Endless War category archive

Over at Balloon Juice, in the midst of a longer post in which he touches on a number fo topics, John Cole puts his finger on why Donald Trump’s war of choice on Iran is not going according to plan (assuming, that is, there ever ever was a plan).

It’s as neat a summing up as I think you’ll find:

One of Trump and many in his regime’s problem is being simply incapable of realizing that other nations and people have agency. People will react to provocations and attacks, and they are not obligated to react in a way that you proscribe.

At the Portland Press-Herald, Victoria Hugo-Nidal suggests that the press coverage of the student demonstrations at U. S. colleges may be slightly–er–skewed. Here’s a bit of her article:

It’s frustrating to watch the mainstream media pick one or two individuals who have said violent or antisemitic things and make it seem as if they represent the groups of protesters as a whole because they don’t.

It’s difficult to imagine getting away with doing this for any other group. Can you imagine if I pointed to Rep. Michael Lemelin – you know, the guy who said that the Lewiston mass shooting was God’s punishment on Maine for enacting “immoral laws” – and said he represented the beliefs of every single Republican in the state of Maine? I’d get torn apart. Nobody would let me get away with that.

The article is worth the two or three minutes you’ll need to read it.

At the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a Jewish student from Georgia currently enrolled at Columbia University expresses his disappointment at how his college has reacted to the demonstrations there and his dismay at how some students, professors, and pundits are portraying both the demonstrations and the conflict in Gaza. It is a thoughtful piece well-worth a read.

Here’s a tiny bit:

I don’t have a good solution for a conflict whose roots go back more than a century. I don’t know how to resolve the tension between constitutional guarantees of free speech and the university’s responsibilities to maintain the order of an academic institution. But I do try to be as open-minded as I can despite the conflicting pressures. Unfortunately, even my professors, most of whom I’d previously regarded as devoted to the clarification of ideas and not the advocacy of political positions, have coalesced into opposing factions: Zionist versus anti-Zionist; the side accused of supporting genocide and the side accused of antisemitism. Reason is helpless in the face of impassioned rhetoric. The search for common ground has been abandoned; the center has not held.

At the Portland Press-Herald, Victoria Hugo-Vidal looks at the conflict in Gaza and hears a rhyme.

______________________

*Mark Twain

Der Spiegel takes a long and deep look at the situation in the Middle East and at the background. Christoph Reuter und Monika Bolliger, authors of the story, come to the disturbing conclusion that “the risk of escalation in the Middle East is growing.”

Given the often contradictory and frequently emotionally-charged reporting and commentary on events there, I think this article is well worth the few minutes it will take you to read it.