Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is making headlines this week by saying he’s willing to “dismantle” the International Criminal Court, “brick by brick” if necessary.

The plan is expected to involve pressuring countries to abandon the court and nations that refuse to reject the ICC’s “false authority” while relying on US assistance are likely to come under increased scrutiny, a State Department official told CNN, adding that possible punishments could involve sanctions and travel bans.

But Rubio’s comments didn’t emerge in a vacuum. Much of what the Trump administration is doing builds on decades of precedent, and its confrontation with the ICC is no exception.

In 2002, President Bush signed the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and explicitly prohibited US government agencies from cooperating with the ICC. Most famously, it authorized the US to use “all means necessary and appropriate”—including military force—to free any US or allied personnel detained by the ICC in The Hague, earning it the nickname of “The Hague Invasion Act”.

In 2004, the Bush administration exploited Article 98 of the Rome Statute to sign bilateral pacts with individual countries, which meant signatory countries would promise never to surrender US citizens to the ICC. To guarantee compliance, Bush used the Nethercutt Amendment, which effectively cut US military aid and economic assistance to developing nations that refused to sign these immunity deals.

Just ten years later, in 2014, the Obama administration used Article 98 to justify an official memorandum certifying that US forces deployed in Mali were entirely “without risk of criminal prosecution or other assertion of jurisdiction by the International Criminal Court”.

Additionally, the Obama administration fiercely opposed the Palestinian Authority’s efforts to join the ICC. In a 2015 phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the White House confirmed that Obama “underscored that the United States does not believe Palestinian accession to the ICC is a constructive way forward,” maintaining that Palestine was not a sovereign state eligible for membership.

In November 2016, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda released a breakthrough report stating there was a “reasonable basis to believe” that US military forces and CIA operatives had committed war crimes of torture and related ill-treatment. The ICC report detailed that at least 61 detained persons were tortured by the US military in Afghanistan, and another 27 were tortured by the CIA across secret detention facilities in Afghanistan, Poland, Romania, and Lithuania. The Obama State Department immediately rejected the ICC’s findings regarding US personnel, arguing that the US was not a party to the Rome Statute and that an ICC investigation was neither “warranted nor appropriate.”

Trump’s first term continued the trend.

In September 2018, National Security Advisor John Bolton delivered a fiery speech to the Federalist Society, declaring the ICC “illegitimate” and “dead to us”. Bolton issued an explicit warning: if the court went ahead with investigations into US or Israeli personnel, the administration would ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States, freeze their assets, and prosecute them under US criminal law.

In June 2020, Trump issued Executive Order 13928, declaring a “national emergency” and asserting that the ICC’s actions threatened US sovereignty.

The Biden administration lifted all financial blacklists and visa restrictions against ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and her staff in April 2021, but this diplomatic reset just so happened to coincide with the ICC deprioritizing its sensitive investigation into US military torture in Afghanistan to focus instead on the Taliban.

Following the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war, Biden strongly embraced the ICC’s mandate and ordered US intelligence agencies to share evidence of Russian war crimes directly with the ICC. But America’s interest in examining war crimes coincidentally flipped just a year later with Israel’s invasion of Gaza.

When ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan requested—and the court later issued—war crimes arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, Biden reacted with fury, calling the warrant “outrageous”. In 2024, Biden used a White House address to formally state, “What’s happening is not genocide. We reject that”, explicitly trying to strip the ICC and the International Court of Justice of the legal definitions required to build their cases.

In 2025, human rights groups and legal organizations formally submitted a massive 172-page communication to the ICC Prosecutor urging the ICC to investigate Biden himself, along with Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin, for “aiding and abetting” war crimes by approving over $17.9 billion in weapons transfers to Israel, providing real-time intelligence, and offering systematic diplomatic cover.

Immediately after returning to office in January 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14203, labeling the ICC a threat to US sovereignty and condemning its “illegitimate and baseless actions”.

That executive order marked the latest step in a policy that had been developing for decades. Now, in July 2026, Marco Rubio is saying he is willing to dismantle the ICC “brick by brick” if necessary.

From the 2003 invasion of Iraq through drone strikes and torture coverups, the genocide in Gaza, and the open dismemberment of foreign governments in Venezuela and Iran, the US government under both major parties has made it clear that it is not beholden to any form of international law and order.

Viewed together, these episodes reveal a consistent pattern across administrations.

Dismantling the ICC “brick by brick” is simply the next logical step in the evolution of a dying empire clutching desperately to maintain its power.

American media networks have been working overtime to draw a line in the sand between Trump and what came before, ignoring the harsh reality that the world before Trump was not exactly candy and unicorns.

Once upon a time, then-president George W. Bush was frequently compared to Hitler for his overreaches of power. Today, he’s known for painting pictures of dogs and giving interviews about the merits of democracy. Last month, Obama invited us to imagine the backlash if he had done “any” of what Trump did while in office, namely targeting “democratic” political dissent, as though Obama didn’t spend years in the White House overseeing a system of mass surveillance that cracked down on protests along with waging an unprecedented war on a record number of whistleblowers.

Life under Trump is undoubtedly a nightmare, but let’s not kid ourselves about the standards set by the men before him set, which largely paved the way for so much of what Trump has been able to get away with in the first place.

In January 2001, Bush rode to his inaugural ceremony on rainy streets with protesters throwing eggs and tennis balls at his motorcade. From the start, the administration — largely made up of oil execs and neoconservatives — was riddled with controversy, starting with claims he stole the 2000 presidential election. After 9/11, questions arose over the administration missing numerous warnings about an impending attack. Bush initially appointed none other than Henry Kissinger to the 9/11 Commission, before the victims’ families managed to get him removed and replaced.

Between September 2001 and March 2003, Bush officials made numerous false links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda to drum up support for an invasion of Iraq to remove weapons of mass destruction that never actually existed in the first place. Bush oversaw gruesome CIA torture while simultaneously creating a domestic system of mass government surveillance. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed as a result of the US invasion, with trillions of taxpayer dollars wasted.

Barack Obama came into office on promises of reversing the worst times of the Bush era, only to ultimately spend eight years building upon its foundation. Year after year, the Patriot Act was renewed, systems of mass surveillance were continued and expanded, and abroad, Obama’s drones slaughtered civilians in at least half a dozen countries, targeting rescue workers, hospitals, and weddings. Obama helped instigate a coup in oil-rich Libya, decided not to prosecute Bush-era torture, force-fed hunger-striking inmates at Guantanamo Bay, and, before signing the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, continued to falsely accuse the country of pursuing nuclear weapons, implemented crushing economic sanctions, while also hitting them with cyberattacks.

Obama was supposed to be a change from the Bush years, but those changes failed to produce much beyond lofty rhetoric. This is why, in 2016, the mantra between both major parties was overwhelmingly “not another Bush, not another Clinton”. Voters wanted someone anti-establishment, which is likely what helped Trump win, even though all indications — even at the time — pointed to Trump being very much part of the same establishment as every other politician vying for the White House.

Trump’s first term was marked by a failed coup in Venezuela, the open assassination of a high-ranking Iranian commander, the covering up of civilian casualties from drone strikes, continued funding Israeli atrocities, and the continuation of all of the Bush and Obama-era wars.

By 2020, Americans were ready to ratchet back and again try an openly establishment candidate, which materialized in the form of Joe Biden. And yet by the time he left office, Biden had not only funneled billions into a US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, but also supported Israel in its murderous campaign across Gaza, earning him the moniker of “Genocide Joe” during his last years in office.

With Trump seemingly finishing his coup in Venezuela, continuing to fund Israeli war crimes, all while waging a hot war against Iran, American media networks are trying to glamorize life before Trump. They want us to yearn for establishment candidates, hastily urging us to forget just how awful these times were. They are encouraging a back-and-forth mentality between the two major parties, pushing their audience between establishment candidates and allegedly anti-establishment candidates, forming a line between the two camps where one doesn’t actually exist, and, as a result, keeping the US locked in the status quo for years to come.

