copper problem risks quickly becoming a readiness and resilience problem." They call this a "prelogistical crisis," which is to say a crisis which will be ignored until it's too late.

  • Alex Shephard [03-19]: This is how forever wars begin: "First, with lies and bombs. Then, with a request for hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars. Will Congress cave to the White House yet again?"

  • Ryan Cooper [03-20]: Ol' Donny Trump has really stepped in it this time: "In Iran, he finally created a jam for himself it will not be easy to wriggle out of." There's a reference here to an interesting piece from 2024 called Revisiting the tanker war, which Cooper sums up here:

    The Pentagon has filing cabinets stuffed with war plans dealing with this possibility. The U.S. might take out most of Iran's formal military, but even back in the 1980s during the Tanker War, when Iran was much less developed than it is today, the Navy found it very difficult to stop irregular forces from laying mines at night, or planting limpet bombs, conducting missile attacks from speedboats, and so on. Operation Earnest Will, an escort mission to keep the strait open, required more than two dozen ships operating simultaneously (including support from both the British and the French), went on for more than a year, and saw significant casualties.

    Today, not only do we have drone technology making these types of attacks much more dangerous and effective, but also the U.S. Navy is much smaller than it was at the end of the Cold War. In particular, it has almost none of the frigates and minesweepers that were core to the Tanker War's escort mission.

    Cooper also gets into the "how will this end" question, suggesting that "the easiest and least painful way to end Trump's war is likely just to give up and let Iran seize the strait" — assuming they would be content to collect tolls to allow ships to pass, but he doubts that would satisfy them (and obviously it wouldn't satisfy Trump or Netanyahu).

    Making everything worse is Trump's alliance with Israel, whose government is evidently bent on turning Iran into a stygian nightmare of death and suffering. As noted above, the destruction of Ras Laffan was touched off by an Israeli strike — and it happened after Trump asked Israel not to. Iran struggles to hit back at Israel, but it can hit at the allies of Israel's most important ally, and increase the pressure on the global economy.

    What Trump usually does when one of his dotard plots backfires is to retreat — chicken out, as Wall Street has called it — and pretend it never happened. That sort of works with something like tariffs, where long-term damage takes a long time to appear. But it likely won't be possible here. . . .

    So if Trump tries to cut and run, he will face one of the few things he reacts to — a storm of criticism on television — plus fierce pushback from the D.C. blob. Even if he were to try to do it, Israel almost certainly would bait him back into the conflict by inciting more tit-for-tat bombing.

    If Trump doesn't cut and run, he faces a hole in global energy needs that grows by about 20 million barrels of oil and 20 billion cubic feet of natural gas every day, with steadily increasing damage to the delicate energy infrastructure all around the Persian Gulf that will take months or years to repair, and more and more American soldiers wounded or killed.

    It would be a thorny situation even for the wisest statesmen in world history. Alas, all we have is an elderly idiot whose primary method of diplomacy is posting barely literate screeds on his personal social media site. Folks, it isn't looking good.

  • Yumna Patel [03-20]: Anger in the GCC spreads as Iran retaliates over US-Israeli strikes: "These are signs of the growing impatience of Iran's Arab neighbors with Iran's tactic of striking at them in response to Israeli or American attacks. But the anger of the Gulf states isn't only reserved for Iran." A lot of stress here, which could crack up several ways.

  • Bryan Walsh [03-20]: The pain from the Strait of Hormuz crisis will be felt far beyond the pump: "Four billion people are fed by fossil fuels. The Iran war is showing just how fragile that is." There's a chart here that argues that about half of the world's current population (8 billion) wouldn't be able to live today without synthetic fertilizers, which are mostly made with oil, with about 30% normally shipped through the now closed Strait of Hormuz. This production and distribution has developed with little thought from political leaders, especially ones as stupid and careless as Trump and Netanyahu, who have now endangered the entire world.

  • Caitlin Dewey [03-20]: What everyday life is like for Iranians right now: "Iranians are still trying to work, study, and parent under the constant threat of both airstrikes and regime violence." This is a good question, but to answer it they're interviewing Roya Rastegar, a co-founder of Iranian Diaspora Collective, which is to say someone not in Iran, claiming only to be "in touch with a network of people on the ground in Iran," and even so "the blackout makes it almost impossible to hear about conditions on the ground in real time." So cue to say whatever you think is happening.

  • Ian Welsh [03-20]: This is the end of the American empire. Period. Opens with:

    My friends, this is it. America isn't going to win this war, unless they use nukes, but even if I'm wrong and they squeeze out their .01% chance of success, it is over. The army is exhausted and can't be re-armed in less than a decade, with Chinese help. The Middle East will be in ruins. The AI bubble will crash out without money and resources from the Gulf. Everyone's going to turn hard from hydrocarbons to renewables, especially solar, and that means China is going to make absolute bank.

    I'm a little confused when he demotes this to "the second stupidest war decision I've seen in my entire life" ("the first was Ukraine refusing a very generous peace deal," something I somehow missed, but I don't doubt that Ukraine was solvable had Obama, Trump, and Biden shown any actual concern for the country they were arming), and it's probable that his life is a good deal shorter a period of time than mine. I also doubt that "the Israelis almost certainly have video of Trump raping kids," but in the same sentence he hits on a truism: "Americans can't admit they're losing." So caveat lector here, please do your own thinking. My thinking is divided between: yes, the empire may not be finished, but it is bound to be severely diminished; and, well, it wasn't really an empire in the first place, just a network of bases and arms placed at the service of global capitalism, which probably doesn't need them anymore (not least because countries like China and Russia are already part of that global capitalism, and others like Iran and Venezuela want to be, just not on America's terms).

  • Brian McGlinchey [03-20]: Jion the US military — kill and die for Israel: This seems like a fair and useful debunking of many of the propaganda points used to indict Iran, turning them into a suitable target for US-Israeli aggression. Whether the US is doing its part for Israel or for its own reasons can be debated.

  • Robert Wright [03-21]: War isn't a zero-sum game. I happen to be reading Wright's 2000 book Nonzero, so I'm deep into this sort of logic:

    But, that inconvenience aside, the fact that war is non-zero-sum seems like potentially good news. If nations rationally pursue their self-interest, shouldn't the knowledge that war often makes both sides worse off discourage them from starting wars?

    In theory, maybe. But, back in the real world, there's a massively destructive war going on in the Middle East.

    Well, we might as well put it to good use! I think viewing the Iran War in game theoretical terms can shed light on the question of why humankind seems so bad at respecting the logic of game theory — why nations keep getting into wars that, history tells us, may inflict huge costs on all concerned.

    While I don't want to distract from the very enlightening discussion that follows, I already have two points to make. One is that the weights get distorted when you absolutely don't care for how much harm is done to the other side (or even more if you regard that harm as a positive for your side). This is unfortunately common. Even countries that see themselves as liberators struggle to act in ways that show concern. Then there are countries that are totally self-concerned, like Israel. Second, some countries give themselves a handicap, by assuming that they will be attacked, and counting the losses they could suffer in that event as gains when they attack first.

    Well, I also have a third, which is that hardly anyone thinks to anticipate the long-range costs of seeming to win. Israel's stunning "win" in 1967 led directly to the 1970-71 and 1973 wars, and indirectly to dozens more, including the current war with Iran. Japan's big wins in 1895 and 1905 led to their massive defeat in WWII. Even before such a final reckoning, the arrogance and belligerence took a psychic toll, on the warriors as well as their victims. It's been said that the worst thing that ever happened to the US was "winning" WWII. The US became a very different country after that, much to the woe of the world and to ourselves.

    And maybe there's a fourth point, which is that the people who decide to go to war simply aren't very good at figuring out why. Wright finally gets around to this:

    I listen to a lot of podcasts, and some of them are what you could call foreign policy establishment podcasts — they're produced by, say, the Council on Foreign Relations or some very buttoned up DC think tank, or they feature conversations among the kinds of people who work at such places. And, almost invariably, the people on these podcasts, in gravely assessing the motivations that start and then steer wars, stay at the level of geopolitics and national interest and assiduously avoid the level of domestic politics. To hear them talk you'd think that Trump was Metternich — or at least a dimmer version of Metternich — rather than a former Reality TV star who is just trying to keep his ratings up by staging a new spectacle that's more eye-catching than the last one.

