Endless War Machine

Lawless U.S. airstrikes in the Iraq-Syria border region merely keep the cycle going

On Sunday the U.S. conducted airstrikes in the Iraq-Syria border region. Judging from U.S. media coverage of it on Monday, the country had already yawned and moved on. By lunchtime both the Apple News and Google News aggregators showed one short news item each, way down in the scroll.

One journalist who refuses to stop covering our endless wars is Glenn Greenwald. The indefatigable Greenwald publishes on Substack, a new platform that is a haven for writers who will no longer tolerate being under the thumb of corporate media outlets.

Greenwald’s “Biden’s Lawless Bombing of Iraq and Syria Only Serves the Weapons Industry Funding Both Parties” (June 28) tells the latest story of the endless war machine and prods American citizens to continue to pay attention.

A link to the full article is below, but first some highlights:

  • A Pentagon spokesman says the U.S. “acted pursuant to its right of self-defense.” Greenwald points out, “Neither Syria nor Iraq is a U.S. colony or American property, nor does the U.S. have any legal right to be fighting wars in either country.”
  • Biden’s latest bombing has “no conceivable Congressional authorization,” just as Obama’s in Libya and Trump’s and Obama’s uses of force in Syria had none.
  • Greenwald reminds that the U.S. government routinely violates the law and the Constitution, and the “requirement that no wars be fought absent congressional authority is not some ancillary bureaucratic annoyance but was completely central to the design of the country.”
  • “Each time the U.S. ‘retaliates’ against Iran or Iraqi militias or Syrian fighters, it causes them to ‘retaliate’ back, which in turn is cited as the reason the U.S. can never leave but must instead keep retaliating, ensuring this cycle never ends.”
  • The U.S. “continues to spend more on its military than the next thirteen countries combined” and “the establishment wings of both parties support it.”

The link: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/bidens-lawless-bombing-of-iraq-and

 

Barbara E. Rose is Web Editor of the NOR.

From The Narthex

So, You Failed?

Ideas for essays are sometimes like grace: they come from the most unexpected places. Today’s…

Of Hell and Heaven

Christians don’t believe in Hell as much as they did 50 years ago. The number…

Mutations of 'Reparation'

Donald DeMarco, over at Crisis (linked below), asks whether Pope Francis has a “fixation” with…