Americans have tried establishment candidates like George Bush and Joe Biden, and they’ve tried supposedly anti-establishment candidates like Barack Obama and Donald Trump. It’s been nearly thirty years of a dance between the two major parties, yet election after election, Americans still continue struggling for basic needs while each administration panders to the corporate donors who funded their campaign.

With another election looming, Americans aren’t just choosing between candidates — they’re deciding whether to keep participating in a cycle that has delivered the same results for decades.

American bombs are now falling on Tehran, and while Donald Trump ultimately pulled the trigger, administrations before him—Republican and Democrat alike—constructed the gun, and even loaded it.

In 1995, US president Bill Clinton issued executive orders banning US investment tied to Iran’s petroleum sector and, soon after, most US trade with and investment in Iran. His administration justified the sanctions with an accusation that would later be used against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq not even a decade later: “Iran’s efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction” and their alleged support for terrorism.

The International Atomic Energy Agency—which had visited Iran a few years prior to inspect their nuclear activity—reported no evidence of nuclear weapons.

In 1996, Congress followed up with the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act—which passed 415-0 in the House, and by unanimous consent in the Senate—targeting foreign and US companies investing more than $20 million a year in Iran’s energy sector.

Much like embargoes on Iraq, which were linked to catastrophic civilian deaths, over time, American sanctions on Iran decimated the economy and its people by devaluing currency, shrinking living standards, and limiting access to food and medicine.

In 2000, a report by a neoconservative think-tank called Project for the New American Century warned that even if Saddam Hussein were removed, “the need for a substantial American force presence” in the region would remain because “Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests in the Gulf” as Iraq has.

Several prominent figures involved with the think-tank later joined the Bush administration, including Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and John Bolton.

In 2001, shortly after 9/11, Iran offered counter-terrorism assistance to the US, but instead, President Bush lumped them in with Iraq and North Korea under an umbrella he termed the “Axis of Evil”. Clinton-era sanctions were kept in place, new ones were added, and covert measures began to undermine the Iranian establishment.

That same year, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force by a vote of 420-1 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate, granting the president sweeping authority to use military action against those connected to the 9/11 attacks. Although Iran had no connection to 9/11, the deliberately broad language of the bill created a permanent legal framework for military action across the Middle East without requiring new congressional approval.

Towards the end of Bush’s final term in office, a 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate (a comprehensive report involving all US intelligence agencies) concluded with “high confidence” that Iran was not currently building a nuclear weapon.

Still, Barack Obama’s policies continued beating the drums of war.

In 2010, he significantly expanded financial sanctions on Iran’s oil, gas, and banking sectors—measures that severely restricted access to essential medicines in Iran—which passed the House 408–8 and the Senate 99–0.

At the same time, his administration intensified Bush-era cyber operations against Iranian nuclear facilities. The Stuxnet computer worm—reportedly developed by the US and Israel—was credited with disabling hundreds of centrifuges and delaying enrichment efforts, even though the nuclear program continued to show no signs of weaponization.

In 2015, Obama concluded a nuclear deal that imposed strict limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. But its premise was a masterclass in propaganda that worked to build further consensus for war, first by painting Iran as an aggressor, and second by continuing to perpetuate a narrative that it was interested in pursuing nuclear weapons, despite continued evidence to the contrary.

Meanwhile, far more aggressive American allies in the region—namely, Israel—were exempt from such scrutiny, with their own nuclear stockpile shrouded in secrecy and tucked away from international oversight of any kind.

After the nuclear deal lifted certain sanctions in 2016, Iran’s economy rebounded. And yet at the same time, US and Israeli hawks continued to fret, alternating their fearmongering and moving the goalpost away from Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapons and instead towards their regional influence and ballistic missile program.

Republicans and Democrats joined together the following year to pass new sanctions on Iran’s missile program, along with entities tied to the Revolutionary Guard. These measures were approved with a vote of 419-3 in the House, 98-2 in the Senate.

Fortunately for the many warmongers adorning both major political parties, the arrangement with Iran had been signed late into Obama’s second term, paving the way for a new president to conveniently overturn it.

In 2018, Donald Trump did exactly that. His administration unilaterally withdrew from the deal and reimposed sanctions. In April 2019, the US designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—Iran’s most powerful military and political force—as a foreign terrorist organization. The following year, Trump ordered a drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, head of the Guard Corps’ Quds Force, a dramatic escalation.

Taking office in January 2021, the administration of Joe Biden largely maintained Trump’s “maximum pressure” framework, leaving existing sanctions in place, along with Trump’s designation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

And while Biden campaigned on rejoining the nuclear deal, once in office, he demanded Iranian compliance as a prelude to sanction relief, which effectively made it impossible given growing Iranian distrust for the US.

In late 2022, after being asked about the nuclear deal by a woman appearing to wear a hair ribbon in Iran’s flag colors, Biden reportedly responded that the deal was “dead”, adding, “I know they don’t represent you, but they will have a nuclear weapon.”

Two years later, an assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found that Iran “has undertaken activities that better position it to produce one, if it so chooses” but added that “the Intelligence Community continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.”

Even so, in October 2024, when asked who she thought America’s “greatest adversary” was, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris replied: “I think there’s an obvious one in mind, which is Iran.”

Harris, like Trump, repeated the lie that Iran was in the business of pursuing nukes, saying the US “will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. Period.” And like Trump, she maintained that “all options” remained on the table to keep them from obtaining nuclear weapons, including military force.

In 2025, a majority of Democrats voted with Republicans to hand the Trump administration $900 billion in military spending, which provided funding for Pentagon operations, weapons procurement, overseas deployments, and military readiness programs for the upcoming fiscal year.

At nearly every stage, Republicans and Democrats in Congress—along with presidents from both major parties—have laid the foundation for a war on Iran.

The Bush administration lied its way into an invasion of Iraq, but nobody was held accountable. The Obama administration expanded the Bush-era Authorization for Use of Military Force to include drone-bombings in at least seven different countries, along with the targeting of US citizens accused of terrorism, and again, nobody was held accountable. Trump built on these precedents during his first term not only by amping up Obama’s drone strikes, but also by assassinating an Iranian commander. Again, no accountability. The Biden administration funded Israel’s flattening of the Gaza Strip while also shielding it from repercussions at the United Nations and International Criminal Court, effectively demonstrating that the so-called rules of international law were never fair, but instead, selectively applied.

Over time, escalation itself became normalized.

Economic warfare became cyber sabotage. Cyber sabotage became targeted assassinations. What were once extraordinary war powers became permanent executive authorities. By the time Trump entered the White House for his second term, the framework for America’s long-awaited war on Iran was already in place.

All he had to do was pull the trigger.

Three years ago, Donald Trump referred to himself as “the candidate who delivers peace.” This weekend, his administration bombed Iran. While it may seem unusual, the historical record suggests otherwise, clearly demonstrating that Trump follows a long line of American politicians who spent a lot of time talking about being against wars only to wage them once elected president.

During the 2000 presidential debates, George W. Bush claimed he wanted a “humble” foreign policy, adding that he doesn’t think US troops “ought to be used for what’s called nation-building.”

By 2003, the Bush administration was at war in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to researchers at Brown University, the Iraq War directly caused at least 190,000 deaths and is projected to cost US taxpayers roughly $2.2 trillion when long-term veteran care and related expenses are included.

Bush also oversaw a brutal torture program that included waterboarding, sensory deprivation, auditory overload, and “rectal rehydration”.

In February 2007, Barack Obama told an Illinois crowd that they came to see him speak “because you believe in what this country can be. In the face of war, you believe there can be peace. In the face of despair, you believe there can be hope.” In 2008, he said that events in Iraq “have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible.”

Obama received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

Three days after his inauguration, Obama ordered the CIA’s first Pakistani drone strike, killing at least nine civilians. During his first term, Obama outpaced Bush in the number of drone strikes he authorized, blew up weddings and funerals, bombed Libya, launched cyber attacks and imposed crushing economic sanctions against Iran, while also openly targeting US citizens in Yemen.