    This kind of credulous discourse is a disservice to the nation. It sustains the myth that the people who steer American foreign policy are by and large worth taking seriously. They're not. The politicians who steer it are for the most part just trying to get re-elected — and will serve whichever cluster of special interests can further that cause. And the "experts" who help steer it, including many of the voices on these podcasts, are people who managed to get hired by think tanks that, for the most part, are funded by the same special interests that are corrupting those politicians.

  • Karim Sadjadpour [03-23]: Iran is trying to defeat America in the living room: "The regime knows that its best ally against American power is American public opinion."

    Although opinion polls, oil prices, and the number of projectiles remaining are measurable, the fate of the war will be determined in part by the resolve of both parties, something far more difficult to measure. A democratic president's will to fight is constrained by elections, polls, gas prices, and the news cycle. An authoritarian regime fighting for its survival answers to none of those pressures. Reagan had resolve until Congress didn't. Bush had resolve until six in 10 Americans called his war a mistake. This asymmetry of resolve is Iran's greatest structural advantage. Tehran wins by not losing; Trump loses by not winning.

  • Kelly Grieco [03-23]: The "Iran is losing" narrative is tracking the wrong number: "Yes, missile and drone launch rates are down 90%+. But hit rate (or confirmed impacts per projectile fired) has been climbing steadily since Day 1." The thread provides more numbers. "And on the metric that matters (cost imposed per missile fired) Iran may actually be getting more effective as the war goes on, not less."

  • Yun Li [03-23]: Volume in stock and oil futures surged minutes before Trump's market-turning post.

    • Paul Krugman [03-24]: Treason in the futures markets: Takes a closer look at this event. I hate the word "treason," and wouldn't use it here, but this sure looks suspicious, even compared to the level of graft we've come to expect. As I recall, back during the Bush admin, some genius wanted to create a futures market on terror attacks, purely as a way to harness the genius of markets as an intelligence source. The idea suffered a crib death, as the prospect of betting on terrorism was hard even for neocons to swallow. New "prediction markets" raise the same concerns about moral hazard, but they're run by the private sector, so nobody asked permission, and this administration won't lift a finger, possibly because ideologically they want rackets unregulated, or perhaps just because they want to use their insider knowledge to play?

      This "sharp and isolated jump in volume" — which you can see for the oil futures market in the chart at the top of this post — was especially bizarre because there were no major news items — no major publicly available news items — to drive sudden big market transactions. The story would be baffling, except that there's an obvious explanation: Somebody close to Trump knew what he was about to do, and exploited that inside information to make huge, instant profits.

      This wasn't the first time something like this has happened under Trump. There were large, suspicious moves in the prediction market Polymarket before previous attacks on Iran and Venezuela. But this front-running of U.S. policy was really large: the Financial Times estimates the sales of oil futures in that magic minute Monday morning at about $580 million, and that doesn't count the purchases of stock futures.

  • Katherine Doyle/Courtney Kube/Dan DeLuce [03-25]: Inside Trump's daily video montage briefing on the Iran war: "The montage, which typically runs for about two minutes, has raised concerns among some of the president's allies that he may not be receiving the complete picture of the war."

  • Dave DeCamp: He writes short news items for Antiwar.com. These are merely the most recent:

Epsteinmania: As Steven Colbert noted right after Trump started the war: "Fun fact: 'Epic Fury' [the name given to the "operation"] is an anagram for 'Forget Epstein.'" This abbreviated section suggests it's working (but I've never pushed the story hard).

  • Elie Honig [03-06]: The Clintons have testified about Epstein. Will Trump be next? No. Nor an I sure he should, but I can't blame folks for asking. The Republicans opened up this can of worms, in one of their few efforts at bipartisanship. As noted, Hilary had nothing to offer, and the only reason for subpoenaing her was to put on the record something we already knew: that Bill sometimes operated on his own. As for Bill, after admitting "some truth of Clinton's claim that he 'did nothing wrong,' Honig continues:

    But the "saw nothing" part of his testimony is open to reasonable questioning. Consider, first, that Clinton's friendship with Epstein peaked in the early 2000s — right as Epstein was running his massive international child-sex-trafficking ring, according to the Justice Department's indictment of Epstein, which charged criminal conduct up until 2005. And this wasn't some passing relationship, some casual glad-handing of a potential donor. Clinton flew on Epstein's plane at least 16 times, sent a warm note to Epstein on his 50th birthday in 2003, and gave a glowing quote to New York Magazine for a 2002 Epstein profile. He also shows up in many photographs partying and swimming and hot-tubbing and receiving massages while with Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and others — including women whose identities have been redacted. (Clinton testified that he did not know and did not have sex with his hot-tub partner.) Yet, through it all, Clinton — a Yale-trained lawyer, reputed possessor of a genius-level IQ, two-term former president — had no idea at all that anything might have been awry, not even an "inkling."

SAVE America Act: "Republicans are pushing to get historically restrictive voter ID bill to the president's desk." Evidently "SAVE" stands for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, a program "initially made to check if non-citizens were using government benefits." But the proposed law reportedly is much more restrictive, requiring a "birth certificate or passport," something which "half of Americans don't have." People who have changed their names, especially married women, face further obstacles. (I have an expired passport and a "REAL ID" drivers license. Unclear whether either would work, although both are based on a valid birth certificate.) The bill also adds burdens to mail in ballots. (Trump wants to completely ban them.) The bill passed the House on Feb. 11, and is being debated in the Senate.

  • Eliza Sweren-Becker/Owen Backskai [03-20]: New SAVE Act bills would still block millions of American from voting.

  • Jelinda Montes [03-18]: Trump is going all in on the SAVE America Act. It could make voting harder for millions.

  • Jamelle Bouie [03-18]: This is what the president is fixated on right now? He points out that the bill could backfire against Republicans, as it most clearly discriminates against several groups that broke for Trump last time, like women who changed their name for marriage, and uneducated people who never got a passport. I'd throw in older folk who lost track of their documentation (I may be one: I have an expired passport, which should still prove my citizenship, but does it?). Perhaps the biggest question is who has enough motivation to fight the bureaucracy just to vote? Still, Trump and his party cling to the notion that the fewer people who can vote, the better:

    The point of the SAVE Act, for them, is to use a ginned-up panic over noncitizen voting to disenfranchise the tens of millions of Americans who oppose the president and who have, as a result, been placed outside the political community. The SAVE Act embodies Trump and the Republican Party's astonishing contempt for the idea that a fair election is one in which you can vote without being hassled by the state.

The Oscars: Prodded on by my wife, I managed to watch most of the nominated pictures (without, sorry to say, enjoying them much), so I was better informed than usual. I also watched the whole show (on a delay from fixing dinner, so we could fast-forward through the commercials). In last week's Music Week, I wrote a bit about the movies in advance of the show. Maybe I'll follow up in the next Music Week?

Major Threads

Israel: Netanyahu finally got his war against Iran, which is mostly reported in the long Trump Bombs Iran section. Hezbollah offered enough of a reaction for Israel to renew its assault on Lebanon (not that, despite a "ceasefire," it had ever halted). But more importantly, the Iran war distracts the US from Israel's violations of the "Gaza Peace Plan," and provides cover for more aggression against Palestinians in the West Bank.

  • Yakov Hirsch [03-04]: The War to Erase October 7: What 'The Atlantic' leaves out about Netanyahu and the US-Israeli assault on Iran: "The Atlantic's Yair Rosenberg recasts Benjamin Netanyahu as a tragic figure forced to take radical action after October 7, ignoring his long history of fomenting war and exploiting Jewish trauma to further himself and his Zionist ideology." The section on "Weaponizing Holocaust memory" is useful for understanding the psychology that underlies Israeli politics:

    This silence is not just personal to Rosenberg. It flows from a broader Hasbara Culture that treats Netanyahu's worldview as sacred. A certain cluster of "Never Again" journalists — Jeffrey Goldberg, Rosenberg, Kirchick, and others — have spent decades telling American readers that Israel's enemies should be read through Holocaust categories. Iran is not just a hostile state; it is Amalek. Hamas is not just a brutal, rejectionist movement; they are, as Rosenberg himself argues, the new Nazis who simply want to kill Jews. Anyone who doubts that framework is portrayed as naive at best, or dangerously indulgent of genocidal antisemitism at worst. . . .

