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Assassinating Scientists is Not a Sound Policy
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If the Iranians intend to stick to a renewed JCPOA this will make no difference. Analogy: I have a baker who can make a pie. I don’t want pie. Therefore the loss of the baker is irrelevant. Iran can still be furious at the violation of their sovereignty, but it will have no downstream effect unless, of course, they intended to develop nuclear weapons. An overlooked story that may be relevant. We have recently retrofitted some F-35s to be able to carry nuclear dumb bombs. The US has a wide array of possible delivery platforms for nuclear weapons that do… Read more »
When I was very young we had practices to “hide” from the bomb that we almost knew for sure was coming via Moscow at any moment. Even as little tykes we knew this was pure bullshit. Hide from a hydrogen bomb? Surely you jest. At the time I thought if I had the time I would ride the subway into NY and hang out in Times Square. Surely they would drop one near there and I could end the bullshit. I mean who the fuck wants to play baseball in a blue glowing haze? And yet we are still playing… Read more »
The most frustrating part of being against Empire is having to deal with “Realpolitik” and actions like “assassination”. Euphemisms for phrases that are more accurate, simply because of the spectre of Empire. Want to know what this assassination actually was, if you remove the filter of Empire? Terrorism. The US commits terrorism, and our satellite states commit terrorism, because of “American Exceptionalism”, or “American Interests”, which are just euphemisms for extra-legal activities of Empires that are allowed to stand because there’s no one to stand up to the Empire. We fly death robots over foreign countries, launch missiles that kill… Read more »
Empire IMO is an outdated term. We have acted like an empire at times – the Mexican-American war being an example. But we are not at present controlling any land whose people or government don’t want us there. No one pays tribute – and that is one of the definitions of an empire. It’s an odd empire that pays its supposed vassal states rather than the other way around. We are simply a superpower primarily concerned with stability, because the status quo works well for us. A status quo power with the ability to extend our power anywhere not protected… Read more »
It’s cognitive dissonance to say the US isn’t an Empire. In fact, it always has been, even before it was a country. The US started out as colonies of an Empire, decided that they’d be just fine without Mother Empire, and then started a program of expansion. Hell, “Manifest Destiny” is just a precursor to German “Lebensraum” – and it was done using the same tactics: warfare and genocide. Empires start out expanding outwards, physically. They almost always end up hollowing themselves out financially just to maintain their present-or-shrinking borders – typically what is thought of as an Empire in… Read more »
Sorry, no. The purpose of an empire is profit. Show me the countries that pay us net. Show me the countries whose government we choose or install. Show me the countries we can impose a troop levy on. Show me a single country that is prepared to bend the knee and accept the suzerainty of the United States. Having overseas bases – bases where we can be, and have on occasion been, ejected from by the local government – does not an empire make. The last territorial expansion of the US was the takeover of Hawaii in the late 19th… Read more »
Intelligent Empires do not occupy land that they don’t need to occupy. They extract resources, labor, and easements. But if you think the US isn’t an Empire because it doesn’t call itself an Empire, then so be it.
It is a sad comment on our society that domestic extra-judicial killings are only just now starting to receive real scrutiny. The video of George Floyd’s murder lit a fire in this country that I do not think will soon go out. But I worry that a large part of our country does not think about or care about extra-judicial killings that occur overseas. In the case of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, I wonder if many Americans would care one bit if it turns out that the U.S.A. committed this particular crime. Even fewer Americans will care (IMHO) if it turns out… Read more »