In 2013, Obama boasted that “after a decade of grinding war, our brave men and women in uniform are coming home.” And yet, by the time he left office in January 2017, US troops remained in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, Bush-era CIA torture was brushed under the carpet, and the US had bombed at least seven different countries.

In 2016, Donald Trump claimed if he became president, “the era of nation-building will be brought to a very swift and decisive end.”

Less than a week into his first term, Trump oversaw a commando raid in Yemen that resulted in the death of an 8-year-old girl.

Over the course of a single term in office, the US under Trump doubled Obama’s drone strikes, attempted a humiliating coup in Venezuela, bombed Syria, and in 2020, assassinated a high-ranking Iranian commander, risking all-out war.

While running for president in 2020, Joe Biden pledged to end America’s “forever wars” which, he said, have cost the US “untold blood and treasure.”

Nevertheless, the Biden administration saw troops occupying Syria and Iraq, bombing campaigns in Yemen and Somalia, billions of tax dollars funneled into the war in Ukraine, all while giving a blank check to Israel to wage a genocidal war on Gaza.

Remarkably, in 2024, Biden claimed to be the “first president of this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.”

That same year, Trump won a second term in the White House and, during his victory speech, blatantly lied, stating that when he was last in office, the US “had no wars”.

Trump’s second term has so far been marked by the continuation of the bloodbath in Gaza, additional funding for the war in Ukraine, the kidnapping of Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela, and, most recently, US strikes on Iran.

At the time of publication, several high command Iranians are dead, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and more than 100 people were also reportedly slaughtered after Israeli airstrikes ripped apart two Iranian schools.

Decades of bipartisan warmongering make it painfully obvious that no president who reaches the White House with vows of peace is constrained by them once in power.

What reigns in Washington is permanent war.

This week, Iran had the audacity to fly a drone near the USS Abraham Lincoln, an American aircraft carrier innocently parked 500 miles (or 434 nautical miles) off their coastline as part of a Trump naval “armada” deployed amid threats to bomb the country into oblivion over a nuclear weapons program that does not exist.

Like clockwork, war-hungry American news networks went into overdrive beating the propagandistic war drums. One headline from The Washington Post, titled “US shoots down Iranian drone that approached aircraft carrier Lincoln”, cited anonymous “officials” who claimed the drone was “acting aggressively”.

Other outlets like CBS News, PBS, CNBC, New York Post, and USA Today also echoed this narrative about the Iranian drone’s “aggressive” behavior around the Lincoln, which clearly felt threatened as a 5,000-personnel, nuclear-powered, missile-loaded carrier with the capacity to hold around 80-90 aircraft.

And while these articles rightly point out that the US ship is technically in international waters, it is still well within striking distance.

For Iran, the threat from the US is very real. Not only because the country is militarily surrounded by American forces, but also because the US acted on its saber-rattling last summer and bombed Iranian enrichment sites. That’s why this framing of a single Iranian drone as “aggressive”—particularly coming from the United States, one of the most hostile countries on the planet—is beyond laughable.

Flip the scenario: imagine how the US would react if an Iranian warship came within 434 nautical miles of North Carolina’s coastline—still firmly in international waters.

How would Washington react?

I think we know the answer.

On January 20th, Mark Carney, Canada’s Prime Minister, made a startling admission while giving a speech at the World Economic Forum:

“For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false—that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes. So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”

This might be one of the most revealing statements by a world leader in recent memory. Not only is Carney admitting to Canada’s silent complicity in perpetuating an imbalanced world order, but he is also openly confessing that the entire arrangement rests on a known fiction.

Canada perpetuated this fiction for its own benefit, and only now—because the arrangement no longer works for them—are we treated to such a brazen confession. Even so, how remarkably refreshing to hear the quiet part said out loud.

For decades, the “rules-based order”—a club of mostly North American and European nations—has been weaponized to serve imperial agendas, leaving trails of devastation while participants reaped the benefits. During Bill Clinton’s presidency, America and its allies invoked this phony system to accuse Saddam Hussein of not cooperating with international inspections of its weapons stockpiles. As a result, Iraq endured US airstrikes and crushing sanctions throughout the 1990s, devastating civilians and causing an estimated 500,000 child deaths from malnutrition and disease.

Then, in 2003, the US-led “coalition of the willing” invaded Iraq knowing their justification was a lie, resulting in Hussein’s capture and execution, hundreds of thousands of dead civilians, and western oil companies pillaging the country’s oil.

The pattern repeats in neighboring Iran, also subjected to the same double standards. Like Iraq, it has been accused of wanting weapons of mass destruction—nuclear weapons in particular—despite evidence repeatedly proving the exact opposite. But Iran played along and signed a deal with the Obama administration to restrict uranium enrichment—even after the US had implemented economic sanctions and launched cyber attacks against its nuclear reactors. Iran kept up its end of the deal until 2018, as verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency, but it was ultimately scrapped during the Trump administration, followed by the reimposition of sanctions. Later, Trump oversaw the assassination of a high-ranking Iranian commander, and then, during his second term, launched airstrikes against Iranian nuclear enrichment sites.

Compliance with the “rules-based order” hasn’t worked out for Iran, and it certainly didn’t work any better for Libya, which forfeited its weapons of mass destruction program during the Bush years yet still came under assault by the US and its allies in 2011. Libyan civilians were slaughtered by NATO airstrikes, Muammar Gaddafi was executed by US-backed rebels, and the country has been gripped by chaos ever since, overrun by violence and a brutal slave trade.

This selective enforcement persists today in other conflicts as well. After Russia launched its military offensive against Ukraine in 2022, Biden-era Secretary of State Antony Blinken called it an attack on the “fundamental principles of a rules-based international order.” Four years later, the US conducted a raid inside Venezuela, killing 100 people and kidnapping their president. Where were defenders of the so-called “fundamental principles of a rules-based international order”? Where were they for Iraq, Libya, or dozens of other countries impacted by US-backed interventions over the last several decades?

The answer, according to the Canadian Prime Minister, is simple: they were standing by America through all of that, including times when they were allegedly neutral. Canada—which publicly refused to assist the United States when it invaded Iraq in 2003—privately assured the US that it would offer clandestine military support. After Israel launched its brutal assault on Gaza in 2023, Canada claimed it would pause arms sales—yet still managed to find convenient loopholes allowing companies to continue profiting from the bloodshed.

When it comes to Israel’s repeated pattern of unchecked aggression, there is no better example of the global order’s blatant hypocrisy.

For decades, Israel has killed thousands of Palestinians while deliberately keeping Gaza on the brink of collapse, blocking supplies of food and medical aid through land checkpoints and naval blockades—actions the United Nations condemned as collective punishment back in 2009. After Israel was attacked in October 2023, its response was an intensified campaign of mass murder, annihilating hospitals and schools, further restricting access to food and medical supplies, slaughtering journalists, all while openly discussing plans to build profitable resorts and casinos atop the smoldering rubble of their genocidal rampage.

Where was the NATO-backed “no-fly zone” over the Gaza Strip to protect Palestinians from Israeli airstrikes, similar to the one seen in Libya? Where were airstrikes to curtail Israel’s use of chemical and incendiary agents against Gazans, like the airstrikes launched when chemical weapons were used in Syria?

International organizations such as the United Nations could play a role in balancing the “rules-based order”—but how, when they are so easily swatted away like annoying flies any time a proposal comes up that is unfavorable to the US? Resolutions against Israel are easily made null and void by American veto power. In fact, since 1972, the US has vetoed more than 40 resolutions critical of Israel, exemplifying the selective “rules” Carney exposes. Other entities, such as the International Criminal Court, have also been made irrelevant, with Joe Biden labelling allegations of war crimes against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “outrageous” and Donald Trump issuing sanctions against ICC prosecutors.