    In Hasbara Culture's world, Netanyahu is not just another politician; he is the man who sees 1938 coming again. His constant talk of "existential threats" is treated not as rhetoric but as revelation. Once you accept that frame, questioning his motives becomes almost taboo. If you say he is exaggerating or exploiting the threat, you are implicitly saying Jews should not take existential danger seriously. If you suggest he is using Holocaust memory for political gain, you risk being lumped with the people who accuse "the Jews" of "using" the Holocaust.

    That is why, when Netanyahu throws around Amalek and Holocaust analogies, these journalists nod along. It is why they treated his Gaza campaign and now his Iran war primarily as responses to October 7, rather than as the culmination of a long political and ideological project. And the long political and ideological project is the revisionist Zionist program he inherited and perfected: a maximalist claim to the land between the river and the sea; permanent rejection of Palestinian sovereignty; and an "iron wall" ethic that treats overwhelming, exemplary violence as the only reliable guarantee of Jewish safety and supremacy. Read this way, his invocations of Amalek and the Holocaust are not just panic or trauma, but the moral vocabulary of a worldview that prefers endless war-management, de facto annexation, and regional work-arounds to any settlement that would concede equal rights to Palestinians — and that is exactly how Gaza, and now Iran, end up looking like destiny rather than choice.

    Rosenberg's article is here:

  • Tareq S Hajjaj:

  • Ross Barkan [03-06]: The day Israel lost America: "The Iran war sure looks like a breaking point."

  • Qassam Muaddi:

  • Mohammed R Mhawish [03-09]: The Iran war is a disaster for Gaza: "How the crisis leaves Gaza's 2 million people more friendless, isolated, and vulnerable than ever before."

  • Ahmed Dremly/Ibtisam Mahdi [03-10]: 'The war is between Israel and Iran. Why should people in Gaza pay the price?': "After closures of Gaza's crossings drove up food casts and stalled medical evacuations, ongoing Israeli strikes raise fears of a renewed large-scale assault." One could also wonder why Iran should pay the price of Israel's war against Gaza. I fear it's reached the point where it no longer matters to Israel who they are hitting, as long as they are hitting someone else, showing the world that this is what they can and will do.

  • Michael Arria [03-10]: US support for Israel continues to plummet, despite media's best efforts. "Last month, a Gallup poll found that 41% Americans now sympathize more with Palestinians, compared to 36% who say they sympathize more with Israelis." Further down, I saw a term I hadn't heard before: "Holocaust inversion," which is a new code for people who think Israel is guilty of genocide. This tries to force an analogy with "Holocaust denial," which is not uncommon (but probably exaggerated) among old-school antisemites. But the new charge is very different: those who are so charged not only acknowledge the Holocaust, they are consistent in applying the standard definition of genocide, regardless of who's doing the killing, and who's being killed.

  • Elia Ayoub [03-11]: Israel's renewed war on Lebanon is about more than just Hezbollah: "After violating the 'ceasefire' 10,000 times, Israel is once again pounding Lebanon as its enduring thirst for war drives ever expanding ambitions."

  • Oren Ziv [03-13]: 'Our coverage is not truthful': How Israel is censoring reporting on the war: "Barred from publishing details of Iranian missile impacts or interceptions, local and international journalists are struggling to tell the full story."

  • Janet Abou-Elias [03-18]: US policy toward Lebanon is badly broken: "Washington has stoked a cycle of violence by prizing Israeli security over Lebanese stability." Sane people would realize that stability is essential for security, and focus on the basics. Israel has proven repeatedly that security must be mutual, and cannot be attained by one side repeatedly bombing the other.

  • Mayssoun Sukarieh [03-20]: The Gods must be cruel: Inside Israel's psychological warfare campaign in Lebanon: "Israel is waging a campaign of psychological warfare in Beirut by projecting godlike power from the skies, raining down bombs that mete out death and dropping leaflets vowing that Beirut and Gaza will share in the same fate."

  • Michael Sfard [03-21]: From Sde Teiman, the truth about Israel's military justice system has been set free: "By dropping all charges against the soldiers filmed abusing a Palestinian detainee, Israel has abandoned the whole masquerade of accountability."

  • Oren Ziv/Ariel Caine [03-24]: "Erasing the l ines": How settlers are seizing new regions of the West Bank: "After decades consolidating their control over Area C, Israeli settlers are expanding into Areas B and A — nominally under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction — and displacing communities."

Elsewhere Around the World: With Ukraine turning into something of a forgotten war, I thought I'd extend this section to pick up bits on how the rest of the world is reacting to Trump's adventurism. As far as I can tell, slowly and cautiously, which doesn't make for a lot of news, but I suspect there is more going on than I'm noticing.

Trump Threatens the World: I originally set this section up to deal with Trump's threats of war. We're obviously beyond that now, so see the section on Iran for more on that. Nothing much on Cuba here, but that front seems to be heating up. But there is a fair amount here on Trump's newfound militarist mentality. For a while, I thought Trump had an aversion to war — while appreciating the military's usefulness for graft — that distinguished him from classic fascists, but once again we find that fascist power fetishism inevitably ends in war.

  • Leah Schroeder [02-17]: Further US intervention in Haiti would be worst Trump move of all: "Washington sent warships this month to deploy 'gunboat diplomacy' while the island nation continues its frefall of violence and corruption." Note date, 11 days before Iran. Never say never.

  • David French [03-01]: War and peace cannot be left to one man — especially not this man. I disagree with much of this, but he tries hard to make "a case for striking Iran":

    As my colleague Bret Stephens has argued, the Iranian regime is evil, hostile to the United States and militarily aggressive. It has engaged in a decades-long conflict with the United States. Beginning with the hostage crisis in 1979 — when Iranians seized and held American diplomats and Embassy employees for 444 days — Iran has conducted countless direct and indirect attacks against the United States.

    Iranian-backed terrorists are responsible for the Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon in 1983 that killed 241 Americans. Iranian-backed terrorists killed 19 Americans in the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996. Iran-backed militias killed hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq.

    Since the second Iraq war, Iranian-backed militias have continued their attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. In fact, it's fair to say that Iran's efforts to attack and kill Americans have been relentless for decades.

    Beyond its attacks on Americans, Iran is one of the most aggressive and destabilizing regimes in the world. It has supported Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis — three of the world's most powerful terrorist militias — it has attacked Israel with ballistic missiles, and it has supplied Russia with drones to use in its illegal invasion of Ukraine.

    Iran is deeply repressive at home. It stifles dissent, deprives women of their most basic human rights and massacres its own people by the thousands when they protest against the regime.

    If you're going to list foreign countries that should not obtain access to nuclear weapons, Iran should be at or close to the very top. Blocking Iran's ability to develop and deploy nuclear weapons is among our most vital national interests.

    This omits a lot of context, and also ignores the counterargument that if these constitute a casus belli for attacking Iran, one could construct a much longer list of similar reasons striking the US. Reasonable people should object to strikes on either, not based on the historical facts but because the attacks won't solve the problem, and will only lead to more problems. (By the way, I don't mean to justify the attitudes and behavior of Iran's rulers. I am critical of them, but one of my main complaints is the extent to which they have embraced their enemies' views on deterrence, subversion, and ultimately war. I also object to what I take to be the arrogant belief that they are a great country and deserve to have influence over lesser countries in the region.)

    French also offers a "case against an attack," which sad to say is even lamer than his case for. It starts with the worry that in attacking Iran, Trump is wasting missiles needed to deter China from attacking Taiwan. More sensible are his worries that Iran will fight back effectively, that the regime might not fall or collapse, and that its new leaders will emerge even more determined than ever to develop the nuclear weapons, especially since those Iranians who favored a path of caution have been killed off.