Full stop, the “rules-based order” has, by design, completely failed not only Palestinians, but millions of others around the world as well. Canada, along with America’s other European allies, benefited handsomely from its proximity to US power, knowing all along that the global system was never truly fair or neutral, but instead, a carefully maintained fiction designed to benefit those willing to play along. Carney’s blunt admission is rare because it names what has been seen but rarely spoken—that the order was never truly “rules-based” at all.

But in the absence of this fiction, what do we have left?

In November 2023, I took a train to Washington, DC and attended one of the largest protests I’d ever been to in my life. By one estimate, more than 300,000 people showed up that day to speak out against US support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. The bombardment was only a month in, yet we were already beyond disgusted with constant reports of shelled hospitals and maimed children.

After a few powerful, energizing speeches, we surged like a wave through the streets of the capital, before eventually moving to the White House. There, we stood beyond the gates, chanting slogans at “Genocide Joe” Biden’s presidential residence as drones buzzed overhead, surveilling our every move.

It felt incredible to see so many people out on the streets gathered for a common cause. And yet when I boarded the train back home that night, something felt off, and that unsettling feeling continued to grow as days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months, and US policy didn’t seem to shift in any meaningful way.

Eventually, the Biden administration gave way to the Trump administration, offering a change in tone and presentation on the issue but not much else. Whereas Biden pretended to be frustrated with Israel publicly—while privately continuing to bankroll their campaign of mass slaughter—Trump offered no buttered rhetoric, yet still fueled Israel’s onslaught. And like Biden, Trump has continued to shield Israel at the United Nations. Like Biden, he has continued to fight the International Criminal Court’s efforts to hold Israeli officials accountable for their actions.

It makes no difference whether a Democrat or a Republican occupies the White House: neither seems to care that a majority of the country opposes what Israel is doing in Gaza. And as these protests have carried on into Trump’s second term, it has become obvious that the two major parties don’t really care about demonstrations either. But it’s not because enough of us aren’t showing up; it’s because by itself, marching is not really an effective form of resistance, as evidenced by a growing historical pattern increasingly impossible to ignore.

Millions protested the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, but the war happened anyway, and continued for years after, with US troops still stationed in the country to this day. Throughout Obama’s eight years in office, numerous protests took place in opposition to his deadly drone wars around the world, but it didn’t stop the airstrikes from expanding into seven countries by the time he left office.

Persistent demonstrations against the Iraq war may have helped to change public perspectives about the invasion, but it took years for that shift to register. During those years, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians lost their lives, while politicians from both major political parties—backed by defense companies—continued to fund the campaign, their policies on the issue largely unaffected by public opposition.

In 2008, former Vice President Dick Cheney—now presumably enjoying a senior management role somewhere in Hell’s seventh layer—was confronted by Martha Raddatz during an ABC interview with a poll showing most Americans believed the Iraq War was no longer worth fighting. He replied, simply: “So?” When Raddatz pushed back, asking whether public opinion mattered to him, Cheney said he thinks the government shouldn’t be “blown off course” by “fluctuations” in opinion polls.

A rare moment of honesty from a man whose lies helped set in motion a bloodbath of catastrophic proportions, but also an important admission demonstrating the mentality of a government completely apathetic to enormous antiwar protests.

Effective opposition requires more than numbers: it requires direct action. For instance, Civil Rights marches starting in the late 1950s were effective not just because they had massive crowds showing up to rallies, but because those crowds were intertwined with boycotts, sit-ins, and other forms of resistance that directly challenged business as usual and the blatant racism of the established order.

The state didn’t care for this kind of nonviolent tactical disruption then—beating, hosing, and killing protesters—and it still doesn’t care for it today. Disruption remains the point at which power begins to take dissent seriously.

One month after the US invaded Iraq, riot-geared police shot “spool-sized wooden projectiles” at nonviolent protesters attempting to block the gates of an Oakland shipping company under contract with the military. During the Obama years, UC Davis campus police turned themselves into an internet meme after dousing seated nonviolent students with pepper spray at point-blank range. Two years later, protesters were arrested after lying down to block the entrances of bases where killer drones were operated. Demonstrations against Israel’s assault on Gaza taking the form of peaceful university encampments resulted in students getting beaten and doused with chemical agents. Activists who obstructed ports shipping supplies to Israel or blocked access to factories making their weapons were arrested.

Within just the past year, nonviolent sit-ins and blockades targeting ICE detention centers ended with activists being arrested, and in separate incidents, volunteer “ICE watchers” simply observing and documenting the activity of ICE agents had their windshields smashed in and were forcibly removed and detained.

Time and time again, the American government has made it abundantly clear that it’s not all too interested in what a protesting crowd has to say, and whether it’s 300,000 people in that crowd or a million makes little difference. So long as the demonstration gets a permit, marches along a pre-planned route, and then goes home at the end of the day, they simply do not care. This type of event might raise awareness and build solidarity, but ultimately it has become little more than a pressure valve—a safe way for the public to release anger without threatening the status quo.

Tactics such as port shutdowns, sit-ins, and factory blockades get crushed so quickly because they actually slow or stop the gears from turning in a very immediate sense. They risk producing real, tangible change in the moment, without delay.

The question is how long we will keep confusing being visible with being powerful, and how many more people will be killed—both in the United States and abroad—until we stop pretending the difference doesn’t matter.

The year is 2026. The US under Donald Trump kidnapped the president of Venezuela after bombing the country and killing a hundred people on the ground. This follows a year of airstrikes on Venezuelan boats, supposedly carrying drugs, with passengers treated as guilty until proven dead and evidence of their alleged crimes never provided. The US claims it will temporarily “run” Venezuela during a so-called transition, positioning itself to seize the country’s vast oil reserves.

For decades, the US has rampaged around the world with impunity, invading Iraq in 2003, bombing Libya in 2011, running unaccountable torture programs, and openly assassinating high-ranking generals. Free from the international laws it expects others to obey, the US now has its sights set on Greenland. And who knows what else after that, so long as it serves US “national security”.

Such a level of dystopian overreach doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Trump embodies US imperialism without disguise, but he is not a king. These actions require more than desire—they require complicity: the votes to fund them, the confirmations to staff them, and the procedural cover to let them proceed unchallenged. Not just from Republicans, but from Democrats—the so-called opposition party that could stop him yet so often chooses not to, especially when it comes to imperialism.

This pattern became especially visible with the January 2025 nomination of Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. Rubio—a lifelong neoconservative hawk who has backed just about every US war since 9/11—could have been resisted. Instead, Democrats in the Senate joined Republicans to confirm him 99-0.

In June 2025, Trump launched unilateral airstrikes against Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities, and some Democrats took issue—not with him openly bombing Iran, but with his failure to seek out Congressional approval first. Impeachment measures were proposed, but then overwhelmingly tabled, after a bipartisan majority—including 128 Democrats—voted against them.

In early January 2026, the Senate allowed debate on a war powers resolution to check President Trump’s military activities in Venezuela, a procedural gesture that looked impressive in headlines but did nothing to constrain him. When it came time for a binding vote to actually restrict Trump’s powers, the measure failed.

Then, on January 22nd, every present House Democrat voted to support a resolution that would have barred President Trump from conducting military actions in Venezuela without congressional authorization, largely irrelevant given that the coup is now complete. The resolution also called for US forces to exit the country—again pointless, since none were there—somewhat akin to passing a resolution to remove troops from the Moon. The vote was 215–215 and, per House rules, a tie counts as a defeat. Still, a win for Democrats as a show of pseudo-resistance.

Meanwhile, hours before this charade took place, 149 House Democrats joined with 192 Republicans to approve $828.7 billion in military spending—based on a framework established months earlier with the support of Senate Democrats—that would further embolden imperialism around the world: funding for Israeli missile defense, hundreds of millions for Ukraine, troop restrictions in Europe, and billions for ships, hypersonic weapons, and munitions.

Such unchecked funding is no surprise: it’s the lifeblood of a cross-party project that has defined US imperialism for decades, with Venezuela simply serving as the latest chapter. In 2002, George W. Bush backed a failed coup there. Later, Obama labeled Venezuela a national security threat and imposed sanctions. Trump’s first term was marked by a humiliating coup attempt in the country, additional sanctions, and a bounty placed upon the head of Nicolás Maduro. Biden continued the sanctions and upped the bounty reward. Trump’s second term has included airstrikes on Venezuelan boats, the bombing of its capital, and the kidnapping of Maduro.

And yet, if Venezuela illustrates how the US empire operates in moments of escalation, Israel shows how it functions as a permanent fixture of US foreign policy. Both parties pledge unwavering allegiance; no one reaches the Oval Office without being thoroughly invested. Under Bush, Obama, and Trump’s first term, Israel received a constant flow of weapons and diplomatic cover to harass, detain, and kill Palestinians. Under Biden—and throughout Trump’s second term—this support hasn’t wavered. Both administrations have backed Israel as it targets hospitals, schools, and bakeries, flattening Gaza and wiping out entire families with impunity.

Biden represented what might be described as “mask on” imperialism: publicly calling Israel’s actions in Gaza “over the top”, while privately continuing to fund the bloodbath, shielding Israel at the United Nations, and calling the International Criminal Court “outrageous” for pursuing charges against Israeli leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump, by contrast, dispenses with this performance entirely, openly financing Israeli atrocities while boasting about “leveling” Gaza and building casinos and resorts to whitewash the smoldering remains of a bipartisan genocide. Like Biden, he too has threatened the ICC for investigating Israeli war crimes.

Still, Democratic complicity predates the Trump era.

In 2003, Democrats—including Joe Biden—voted with Republicans to authorize the costly and disastrous US invasion of Iraq. Year after year, they funded the occupation, shoveling billions into it long after the lies were fully exposed.

During Obama’s first term, Democrats briefly held a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate—alongside a strong majority in the House—which they used to pass a watered-down Affordable Care Act, a plan that was hollowed out by the removal of the public option, prioritizing private insurers. At the same time, Democrats continued Bush-era bailouts, funneling taxpayer dollars to financial giants like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, who just so happened to be major Obama donors. Not once did Democrats use their power to dismantle the war machine—tools they would inevitably pass on to future administrations. In fact, Obama did the opposite: he expanded Bush-era surveillance programs, chose to “look forward” instead of prosecuting gruesome CIA torture, set precedents for drone-murdering US citizens without due process, and broadened bombing campaigns across seven countries.

When Joe Biden took office, Democrats scraped together a razor-thin majority—a 50-50 Senate split, with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaker. Yet they still trotted out excuses to dodge popular policies, from “moderate” Democrats threatening to fracture their hold, to the Senate Parliamentarian’s roadblocks.

Conveniently, whenever it’s time to pass policies actually beneficial to constituents, Democrats have a litany of excuses—even when they hold a majority—to not pass them. And when they have a minority in the House and Senate, well, their hands are tied. War is the only time the excuses seem to go away. Imperialism is always on the table. It’s always a priority.

Democrats can act shocked by Trump’s brand of imperialism, but they can’t pretend as though they aren’t structurally invested in maintaining it. Democrats—like Republicans—take hundreds of thousands of dollars each election cycle from defense companies. Both parties are heavily reliant on industries that profit from war.

The wars might not be popular with the public, but that doesn’t matter. Whether driven by Trump’s undisguised imperialism—open admissions that America is invading a country for its oil—or by Democratic imperialism cloaked in “humanitarian” language and polite expressions of concern, defense industry donors just want the wars to start. The means to get there are irrelevant.

The US government under Donald Trump has already continued building on the imperial legacy of his predecessors. With less than a year in office, his administration has pounded Somalia with airstrikes more than 100 times, attacked Iranian nuclear-enrichment sites, and bombed Syria, where US troops have remained since the Obama years, and where Trump left them during his first term to “keep the oil”. He has also maintained the Biden-era policy of funding Israel’s lethal cleansing and mass starvation in Gaza, and broke a campaign pledge to end the Ukraine war “within 24 hours”, instead continuing to fund it.

But nowhere is the continuity of American intervention more obvious than in Latin America, where Trump began destroying Venezuelan shipping boats, and—days into the new year—captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and brought him back to the US for a trial that will surely be free and fair.

If this seems out of character for the United States, consider the fact that, between 1898 and 1994, Washington intervened in Latin American affairs at least 41 times—about once every twenty-eight months for an entire century. Trump is no aberration; he is simply the latest foreman on a very old job site.

The Global Backlash: How the World Sees US Imperialism

Much like Barack Obama, who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and then spent eight years bombing seven countries, or George W. Bush, who entered office promising restraint only to preside over nation-building wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Trump has simply continued a decades-long tradition of Republican and Democratic presidents insisting they do not seek war, yet waging it anyway once in power.

On the surface, it might seem unprecedented for an American president to bomb a city in a country the United States claims it is not at war with, kill dozens of people on the ground, and kidnap a sitting head of state in the dead of night. But placed in historical context—especially the post-9/11 era—this is not some shocking deviation. It’s a continuation, and the “rules-based international order” Washington loves to lecture about has been shredded by its own architects.

The world noticed.

A recent international opinion poll shows that in large parts of the globe, the United States is no longer viewed as a stabilizing force, but as one of the greatest threats to their country. According to Pew’s 2025 survey across 25 countries, the US—along with China and Russia—was the most widely viewed as an international threat, with one of them appearing in the top three responses in nearly every nation surveyed.

The Bush Era: Setting the Precedent for Endless War

Starting in 2003 under George W. Bush, the US launched an unjustified invasion of Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, with the aftermath still rippling through the region today. Conveniently omitted from Bush’s moral crusade was any mention of America’s crippling economic sanctions against Iraq—which predominantly impacted civilians—or America’s long-standing relationship with Saddam Hussein, which dates back to the 1980s when the US backed his war against Iran with weapons and intelligence, even as he openly used chemical weapons.

Those chemical weapons would become the excuse to invade Iraq, with the US under Bush claiming Saddam not only had hidden stockpiles, but also that he had ties to those behind the attacks of September 11th, 2001. Both claims were false, but it didn’t matter. The US wanted Saddam gone.

There was also an element of financial geopolitics at play. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Saddam began selling oil in euros under the United Nations’ Oil‑for‑Food Program, challenging the petrodollar system underpinning America’s global financial power. At the same time, Iraq’s vast oil reserves were an attractive prize for energy giants like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Halliburton, which had lobbied for years to gain access to Iraq’s untapped reserves and stood to benefit immensely from war.

Former members of Bush’s own cabinet—such as Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill—along with US allies such as Britain, later admitted that the administration came into office wanting war with Iraq. And they got their wish.

Early in the invasion, Saddam Hussein’s sons were killed, and the US government made the grotesque decision to release photos of their mangled bodies to the media, broadcasting them like trophies across American nightly news networks. Saddam himself was later pulled from a foxhole, given a cartoonish trial, and executed.

His death marked the end of a long chapter in Iraq’s history, but the next pages would not look much better. The country has been plagued with routine violence, poverty, and outages of water and electricity. Protests have been met with crackdowns. And in certain areas of Iraq, communities have faced devastating rates of horrifying birth defects, along with a sharp increase in leukemia cases, which may be linked to the toxic effects of US munitions. According to research cited in The Guardian, these cancer levels in Fallujah surpassed the peak effects seen in Hiroshima after the US atomic bombing, with leukemia rates rising 2,200% in a shorter timeframe.

America’s largest embassy—the biggest on Earth—now sits in Baghdad, and US troops have yet to leave, remaining through Bush, returning under Obama, and persisting in smaller numbers under Trump and Biden, despite repeated objections from the Iraqi public, which are met with threats by the US. And oil companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron are now deeply embedded in Iraq’s energy sector.

Still, Bush’s so-called “War on Terror” didn’t stop at the Tigris.