  • Mark Mazzetti, et al. [03-02]: How Trump decided to go to war: "President Trump's embrace of military action in Iran was spurred by an Israeli leader determined to end diplomatic negotiations. Few of the president's advisers voiced opposition." The "paper of record" explains the semi-official story, which mostly makes sense, even if the reporters have little sense of just how extraordinarily deranged Trump's decision is. The essential elements are: Netanyahu's long, determined campaign to ensnare Trump in a war with Iran; the staffing of the White House and Pentagon with action-first figures, fitting Trump's own instincts; and "a remarkable piece of intelligence," an opportunity for decapitation which spurred Trump to act immediately. The assassination strike is reported here:

  • Michelle Goldberg [03-02]: The idea that Trump was antiwar was always delusional: "Trump's foreign policy has often been less a repudiation of neoconservatism than a mutation of it." Also: "This has always been the real Trump doctrine. Not no wars, but no rules."

  • Ben Rhodes [03-02]: Trump may come to regret this: I doubt it, but that may be because whenever I see Trump's smiling mug, I immediately flash to the face of Alfred E Neumann, whose motto was "what, me worry?" I'm also reminded of the line in the Fog of War movie, where someone comments that "everyone's having Bob's ulcer but Bob." ("Bob" is Vietnam-era Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, the guy who famously saw the "light at the end of the tunnel." What I do wonder is whether Rhodes regrets his own not inconsiderable role in the long "real men go to Tehran" march to this war? He doesn't say, nor does he mention his old boss, Barack Obama.

  • Ross Barkan [03-02]: Republican Warmongers are back in control: Especially Marco Rubio, who Trump in 2016 "mocked for being a neocon . . . a 'perfect little puppet' of hawkish megadonor Sheldon Adelson." Adelson's widow has since become Trump's top donor (or maybe 2nd to Elon Musk).

    There is a dark political logic to this administration's military adventures in Venezuela and Iran and the aborted threat to seize Greenland. As Trump's popularity plummets at home, his immigration and economic policies largely judged a failure by the American people, he has turned to sowing chaos abroad. Overseas, American presidents can act more like sultans than democratic leaders. Military operations can be launched without congressional oversight. Trump, increasingly emboldened, has indicated he might topple Cuba next. All of this is easier and more enjoyable for him than addressing the plight of the American people.

    Barkan notes that "killing a brutal dictator is easy — even Barack Obama did it in Libya"; but "power vacuums are dangerous, and old regime hands don't simply vanish into smoke." Also:

    Little of this new conflict in Iran makes sense other than as a wish-fulfillment scheme for Israel and frothing American neoconservative warriors. The U.S. already claimed to obliterate Iran's sites that were aimed at building nuclear-weapons capacity. The Iranian regime, hobbled before the air strikes, posed little threat to the U.S. Its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas have already been crushed by Israel, the latter in the de facto genocide in Gaza.

    An unsettling reality is that the current crop of neoconservatives in the Trump administration, beginning with Rubio, do not seem to believe in the need to make a popular case for what they do. When Bush invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, he had the American people, misguided as they were, at his back. He had Republicans and Democrats. In apparently starting a war with Iran, the Trump administration has won over the minuscule slice of hawks in the electorate (and the much larger contingent in Washington), but that's about it. Younger Americans on the left and right are weary of what feels like America's constant capitulation to Israel.

  • Aaron Pellish/Eric Bazail-Eimil [03-03]: US launches military operations in Ecuador: "The joint military operation with Ecuador targeted what the US called 'designated terrorist organizations' in the country."

  • Jordan Michael Smith [03-06] Donald Trump has lit a global match: "Trump and his aides think the United States has global leverage that his predecessors refused to use. He seems to forget that other countries have leverage, too — and they're intent on using it to stop him." It's long bothered me to hear the US presidency described as "the most powerful job in the world," probably because it implied what Trump was the first to clearly hear: that the president can do anything, shake anyone else down, and they will have no choice but to submit.

  • Andrew O'Hehir [03-08]: Behind Trump's war fever lies profound weakness: "US wages fast-escalating war, with no clear motivation and no realistic plan. It isn't fooling anyone." Well, they seem to be fooling themselves. Was the problem with Obama really just "no drama"? Is it possible he just didn't know how to get credit for being rational, predictable, and boring?

  • Thomas B Edsall [03-08]: The smash-and-grab presidency reaches its apex.

    But it isn't just in foreign countries. The willingness to adopt policies that will result in increased deaths among Americans, particularly within Trump's loyal MAGA electorate, pervades administration decision making, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, as I wrote in two previous essays, "What Can't Trump Wreck?" and "The MAHA Pipe Dream Is Going to Hurt MAGA the Most."

    Even so, Trump's war against Iran stands apart from past policies adopted on impulse. In this case, preliminary developments suggest Trump will pay a political price for his lack of careful planning and impetuous behavior. In fact, he may be forced to take responsibility for lost lives, damage to U.S. facilities and allies' cities, economic setbacks and the failure to anticipate predictable adverse events.

  • Casey Ryan Kelly [03-10]: Why Pete Hegseth talks like he's in an action movie: "Many observers were taken aback by his haughty tone, hypermasculine preoccupation with domination, giddiness about violence and casual attitude toward death." This notes that speaking "in a manner that is bombastic, outrageous and perverse" isn't unusual in Trump's cabinet (cf. Kash Patel, Sean Duffy, Mehmet Oz), but Hegseth more than any other has made a role out of it. (Meanwhile, Trump himself seems to be becoming terminally blasé.)

Trump Attacks America: Law, lawlessness, and the courts.

  • Sophia Tesfaye [03-17]: Trump wants to punish media for his unpopular war: "The president and FCC Chair Brendan Carr are threatening journalists and broadcasters for their coverage of Iran." "Carr's threat is a grotesque distortion of the FCC's mandate."

  • Elie Honig [03-20]: Trump's losing war against the Federal Reserve: "The thing is, if he'd gone about it more smartly, he would have gotten his way."

  • Robert Kuttner [03-20]: How Trump lost the courts: "With every passing day, another federal judge issues a scathing order to contain Trump's autocracy and Trump keeps alienating the Supreme Court." Don't get excited too soon. But one thing you can expect judges to do is to defend their own authority, which Trump's megalomania is threatening to run roughshod over. If Republicans do manage to pass the "SAVE" act, I think it's going to have a rough time in the courts, and not just because it's blatantly unconstitutional, but because it is corrosive of the idea that the government (including the courts) reflects the will of the people.

Trump's Administration: What they're up to while you're distracted by the flood of shit emanating from the White House.

  • Joah E Bromwich/Michael S Schmidt [03-02]: Trump Administration abandons efforts to impose orders on law firms: "The move amounts to a surrender in a clash that has led many law firms to submit to the president rather than face the threat of his executive orders." For starters, this makes the firms that surrendered in cases that could easily have been defended and won look cowardly and probably complicit in Trump's outrageous shakedowns.

  • Sarah Jones [03-05]: The myth of the root cause: Meet "Dr." Casey Means, Trump's quack nominee for Surgeon General.

  • David Dayen [03-19]: The quietest government shutdown: "It's been almost imperceptible, but the Department of Homeland Security hasn't been funded since February. Avenues to resolve the standoff keep getting cut off." Last month I had this as a separate story, but it barely qualifies for a mention this time — just long lines and other concerns at airports (here's a summary of How a DHS shutdown affects different components and employees). PS: Okay, here's some news on the shutdown:

  • Maxine Joselow/Brad Plumer [03-23]: Trump admistration to pay $1 billion to energy giant to cancel wind farms: And, in case you didn't think the title was outrageous enough: "In exchange, the French company TotalEnergies would inest in oil and natural gas projects in Texas and elsewhere."

Donald Trump, Himself: Up close and personal, or blown up into some kind of cosmic enigma.