In 2002, Washington signaled tacit approval of a coup in Venezuela as US-funded opposition groups and business leaders moved to remove Hugo Chávez after he raised royalties on oil companies like Exxon and moved to further nationalize the country’s oil reserves—the largest in the world.

Additionally, Chávez proposed the creation of ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, a potential bloc of nations that could operate beyond the realm of US interference, and in mid-2001, he formally requested the departure of US military forces from the Fuerte Tiuna armed forces headquarters in Caracas.

The coup was short-lived.

Chávez was briefly detained by dissident military officers, with business leader Pedro Carmona—who had reportedly met with US officials prior to the attempted overthrow—declaring himself president and immediately dissolving the National Assembly and Supreme Court. Massive demonstrations erupted, key military units refused to recognize the new regime, and Chávez was restored to office within days.

Like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Chávez continued challenging US financial hegemony by formally creating ALBA in 2004, by establishing Petrocaribe in 2005—a program offering subsidized oil to Caribbean and Central American nations on non-dollar terms—and by switching some oil sales to euros in 2008, thereby continuing to make Venezuela a prime target for economic sabotage.

The failed coup against Chávez didn’t mark the end of Washington’s efforts against the country, but instead, it set the template. Economic warfare, parallel governments, and bounty-style politics would later replace tanks in the streets.

Next, Washington targeted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. After ousting him once before in the early 1990s and then restoring him to power in 1994, the US forced him to sign a deal with the World Bank and IMF that privatized state-owned enterprises. Aristide stepped down in 1996 after failing to deliver.

In 2000, he was re-elected. Aristide’s second term was marked by his efforts to double Haiti’s minimum wage, crack down on tax evasion by business elites, and pour money into social programs. He even had the courage to demand France repay Haiti’s “independence debt”—a grotesque sum of 150 million francs that France forced Haiti to pay in 1825 as compensation for the loss of its colony after Haiti’s successful revolution. Demanded under the threat of military intervention, Haiti was forced to borrow the money from French and US banks, plunging the new nation into crippling debt that stunted its development for over a century.

These policies culminated in the February 2004 removal of Aristide, which he termed a “modern-day kidnapping”. Aristide was escorted out of the country by US Marines, removed from office, and ultimately relocated to South Africa.

Former United Nations official Gérard Latortue was named interim prime minister, and his first actions in office included restarting talks with the IMF, World Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank, renewed privatization efforts, and dropping charges against France to repay any owed debts, which France’s former ambassador to Haiti later admitted was one of several reasons they pushed for Aristide’s removal.

By the time Bush left office, the US government had attempted a coup in Venezuela, successfully backed another one in Haiti, and had US troops occupying both Iraq, and also Afghanistan, which a Pentagon memo once termed the “Saudi Arabia of lithium”.

The Obama Era: War in a Hopeful Mask

Barack Obama was supposed to be different. Exhausted by endless war under the Bush years, many Americans easily missed warning signs that his predecessor wouldn’t be much different, such as Obama outpacing a lifelong neoconservative hawk like John McCain on campaign cash from defense companies.

In 2009, Obama’s first year in office, a military coup ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya. American officials studiously avoided the word “coup,” yet WikiLeaks cables later showed that the plotters were in steady contact with the US embassy and knew Washington would look the other way.

Zelaya’s offenses were straightforward: he raised the minimum wage, expanded social programs, but perhaps most damning, he took Honduras into ALBA: “The conspiracy began when I started to join what is ALBA, the Latin American nations with Bolivarian Alternative,” Zelaya told Democracy Now in 2011. “So, a dirty war at the psychological level was carried out against me.”

The US didn’t officially pull the trigger, but it helped ensure Zelaya’s removal went smoothly and then backed the regime that reversed his reforms.

According to Zelaya, he was forced out of the country at gunpoint and taken to Soto Cano Air Base (also known as Palmerola), which is a Honduran military facility that also hosts a permanent US military task force. He was then flown to Costa Rica.

The regime that followed his departure withdrew Honduras from ALBA in early 2010, and gutted Zelaya’s social spending initiatives surrounding education and healthcare.

In 2011, the US shifted its toppling efforts across the ocean to Libya, where—joined by European allies—Libya would be systematically destroyed under the banner of preventing a “humanitarian catastrophe”. Not at all ironic considering how these same countries have not acted with nearly the same level of haste to stop Israel’s ongoing massacre in Gaza, infinitely worse by even a marginal comparison.

The offense of Muammar Gaddafi—who had ruled over Libya for decades, often with US and European support—was not humanitarian, but financial.

Two years prior, he had floated the idea of nationalizing the country’s vast oil reserves, coincidentally the largest in Africa, while demanding steep “signing bonuses” from western oil companies seeking to operate in the country. Gaddafi was one of the largest contributors to the African Union, investing over $300 million in the African Development Bank, which funds projects all over the continent. He proposed a gold-backed, African currency, and advocated for “a single African military force, a single currency, and a single passport” allowing Africans to move freely across the continent in what he described as the “United States of Africa”.

In April 2011, leaked cables passed to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by her advisor Sidney Blumenthal revealed that French intelligence was sweating bullets over Gaddafi’s plan to back a pan‑African currency with Libya’s gold and silver reserves, a move that could have undermined France’s decades-old grip on its former colonies. Most of these countries still use the CFA franc, a currency pegged to the euro and effectively controlled by Paris, giving France enormous influence over West and Central African markets. According to the memo, this threat to French financial dominance, combined with the promise of expanded Libyan influence in Africa, was one of the prime reasons Nicolas Sarkozy decided to drag France into the war.

Matters were not helped by the fact that Gaddafi and his son publicly accused French President Nicolas Sarkozy of accepting Libyan money to fund his 2007 election campaign, an allegation that would later land Sarkozy under criminal investigation.

As such, France became one of the loudest cheerleaders for war alongside the US.

By October of that year, a bloodied and beaten Gaddafi would be dug out of a drainage ditch, captured by western-backed militias and, either dying from his wounds or executed summarily, dumped in an undisclosed desert grave.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton learned of Gaddafi’s death during a live interview and laughed: “We came, we saw, he died.”

Libya was left fractured, impoverished, and crawling with militias, with constant violence and even open slave markets. Western-backed rebels were granted full immunity for any potential war crimes committed during the uprising, Libya’s oil sector reopened on far more agreeable terms, and Gaddafi’s ideas for a gold-backed African currency and united continent were scrapped and forgotten.

A humanitarian success.

Obama also worked to lay the foundation for later administrations by turning the imperial gaze back to Venezuela, first in 2014, by allocating $5 million to “support political competition-building efforts” in Venezuela, and then in 2015, by declaring the country an “extraordinary threat” and imposing targeted economic sanctions.

By the time he left office, the US government under Obama had expanded US drone warfare to an industrial scale, launching airstrikes across the Middle East and Africa. Weddings, funerals, and first responders were all fair game. “Double-tap” strikes ensured that those who came to help the wounded were often killed too. Obama officials reportedly held weekly meetings—nicknamed “Terror Tuesdays”—to decide who would live and who would die. Among those killed was Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen living in Yemen who was assassinated in 2011, his only due process arriving in the form of a drone missile. Two weeks later, his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman—never accused of anything—was killed in a separate strike.

The US under Obama also expanded mass surveillance, refused to prosecute brutal CIA torture under the Bush administration, force-fed hunger-striking inmates at Guantanamo Bay, prosecuted more whistleblowers than all previous presidents combined, and—like Bush before him—continued arming Israel as it terrorized occupied Palestinian territory.

When Trump assumed office in January 2017, he would inherit a series of precedents that allowed him to bomb, kill, spy, and torture. Without accountability for the numerous atrocities carried out under Bush and Obama, Trump was free to not only continue their horrors but build his own on top of them.

Trump’s First Term and Biden: No Breaks in the Chain

One of Trump’s first military actions resulted in the death of 8-year-old Nawar al-Awlaki in Yemen, daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, the US citizen Obama’s drone strike had killed several years earlier.

Eager to hide his bloodshed, Trump loosened rules on civilian-casualty reporting while simultaneously increasing Obama-era drone strikes.

He also established a new precedent for the American empire by openly assassinating a high-ranking Iranian officer—General Qassem Soleimani—nearly igniting a war. UN experts described the strike as illegal under international law. No evidence of an imminent threat was produced, and nobody was ever held accountable.

In Latin America, the US under Trump backed two coups. One failed. One succeeded.

First, in 2019, the Trump administration applauded the removal of Bolivian president Evo Morales, calling it a “strong signal” for “democracy” after the US-funded Organization of American States—created during the Cold War and historically used as a tool for US influence in Latin America—was invited by Bolivia to monitor the election and alleged fraud. As reported by The New York Times, the organization’s “flawed” analysis following the election fueled “a chain of events that changed the South American nation’s history”—a finding supported by independent studies debunking widespread fraud claims.

Not only had US agencies such as the National Endowment for Democracy financed Bolivian civil society and media projects that became prominent voices against Morales during the standoff, but Carlos Mesa—the electoral opponent of Evo Morales—was in direct contact with US embassy officials, discussing strategies to challenge Morales, according to a 2008 diplomatic cable revealed by WikiLeaks.

Morales—who brought Bolivia into ALBA, reduced poverty, nationalized gas fields and telecoms, and kept the country’s vast lithium reserves under state control—fled under military pressure, branding his removal an “act of revenge by the United States which never accepted the loss of control of the Bolivian lithium market in favor of Chinese and German companies.”

“It was a national and international coup d’état,” Morales commented at the time from Buenos Aires. “Industrialized countries don’t want competition.”

Days before the coup, Morales had cancelled a lithium deal with Germany’s ACI Systems Alemania—which makes batteries for companies like Tesla—following local protests in Potosí over low royalties and environmental risks. In response to accusations that the US backed a conspiracy against Morales for Tesla to secure its natural resources, Tesla CEO Elon Musk—who established a foothold in both Trump administrations— tweeted: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”

Bolivian Senator Jeanine Áñez declared herself interim president and gained immediate US recognition from the Trump administration. She gutted social programs, broke a decade-long trend and named a new ambassador to the US, withdrew Bolivia from ALBA, granted military forces immunity from criminal prosecution for actions taken to “restore internal order” during protests, all while letting lithium deals signed with countries like China and Germany stall out.

During her short-lived regime, Áñez further signaled her compliance to the United States by joining dozens of US allies and formally recognizing Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president of Venezuela, despite never being elected.

Guaidó—a leader of the opposition party Voluntad Popular—rose to prominence during a period in which US “democracy promotion” programs were active in Venezuela. He contested Nicolás Maduro’s 2018 re-election as illegitimate, declaring himself interim president in January 2019. Just a few weeks prior, he traveled to Washington and met with Organization of American States Secretary General Luis Almagro. On the night before announcing his presidency, US Vice President Mike Pence called Guaidó to confirm US backing. On January 23rd—the same day Guaidó declared himself president—Trump endorsed him.

Denouncing the move as a coup and alleging the US was “desperate to get its hands on our oil”, some of Maduro’s offenses in the eyes of the US included approving “oil for debt” deals with Russia and China, dedicating a portion of the country’s land for state-led mining of gold and other resources, along with strengthening ALBA alliances with non-Western powers such as China and Russia.

Meanwhile, prominent neoconservative John Bolton—who helped write the blueprint for the 2003 US war in Iraq and briefly found a home in Trump’s first-term cabinet—openly admitted on Fox News in January of that year that it would “make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”

By October 2019, the US government was directly funding the “interim government” with “travel, salaries, and secure communications systems.”

For his part, Guaidó took control of Venezuelan assets, vowed to restore diplomatic ties with Israel, and pledged to reopen oil fields to international investors. However, as with the coup attempt against Chávez decades prior, the military didn’t defect, the public didn’t mobilize, and the operation was a humiliating failure for Trump.

In March 2020, Trump issued a $15 million bounty for the capture of Maduro.

When Trump left office in January 2021, his four-year tenure consisted of a failed coup in Venezuela—along with a more successful one in Bolivia—bombing campaigns across Yemen and Somalia, US troops occupying Iraq, support for Israeli atrocities in Palestine, and his administration also kicked off lethal weapon shipments to Ukraine nearly half a decade before war broke out.

Trump also dropped the so-called “Mother of All Bombs” on Afghanistan, the largest non-nuclear weapon in America’s arsenal.

Biden: A Change in Tone, Not Substance

He left in place Donald Trump’s 2019 recognition of opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s “interim president”, treating Nicolás Maduro as illegitimate while also reimposing economic sanctions against the country.

Biden continued targeting ALBA countries like Cuba with economic sanctions, along with Nicaragua’s state-owned gold mining company. Elsewhere around the world, the US under Biden maintained bombing campaigns across Yemen and Somalia, kept US troops in Syria and Iraq, and—even as he oversaw a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan—the legion of corporations profiting from war still found themselves turning a pretty penny in other theaters.

Over the course of his single term in office, Biden funneled billions upon billions of US-taxpayer dollars into the war in Ukraine, yet halfway through his tenure, the US empire’s depravity escalated even further. Starting in October 2023, the US under Biden began offering an endless supply of financing and weapons to Israel, along with giving diplomatic cover on the international stage to Benjamin Netanyahu and his monstrous regime as it assaulted hospitals, schools, and bakeries under the guise of rooting out Hamas while systematically reshaping the Gaza Strip bomb after bomb, earning Biden the moniker of “Genocide Joe”.

Still, none of this stopped him from making the remarkable claim during a July 2024 address to the nation that he is “the first president this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world”.

During his final weeks in office, Biden’s government refused to recognize Maduro’s 2024 inauguration and raised the bounty on his head to $25 million.

The Logical Extension

With decades of US actions around the world unchecked and unchallenged, Trump’s second term is already proving to be one with practically no restraints, revealing a US government that is pure American imperialism with the mask fully removed. Trump’s second term is not a break from the past—it is the logical extension of it.

For decades, the so-called “international community”—a group of nations that has repeatedly proven itself to be either spineless, complicit, or both—has stood by while US administrations under Republicans and Democrats alike have pillaged the world.

Now, as the US is pointing its imperial cannons at Venezuela and Iran, while adding new targets to the list, such as Greenland, the question many have started to ask is:

Where does all of this end, if it ever does, and if there is a line in the sand, where is it?

Ten years from now, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and countless others who enabled or excused the destruction of Gaza will almost certainly be dead, perhaps passing away peacefully one night during a restful dream.

What they leave behind, however, is a legacy shaped not only by their actions but by how those actions are remembered. History books may brand them as monsters or war criminals—or, just as easily, frame them as leaders caught in a “complicated” era, sanitizing their complicity. In fact, it’s entirely possible the dominant narrative will begin with the attacks of October 7th, burying sheer horrors beneath footnotes and erasing decades of blockades, bombings, and the slow suffocation inflicted on Gaza long before that day.

Memory, as always, will belong not to the victims, but to the victors, those with the power to shape not just the narrative, but the future. Gaza’s ruins will one day be rebuilt, and in the eyes of western imperialism, the most “natural” architects of that future are, of course, the very forces responsible for its destruction.

Names like Tony Blair—widely condemned for his role in the Iraq invasion of 2003—have already been floated for leadership in Gaza’s reconstruction. Trump, whose administration has funneled weapons and diplomatic cover to Israel over this last year, along with during his first term back in 2017, has publicly suggested turning Gaza into a “Riviera”-style resort zone, drawing on his background as a real estate developer with a history of branding luxury hotels.

Blatant, modern day imperialism on full display for all the world to see, the same world that failed to stop any of this from happening.

For two years, people marched across the globe, pleading for action. They were ignored. The bombs fell anyway. Global institutions—powerless or complicit—put their futility on full display. UN resolutions were vetoed. The ICC was threatened. Western governments issued carefully worded condemnations, but continued arms sales. Confident in its impunity, Israel carried on without significant interruption, backed by decades of precedent showing there would be no meaningful consequences.