  • Margaret Hartmann:

  • Robert Reich [03-19]: Dear allies of America, please don't confuse our president with us: "We are trying our best to resist him, contain him and remove him from office as quickly as we possibly can. Thank you for your patience." This is really dumb. In the first place, our efforts aren't really working, nor are them likely to work until his term expires in 2029, if then. Sure, inside the US, there are lots of things that we are doing, or trying to do, to reduce the damage Trump is causing, but outside the US, for all intents and purposes Trump is the US, and you need to adjust your thinking to that simple fact. Just because you used to have an alliance with the US government (which was never the same as the American people), and thought that worthwhile, doesn't mean that Trump is still your ally, or won't fuck you over on some arbitrary whim. You have to do what's best for you, then reevaluate and adjust in 2029, if things change. Reich writes (my numbers, for future reference):

    In point of fact, we the people of the United States do need your help.

    1. We need your help fighting the global climate crisis.
    2. We need your help heading off pandemics.
    3. We need your help countering global criminal gangs that are trafficking people and dangerous drugs and weapons.
    4. We need your help fighting global poverty, hunger and disease.
    5. We need your help safeguarding freedom and democracy from authoritarian regimes intent on extinguishing freedom and democracy around the world.

    These are all things (and the list is far from exhaustive) that all people in all nations should want to work together on. In olden days, the US could help its "allies" on these (and vice versa), but Trump has changed that: He's said that 1 & 2 aren't problems, so you're on your own; 4 may still be a problem, but it isn't ours; 3 is something we're going to address with arbitrary violence, which you can join in on but have no authority over; and for 5, we want more authoritarian regimes, not more democracy. In short, these are areas where other nations, to the extent they realize these are real international problems, need to find their own solutions for, and that may (and probably should) involve breaking with the US. They don't have to become enemies. They can't really threaten us, and it won't do any good to interfere domestically. They may still find it possible to work with American companies (which aren't even all that American these days). But they shouldn't pretend that the US is their ally, when clearly Trump is not. Maybe when Trump is gone, the US will want to work with their organizations, and help with their solutions. But if the US is a lost cause, as currently it is, they shouldn't sacrifice their future for our ego.

    A lot of liberals, like Reich, are stuck on this idea that the US is, and should always remain, the natural leader of a network of global alliances dedicated to solving the world's problems. US foreign policy has always (but especially since WWII) been directed by financial and military interests, offering a little bit of altruism (and high-minded but often hollow rhetoric) as bait. All Trump has really changed has been to get rid of the nice-guy act. Restoring the act isn't going to wash. The world distribution of power has changed since 1945, even if the American ego has not. Moving forward needs to reflect this change, but also to recognize that power itself no longer suffices, and that cooperation has to be built on mutual respect. Trump is the antithesis of that.

  • Henry Giroux [03-20]: Trump's Crusade: Christian Nationalism and the making of a holy war: This starts with a photo of Trump at his desk, surrounded by Christian clergy, many with their hands on Trump's slumped shoulders, blessing his divinely inspired war.

    In this register, Operation Epic Fury becomes barbarism refashioned as spectacle, draped in an aesthetic of impunity and moral annihilation. War is transformed into a form of public pedagogy, a daily lesson in domination delivered through media images, political rhetoric, and state policy, teaching that cruelty signals strength and that enemies, both foreign and domestic, are rendered disposable, unworthy of recognition or justice and instead subjected to humiliation, repression, and violence. Under such conditions, violence no longer hides behind the worn language of necessity or of making the world safe for democracy. It exposes what it has long been in American foreign policy, a ruthless instrument of imperial power. . . .

    This normalization of lawless violence feeds the broader war culture shaping the political imagination of the MAGA movement. Military force is framed not as a tragic last resort but as proof of national vitality. Violence becomes a measure of masculinity and patriotism, while reflection or restraint is dismissed as cowardice. War is imagined as a cleansing force capable of restoring national greatness. . . .

    When militarism fuses with apocalyptic religion, the consequences are deeply troubling. War ceases to be a tragic failure of diplomacy and becomes a sacred drama instead. Violence is sanctified as the instrument through which divine destiny is said to unfold.

  • Chauncey DeVega [03-19]: Laugh at Trump's shoe gifts all you want — it's a loyalty test: "The Florsheim presents aren't about style — they reveal the mechanics of MAGA authoritarianism and if it can endure."

  • Matt Ford [03-19]: There will be no post-presidential peace for Donald Trump: "The president and his allies will face impeachments, lawsuits, and maybe even The Hague." Shortly after Trump took office in 2025, I gave this some thought, and concluded that whoever follows him should grant him a blanket pardon from criminal prosecution (or maybe just advance clemency against jail time should he be convicted), but should let him fend for himself against civil suits (which are as common to him as eating). For one thing, this would settle the question of whether Secret Service should protect him in jail. (In theory, jail should be the safest place in America, but it doesn't seem to be.) I didn't consider the question of international law, as there seems to be no support for that even from Democrats. As for state laws, that's outside the jurisdiction of the next president, but short of shooting someone on Fifth Avenue, that's unlikely to be a problem. Since then, I find myself caring less and less. The main reason for the clemency, aside from the Secret Service issue (and one could argue that a convicted felon safe in jail doesn't merit that service), is that it helps bury the hatchet, or at least is a gesture in that direction. On the other hand, we already have tons of things that need to be publicly examined. It might be better to do so in a commission, especially one that can subpoena and grant immunity for revealing testimony. It's more important to expose what happened than it is to lock a few people up. As for Trump, I still like my idea of exiling him to St. Helena, where he would be free to build a luxury golf resort no one in their right mind would ever visit. But short of that, Eddie Murphy's advice in Trading Places still seems right: "the best way to hurt rich people is by turning 'em into poor people."

  • Brian Karem [03-20]: Who will stop Trump on Iran? "As the war escalates and the president digs in, the White House says 'nobody tells him what to do.'"

  • Cameron Peters [03-20]: Trump's new coin, briefly explained: "How Trump is celebrating his favorite things: gold and himself."

  • Michael Tomasky [03-20]: Yes, Trump Derangement Syndrome exists; but it's among his supporters: "That Pearl Harbor comment: Aside from being a fascist, the man is a national embarrassment. The deranged Americans are those who still support this charlatan."

    Am I overstating things? Do I suffer — gasp — from Trump Derangement Syndrome? Elsewhere today on this site, Simon Lazarus issues a sharp and necessary reminder to liberals not to get overly obsessed with Trump himself — to bear in mind the movement and the intellectuals that support him.

    He's right about that. At the same time, though, I'd say that we shouldn't even accept the presumption that Trump Derangement Syndrome applies to people like us. It does not. The people who suffer from TDS in this country are the ones who support him. And it's getting worse: This week, Nate Silver found Trump's approval slipping into uncharted territory, and approval of the war generally polls in the 30s — but at the same time, an NBC News poll discovered that among self-identified MAGAs, Trump's approval stood literally at 100 percent to zero.

    They're the ones with TDS. You and I have Trump Awareness Syndrome. We see his un-thought-out war — and by the way, if it's almost over, why is he asking Congress for $200 billion? — and we hear him utter vacuous and offensive statements like the Pearl Harbor remark, and we know all too well what he's doing to this country. Awareness is a far heavier burden than derangement.

    The Lazarus piece is here:

    • Simon Lazarus [03-20]: Trump Derangement Syndrome is a self-destructive distraction: "Liberals aren't wrong to excoriate the president for his misdeeds, but they mustn't lose sight of the fact that Trumpism isn't about one man." As someone who's also recently read Laura Field's Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, I recognize the names of the so-called "MAGA intellectuals" mentioned here, but I want to point out that a lot of Trump's worst ideas derive not from them (or their gurus like Carl Schmitt and Harry Jaffa) but from more conventional Republican sources (paleocons, neocons, libertarians, Buckleyites, theocrats, and/or unprincipled weasels like Roy Cohn, and that's far from exhaustive, as the same irritable mental gestures and rabid defense of the elite go back centuries, when the same sort waxed eloquent about the virtues of slaveholding and monarchy. But Trump doesn't wax eloquent about anything. He may pick up thoughts on occasion because he swims in their same sewer, but thoughts don't stick to him, because he doesn't think them, he just spouts along with all the rest of his incoherent mish-mash. That leaves us in a quandary: he's too important, and too symbolic, to ignore, but he's too slippery to pin down, or maybe too sticky to escape ("tarbaby" comes to mind)?

      By the way, some more on Field's book:

    • Alexandre Lefebvre [2025-11-14]: A mole in MAGA's midst.

      What unites the New Right? One fear and one hope. The fear is that liberalism is everywhere, its tentacles wrapped around the public sphere and even the most intimate details of private life. Whichever MAGA faction you turn to, there is a shared conviction, as Field puts it, that "for all its pretensions to neutrality, liberal, pluralistic, modern constitutionalism has normative tendencies and implicit preferences and inevitably shapes the liberal democratic psyche in specific ways." Liberalism is right there on dating apps with every left or right swipe, in the empowerment slogans of multinationals, and in the endless Netflix scroll of choose-your-own-identity mush. And so, while MAGA strategies diverge on how to respond — from tactical retreat (the so-called "Benedict Option") to co-opting the liberal machine (Catholic integralists) to burning it all down (the chronically online Hard Right) — there is consensus on the enemy.

      That's the negative. What about the positive? Field credits Anton — author of the galvanizing 2016 essay "The Flight 93 Election" and now a senior Trump administration figure — with distilling MAGA's three-point creed: "secure borders, economic nationalism, and America-first foreign policy." But this, she shows, is only surface politics. The deeper point of Furious Minds is to reveal a near-consensus on a social vision and a set of moral ideals for what a postliberal United States should look like.

      Denoting these "moral ideals" as "the good, the true, and the beautiful" doesn't help explain them, because those are not concepts that liberals (or most people) lack, but ones they define differently (and less absolutely). The key thing is that the New Right wants their state (which is not your state, or any form of democratic state) to tell you what to believe, and to force you into believing it. They believe that if everyone thought the same things (the same things they think) all our problems would vanish and we'd have heaven on earth. And one of the things they think is that anyone who derides Trump is deranged?

    • Adam Gopnik [2024-03-18]: The forgotten history of Hitler's establishment enables: "The Nazi leader didn't seize power; he was given it." A review of Timothy Ryback's book, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power. This book, like the following review, was cited in the Lazarus piece.

    • Casey Schwartz [2025-11-11]: What could have stopped Hitler — and didn't: "In Fateful Hours, the road map to authoritarian disaster is laid out in gleamingly sinister detail by the German historian Volker Ullrich."

    • John Ganz [03-20]: Grand delusion: "The Trumpist intellectuals wake up." I'm having some trouble digesting this retort to Sohrab Ahmari, but I like the comparison of Trump to Napoleon III and the Marx quote (not the farce that follows tragedy one), but this seemed like as good a place as any to file it for further reference. Intellectuals try very hard to rationalize their world view, even if it has no rational basis at all, which is doubly difficult when your world view is bound to a leader [Trump] who has no sensible grounding at all. Oh, the Marx:

      An old, crafty roué, [who] conceives the historical life of the nations and their performances of state as comedy in the most vulgar sense, as a masquerade in which the grand costumes, words, and postures merely serve to mask the pettiest knavery.

Economists and the Economy: Note that I've moved Dean Baker into his own section.

  • Richard Bookstaber [03-16]: I predicted the 2008 financial crisis. What is coming may be worse. One of the comments mentions how Trump "has bombed himself into a no-exit with the oil market," then concludes: "combine this behavior with our crumbled infrastructure, collapsing job market, rising prices, etc., and it's hard not to see a market meltdown."

Regular Columnists

Sometimes an interesting columnist writes often enough that it makes sense to collect their work in one place, rather than scatter it about.

Dean Baker: For more look here.

  • [03-20]: Are the Biden and Trump economies the same? "While short-term economic data may appear similar, key differences in inflation, labor market strength, affordability pressures, and long-term poicy choices suggest the Trump and Biden economies are meaningfully different."

    Key takeaways:

    • Presidential impact on the economy is often overstated, but policy differences still matter.
    • Claims that Democrats overstated economic success overlook efforts to address affordability concerns.
    • Inflation was trending downward before policy shifts like tariffs disrupted progress.
    • Labor market indicators, especially quit rates and wage growth, point to weakening conditions.
    • Affordability concerns may stem from rising real household costs, especially healthcare and student debt.
    • Trump-era policy changes on energy, immigration, and research could harm long-term growth.
    • Short-term differences are modest, but long-term economic outlook under Trump appears weaker.

    I think the last point should be made much stronger. We're only one year into the Trump economy, and what has happened as a policy level is only starting to impact. Moreover, while the Iran war did quickly signal higher gas prices, it's real impact is still in the future. I don't think we'll actually see the worst-case scenarios that can be projected from Trump's governing principles, because I expect businesses to be more resilient and more resistant to Trump's worst excesses, but best-case is going to be pretty bad, especially as businesses trying to save themselves aren't likely to care much about anyone else.

    I might also note here that I was surprised to see a whole section on "Harris did not cheerlead the Biden economy":

    First, I think he [Jason Furman] is very unfair in saying that former VP Kamala Harris was running around touting that the US economy was the envy of the world. This claim was in fact true, but that was hardly the main story of her campaign.

    Harris went around everywhere saying that she knew people were hurting and outlined proposals, especially on housing, on how she would make things more affordable. We can debate the merits of these proposals, but she was quite explicitly trying to address what she said were major problems in the economy.

    Baker is still far more committed than Harris was to touting the Biden economy, while Harris seemed to be more sensitive to its shortcomings — something she got no credit for during the campaign. The question is why didn't her concerns and proposals get much if any airing in the media? Possible reasons include: that she didn't convey either much outrage or empathy; that her proposals were couched in terms meant to appeal to business and donors; and that she blame the obvious culprits (Biden would have been the easiest mark, as Trump proved). But shouldn't the media have at least tried to sort this out, or are they just totally incapable of reporting on wonky policy matters? I'm reminded here of Hilary Clinton's 2016 gaffe about "baskets of deplorables," which is the only thing the media reported, ignoring the context, which included a fairly detailed and generous plan to revive the economy of areas like West Virginia which had been left behind (something her husband had more than a little to do with). What Clinton proposed would have been much better for the people than Trump's bullshit about "clean coal," but Trump saw his biggest vote gains in areas that Clinton wanted to help, and could have. But who reported that?

  • [03-18]: The "fraud" fraud: "The new anti-fraud push led by JD Vance is portrayed as politically driven, relying on exaggerated claims that don't align with the actual scale of the federal budget or national debt." Opens with:

    Fans of pet-eating migrant stories are thrilled to hear that JD Vance is heading up an anti-fraud task force operating out of the White House. As best anyone cal tell, the purpose is to drum up absurd allegations of fraud against prominent Democrats, like California Governor Gavin Newsom and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker.

    If the reference to pet-eating migrant stories is too obscure, let me remind everyone. During the presidential campaign, Vance admitted that he invented stories about Haitian immigrants eating people's pets in Springfield, Ohio, to advance the Trump ticket's anti-immigrant political agenda. This is important background when considering the sincerity of his new anti-fraud crusade.

    The other important background item is that Trump just gave us an anti-fraud crusade last year. Doesn't anyone remember Elon Musk running around with his chainsaw and his "super-high IQ" DOGE boys? He was supposed to find trillions of dollars of fraud, and send us all $5k dividend checks.

    Baker is right that Vance's interest here is crassly political, and that the sort of blatantly illegal fraud that such a task force could conceivably find is small potatoes compared to the economy as a whole. But fraud is something people do care about, and Democrats would be smart to expose some on their own. They could, of course, start with Trump, and all the money coming in and favors handed out, which will make Reagan's "welfare queens" and whatever it was that Tim Walz got tangled up with in Minnesota look truly microscopic. Moreover, they could start looking at the broader picture of what is supposedly legal but creates a culture which allows fraud to operate and profit. For instance, every day I fend off dozens of phone calls and emails, some from legit businesses I have no desire to hear from, some surely more disreputable. How hard would it be to shut them all down? I'm sure there's a long list of things that could be done, that would in the end make business and government more respectable and trustworthy. But we live in a world where the politicians seem to accept an ethic of everyone having to struggle to screw everyone else, with our best advice being caveat emptor? We're approaching the point where vigilance against fraud is more than a full time job. It's certainly more than one can stand. And one of the worst long-term effects of Trump is that he's poisoning the entire culture by wrapping it up in his graft. Yet somehow he managed to convince lots of voters in 2016 and 2024 that he was the one who wasn't "crooked"!

  • [03-17]: The AI bubble, like the housing bubble, is a big problem and it's not complicated: "Like the housing crash, today's AI bubble driven by inflated expectations and stock valuations poses a major risk to the broader economy when it bursts." I don't doubt that there is a large AI bubble, at least as far as stock prices are concerned, and that it's based on assumptions that won't pan out, but that probably follows 2001 more closely than 2008. On the other hand, I suspect that we're also in a real estate bubble. (My evidence: my tax assessment went up by about 15% this year, and 25% over two years ago.) Both AI stocks and real estate are largely driven to speculative capital, leveraged on a house of cards. The underlying problem is increasing inequality (specifically the ability of the rich to avoid taxation by various schemes).

  • [03-16]: Trump agrees with Mark Carney: the old order is very dead: "Trump's unilateral war on Iran signals the end of the US-led world order and forces allies to reconsider security, trade, and global partnerships."

  • [03-13]: When Pete Hegseth says "lethality" he's talking about killing Iranian school girls: "Relaxed rules of engagement under Pete Hegseth are blamed for increasing civilian casualties, including a deadly strike on a Iranian girls' school."

  • [03-09]: The winning and losing countries from high oil prices: it's not just who has the oil: "Rising oil and gas prices function like a tax on consumers, and despite strong domestic production, US households still face major costs from higher energy prices."

  • [03-05]: Little boy Trump goes to war: "Those of us in the United States who lied through Donald Trump's first presidency know that he is not a person who thinks carefully about his actions and their long-term consequences." For instance, Trump's war is going to accelerate the spread of renewable energy and electric cars. It should also accelerate the realignment of much of the world away from the US: "This war without reason removes any doubt that Trump is a threat to world peace and economic stability. The world needs to move away from any dependence on the United States as quickly as possible and now they all know this."

  • [03-03]: A real abundance agenda starts by rolling back patent and copyright monopolies: "Genuine economic abundance requires weakening monopoly protections and financial rents that enrich the wealthy while driving up costs for everyone else."

  • [02-28]: Trump's stock market is headed down!

  • [02-27]: The Ellisons taking over Warner is pants on fire stuff, but team progressive just whines.

    And this is where progressives are far behind the curve. The fact that the Ellisons can put right-wing hacks like Bari Weiss in charge of the news that people see between the campaign ads is a far greater threat to democracy than the 30-second campaign ads that the rich can buy in abundance.

Jeet Heer: Other pieces cited passim, but let's add these, mostly on Trump/Iran:

  • [03-20]: Will the Iran war destroy MAGA? "Trump's coalition is splintering over nationalism and Israel." Leaving aside what is or is not MAGA, and whether its supposed constituents are anything more than a fad fan base for Trump, what's splintering them is war, specifically the kind that fights back, and seems like none of their business — the kind that Israel is perpetually fighting, and dragging us into. (They seem pretty happy with war on their domestic foes, and would welcome a lot more of that. But engaging abroad, even if just to hurt others, may strike them as unnecessary, especially when it blows back.)

  • [03-13]: The Iran war is spurring global anger at America: "Trump's reckless and unnecessary conflict is hurting allies as well as foes."

  • [03-12]: Is AIPAC doomed? "The hard-line pro-Israel lobby is facing more opposition than ever before. But fully defanging it won't be easy."

  • [03-09]: Trump's war is destroying the global economy: "Spiraling financial chaos might be the only thing that can force the president to pull back from this conflict." It's certainly not going to be analysis, or conscience.

Paul Krugman: I haven't been reading him since he retired to Substack, but his posts there are more frequent and more expansive than the New York Times allowed, and I haven't been paywalled yet. I cite one of his pieces above (under Iran), but here are a few more:

  • [02-23]: Day 1461 of Putin's Three-Day War: "Courage, betrayal — and reasons for hope." He's more hawkishly anti-Putin than I am. I doubt, for instance, that Ukraine have won the war years ago but for Biden's imposing limitations on the use of US-supplied weapons. On the other hand, I do fault Biden for not having the imagination or concern to pursue a diplomatic solution. But his charts do show that Europe has largely made up for Trump's cuts. For now, that only extends the stalemate. The question now is whether Europe can nudge Ukraine into a pragmatic compromise with Russia.

  • [02-27]: The economics of faltering fascism: "Unfortunately for Trump, and fortunately for us, he didn't inherit an economic crisis." Compares this to Hitler and Putin, who were able to consolidate power as they forcefully recovered from inherited crises. Sure, Trump campaigned on Biden being the worst president ever, but Trump's remedies have more often than not made matters worse, and his popularity has stalled and sunk. Krugman cites a couple of interesting pieces here:

    • Mike Konczal [02-09]: Why affordability and the vibecession are real economic problems: "There are many ways inflation makes people worse off even when real incomes recover, especially for essentials."

    • Timothy Snyder [02-25]: Fascist failure: "The state of Trump." This was written just after the SOTU, and just before the resumed bombing of Iran. The prescient point is in the fourth paragraph, but let's not neglect the context (my bold):

      Trump's problem is not with idea of fascism. It suits him well. Just consider the atmospherics of last night. Fascism celebrates a leader who transcends law and aims to unites the people with their destiny. It denies truth in favor of grand stories of struggle against a chosen enemy. It posits an imaginary golden age. All of that was in the speech.

      Fascism demands a chosen enemy, and victims. Trump called the Democrats in the audience "crazy" and associated them with illegal immigration and crime. The United States is engaged in an enormous cleansing project. ICE raids celebrate physical force in the cities and our concentration camp system is landscape of domination in the countryside. The murder of civilians in Minnesota was greeted by big lies about the victims.

      All of this is awful. But it is also stasis. Trump is unpopular, the economy is weak. When the government murdered Americans, this did not deter protest. To actually change the nature of politics, to move beyond the current state of affairs (competitive authoritarianism) to something else, to fascism, Trump needs another kind of conflict.

      Fascism demands a major foreign war to kill one's own people and thereby generate a reservoir of meaning that could be used to justify indefinite rule and further oppression, to make the world seem like an endless struggles and submission to hierarchy as the only kind of life. . . .

      Trump senses that he needs such a war, but, characteristically, he wants a short cut. . . . To complete the fascist transition, Trump has to give the country a war it does not want, and win it, and transform the society. . . .

      And so the state of Trump is that he is stuck. He is failing at fascism. He can break things, but he cannot make things. He can bluster, but he cannot triumph. He is tired, and every day is harder than the day before, and there are rivals in the wings, and elections coming.

      Between now and November 2026 he has two moves: win a war, which he cannot; and suppress the vote, which he has telegraphed that he will try to do.

      Snyder not only mentions Iran, he goes on at some length, to some merit but events have moved beyond speculation. But the notion that Trump would gamble on war to try to shore up his flagging polls on domestic policy was a bit too fantastic for me to figure out, even though it's long been a defining trait of all fascists. Sorry if I thought that even they weren't that stupid, but the core traits that lead folks to fascism do lead to a fetishization of power and violence, and that was already pretty clear with Trump. One more point I should make here is that Trump's problem is not that he's incompetent as a fascist. It's that fascism (even his) doesn't work to fix the problems America has.

  • [03-02]: War, oil and the world economy: "Are we less vulnerable to an oil price shock than we were in 1979?" Answers seems to be "somewhat," based mostly on that real GDP has risen substantially against oil consumption. Still, there are other factors, including "financial fragility." Conclusion — and this was just a few days into the war, before the full impact of closing the Strait of Hormuz factored in — is: "I don't want to engage in doomsaying. But I do worry that people are too complacent about the economic risks this war creates."

  • [03-04]: Reality sets in on Trump's new war: "Surprise! War in the middle of the world's most important oil fields has consequences." Starts with a hart of "traffic through the Strait of Hormuz," followed by one of Brent Crude Oil prices.

  • [03-08]: Oil crises, past and possibly future: "What the 70s can and can't teach us." [Paywall here.]

  • [03-12]: The billionaires' war: "The ultrawealthy put Trump in power but other people will pay the price."

  • [03-16]: No, America is not respected: "Thanks to Trump, we're held in contempt even by our closest allies." I don't doubt the contempt, but still wonder when it's going to be followed up by concrete action. It's still far easier for world elites to humor the US than it is to find ways to work around US obstruction and insanity. Especially as most viable ways would mean moving left.

  • [03-18]: Donald Trump, Petropresident: "Follow the Gulf oil money."

    And then there's Trump's relentless use of his office to enrich himself and his family. As the New York Times editorial board has documented, Trump has raked in at least $1.4 billion since returning to the White House. The biggest single piece of that total is Qatar's gift to him of a $400 million jet. Most of the rest has come from sales of cryptocurrency. We don't know who the buyers of Trump crypto are, but it seems likely that Gulf oil money has accounted for a large share. The Wall Street Journal reports that an Abu Dhabi royal secretly invested $500 million in World Liberty Financial, the center of the Trump crypto empire.

    Meanwhile Jared Kushner, the First Son-in-Law, has been acting as one of the U.S. government's chief negotiators on the Middle East while also raising large sums of money for his personal investment firm from investors in the region, especially the Saudi government's Public Investment Fund.

  • [03-19]: A whiff of staglation: "Inflation was rising and job growth stalled even before the Iran War."

  • [03-23]: When hyperglobalization meets chaos: "Choke points are everywhere you look. . . . While things are bad now, they may very well get a lot worse."

Heather Digby Parton:

Jeffrey St Clair:

  • [03-02]: Preliminary notes on a planned decapitation. The keyword here is "whacked": for Trump, that's all it comes down to, the solution to all problems. And if it doesn't work, just whack again.

    Trump has done the world a service. He has abandoned pretense and clarified the true nature of American power. There is no longer any need to manufacture a case for war, to make an attack seem conform to international law and treaties or to demonstrate its righteousness by acting as part of an international coalition. Now America can do what it wants to whomever it wants solely because the people who run its government want to. This has, of course, almost always been the case behind the curtain of diplomatic niceties. But Trump has ripped those curtains down and now the world is seeing American power in the raw: brazen, arrogant and mindless of the consequences, which will be borne by others and if they complain, they might be whacked, too.

  • [03-06]: Roaming Charges: Calling all angels! Opens with "the shifting rationales (all fictitious) for Trump/Netanyahu's criminal attack on Iran." Let's give a prize to Mario Rubio for the most ironically unselfconscious explanation: "Iran is run by lunatics." This is followed by a video of Paula White ("the spiritual advisor to Trump and head of the White House Faith Office"). Further down, we get to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) explaining, "Iran has been an imminent threat to the United States for 47 years." Some other notes:

    • More than 70 percent of American public school teachers hold at least one side job, according to a new Gallup survey released this week.

    • On Monday, state officials in Ohio approved a $4.5 million sales tax exemption for a $136 million data center expansion in Northeast Ohio. The plant is expected to create a total of 10 new full-time jobs.

    • The number of US adults who feel optimistic about their future life has dropped to 59.2%, the lowest number ever, according to Gallup.

  • [03-13]: Kill, lie, and cover up: The shooting of Ruben Martinez. Like Renee Good, he was a US citizen killed in his car by ICE. "Over the last 14 months, ICE has shot at more than 16 people, hitting 12, including 5 US citizens."

  • [03-20]: Roaming Charges: Trump's little excursion hits the Straits:

    • Meme: "Republican support for war with Iran jumped from 23% to 85% the moment Trump started the war." Comment: "Yet more proof that the Republican Party has turned in to a Jonestown-like cult."

Nick Turse: Covering the US military for The Intercept, he's had a busy month (mostly on Iran, but not only):

Miscellaneous Pieces

The following articles are more/less in order published, although some authors have collected pieces, and some entries have related articles underneath.

Joel Gouveia [02-25]: The death of Spotify: Why streaming is minutes away from being obsolete: Or so says Jimmy Iovine ("arguably the most important living bridge between music and tech": co-founded Interscope, built Beats by Dre, sold it to Apple for $3 billion). Some interesting points here, but none impress me much one way or the other, at least to the point of convincing me that what came before and/or what might come after is any better or worse.

John Herrman [03-05]: Is it really illegal to bet on inside information about the Iran war? How about MrBeast?: "Kalshi and Polymarket are creating a new kind of dilemma." There are few things in this world I find more offensive than gambling, for lots of reasons, but this kind of thing goes orders of magnitude beyond the ordinary.

Chris Dalla Riva [03-06]: Long live Robert Christgau: A conversation with Matty Wishnow: Wishnow has produced a documentary film about the long-time rock critic, The Last Critic, and talks about that here. Also see:

Harold Meyerson [03-19]: Cesar falls: "With the horror of the revelations of his sexual predations, an already tarnished icon collapses." I'm surprised to see this recent spate of stories, as I thought this was already old news. Related here:

  • Timothy Noah [03-19]: The shame of Cesar Chavez: "We shouldn't forget the reasons he has come to be revered, but his legacy was tarnished long before this."

Some notable deaths: Mostly from the New York Times listings. Last time I did such a trawl was on February 27, so we'll look that far back (although some names have appeared since):

Also, not [yet] noted in New York Times:

Tweets: I've usually used this section for highlighting clever responses and/or interesting ideas.

  • Alon Mizrahi: "So basically the US is at war, its president is making one deranged statement after another, and the whole world ignores him like he is a crazy person on a bus."

  • Corey Robin [03-19]: Starts with: "If you haven't seen this yet, you have to take one and a half minutes — that's all it takes — to listen to Marc Andreessen, one of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley, talk about the evils of introspection. He claims that he doesn't do introspection, and I believe him." You can follow the link to six points Robin makes, including "can you think without introspection? Silicon Valley says yes." More on this:

    • David Futrelle [03-23]: Marc Andreessen's Dangerously Unexamined Life: "The tech mogul has declared himself an enemy of introspection, and that conveniently erases considerations of conscience from his amoral investment empire." Includes a Sun Tzu quote that seems to have escaped Trump: "Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a thousand battles without disaster."

      We should note that Marc Andreessen does in fact have an inner life, because we all do. As a result, his declaration of zero introspection is either a weird and extreme failure of self-knowledge or (more likely) a performance, a brand identity so thoroughly constructed and maintained that it functions like an authentic account of the brander's experience. Either way, the practical effect is identical: a man with enormous influence over the technologies of war and surveillance, over the political direction of the country, over the infrastructure of violence that his firm has spent a decade funding, has, in effect, announced that he has no interest in examining his conscience.

      Andreessen has built the perfect ideology for Silicon Valley in the Trump age: Move fast, break people, and don't devote even a moment to self-examination.

  • Cory Robin [03-21]:

    Ten headlines from today's New York Times:

    1. You've Lost Your Health Insurance. It Shouldn't Have Been a Surprise.
    2. Trump's Reaction to Mueller's Death: 'Good, I'm Glad.'
    3. I Predicted the 2008 Financial Crisis. What Is Coming May Be Worse.
    4. The 'Hunger Games,' Hamptons-Style: Hiring a Private Chef for Summer
    5. No Pills or Needles, Just Paper: How Deadly Drugs Are Changing
    6. Student Freed From ICE Detention Worries About Those Left Behind
    7. Across the West, Record Heat Is Colliding With a Snow Drought
    8. Unclogging a Hairy Drain Is Gross. This $15 Stopper Makes It Less So.
    9. The Future of the Democratic Party Is Emerging
    10. Here's what happened in the war in the Middle East on Saturday.

Current count: 310 links, 25755 words (30834 total)

Ask a question, or send a comment.