Meanwhile, Gaza has been starved out. By early 2025, humanitarian aid was nearly paralyzed—at times, no aid trucks were allowed in, and when they were, it was in numbers far below what was needed. The World Health Organization warned of imminent famine, and reports confirmed that children were dying from malnutrition. Hospitals collapsed under the weight of blockade and bombardment, crippled by severe shortages of fuel, clean water, and medical oxygen.

With the passage of time, much of this suffering will likely be whitewashed, their perpetrators vindicated by mainstream narratives.

George W. Bush, for example, spent eight years as president overseeing a needless invasion of Iraq that cost billions in US taxpayer dollars and resulted in nearly a million dead Iraqi civilians. During his two terms, Bush was vilified, often accused of war crimes, and even compared with Hitler. And yet once he left the Oval Office, it wasn’t long before the rehabilitation started, with Bush soon dancing on Ellen, promoting his book, and showing off his dog paintings.

Barack Obama spent two terms as president drone-bombing seven countries around the world, only to enjoy retirement kitesurfing and giving paid speeches.

Joe Biden left office with the moniker of “Genocide Joe” for his support of Israel’s bloodbath in Gaza, but has since been spotted on the boardwalk slurping down ice cream.

With the passage of time, what has happened in Gaza over the last few years might easily become just another Iraq invasion, just another series of drone strikes. Yes, it happened. Yes, the world got mad for a little while. But then the world moved on, never holding the people responsible for such atrocities accountable, undoubtedly ensuring that such acts will be repeated again in the future.

In the end, memory is malleable—reshaped not by justice, but by convenience. The cameras turn away, ruins give way to redevelopment, blood is scrubbed from pavement, history is rewritten, and those once seen as villains are slowly folded back into polite society.

Fast forward ten years.

It’s 2035.

“We have to move on,” an American tourist might think to himself, flip-flops clacking against fresh concrete as he exits a Raytheon-sponsored history museum, eyes locking on to a glimmering Trump hotel on the distant Gaza waterfront ahead. “ That stuff happened ten years ago. It was a complicated time.”

Is this the future we want?

There is nothing complicated about what has happened over the last two years. Grotesque horrors have been unleashed upon the Gaza population in real time. We've all seen it. It’s up to us—right now—whether we’re okay with not only setting another precedent that allows those responsible to get away with this, but worse, letting those same people have any say in Gaza’s future.

#1: Politicians making the issue more about Trump bypassing Congress, and less about the actual act of bombing Iran itself, are missing the point entirely

If Trump had approval from Congress to bomb Iran, it still would not justify it. Moreover, considering much of Congress is comfortably nestled in the deep pockets of defense companies, and considering Republicans currently hold a majority in the House and Senate, the odds are high they would have given Trump approval to attack Iran anyway. The necessity of the strikes should be the first point of contention, not the legality, especially given the US is already well known for not caring about pesky little things like rule of law when it comes to waging war.

#2: Any belief that domestic "checks and balances" such as Congress, or international ones, such as the UN, can stop the US and Israel, is based on fantasy

The historical record shows Congress nearly always falls in line with neocon war plans, and the United Nations is completely absent in their ability and/or willingness to stop them. Israel has waged a genocide in Gaza for the last two years, yet the major institutions that make up the so-called "international community" have completely abandoned them. There is little to indicate these institutions will step up and challenge the US over Iran.

#3: Democrats are far from innocent in their contribution to this

The Obama administration stood by as Israel assassinated Iranian scientists, and during Obama’s first term, the US itself launched cyber attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities—an action that meets the Pentagon’s own definition of an act of war. Additionally, Obama, and later Biden, inflicted crushing economic sanctions on Iran, "justified" by claims that the country was pursuing nuclear weapons.

It's also worth noting that the Obama administration's Iran nuclear deal was constructed around the narrative that it would keep Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons, despite overwhelming evidence—even at the time—that Iran had no interest in doing so. This lie has been repeated over and over by Republican and Democrat administrations alike, possibly to manufacture public support for the war now being sold to them in 2025.

#4: There is no evidence Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons

More than a decade ago, the 2011 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a compilation of data evaluated by America's 17 intelligence agencies, declared that there were no serious revisions to the 2007 NIE, which stated that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003. In 2022, the Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review admitted Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon, writing in their report that the country "does not today possess a nuclear weapon" and is not seeking one. In March 2025, US intelligence agencies reaffirmed there was no evidence Iran was developing nuclear weapons. In June 2025, Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed his organization has "no proof" Iran decided to build a nuclear bomb.

#5: The military-industrial complex would never allow a truly anti-war politician to become president, and Donald Trump was no exception

Trump has always been a part of the neocon establishment. During his first term, he attempted a humiliating coup in Venezuela, openly assassinated a high-ranking Iranian official, dropped a "MOAB" on Afghanistan, sent Javelin missiles to Ukraine, launched raids and airstrikes in Yemen, and left US troops in Syria "only for the oil".

Since taking office in January 2025, Trump has continued bombing Yemen, while also launching US airstrikes in Somalia, keeping troops in Iraq and Syria, and approving weapon sales to Ukraine, even as he ran for a second presidential term on ending that war within 24 hours of becoming president.

The last hard pill to swallow is the most important, particularly because Americans tend to forget it every four years: So long as politicians continue to adhere to the interests of defense companies and other corporate donors, no politician from either major party who is truly anti-war will ever be allowed to step foot in the White House.

Donald Trump has proven himself to be anything but an exception to the rule. Like every other president before him, he’s just another establishment warmonger.

It might be daunting to look at a map like this.

On the surface, it would appear as though most of the country supports Donald Trump for president—but in reality, that’s not exactly the case.

According to a recent count from the University of Florida's US Election Project, some 89 million voting-eligible Americans did not vote, or about 36%.

As of November 11th, Trump held 74.8 million votes, or about 50% of total votes cast, but roughly 30% of the total electorate if non-voters are included.

On the flipside, 71.2 million votes went to Harris, or about 48% of the popular vote, but only about 29% if non-voters are included.

In other words, votes of ‘no confidence’ amounted to a bigger share of the electorate than votes for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.

The fact that more voters turned out for Biden in 2020 than they did for Harris in 2024 is also interesting, and could be explained by her support for the war in Ukraine and/or her support for Israel’s US-funded bloodbath in Gaza.

But the majority of the voting-eligible population also didn’t turn out for Trump, which could be explained by his numerous broken promises after running in 2016, or perhaps even by his own support for the genocide in Gaza.

Either way, it’s easy to look at maps of red and blue and falsely assume that a majority of the country supports Donald Trump when that’s just not the case. Half the country didn’t vote for Trump, and half the country also didn’t vote for Harris.

About a third of eligible voters told both parties to piss off and just stayed home.

While running for president during the 2008 election, Barack Obama made a lot of promises. He vowed to curb government spying programs and increase government transparency, pledged to strengthen abortion access, said he would close Guantanamo Bay, spoke out against torture, assured voters he would look into potential human rights abuses committed under the George W. Bush administration, and he swore to end the US occupation of Iraq—a promise we could “take to the bank”.

Of course, there were warning signs Obama wasn’t going to usher in the level of change he was promising. For example, on the campaign trail, he called Iran a “great threat”, said he was open to sending US troops into Pakistan, promised $30 billion in assistance to Israel, and he even received more campaign cash from defense companies than John McCain. Still, he was nonetheless portrayed by Democrats as the clear “Lesser Evil”.

But after winning the 2008 election, that illusion quickly began to fade.

Throughout his first term, Obama “failed” to close Guantanamo, slammed Iran with crippling economic sanctions, gave Israel a blank check to commit atrocities in Gaza, vastly expanded drone strikes, backpedaled on prioritizing abortion access, withdrew some US troops from Iraq (but later sent them back), renewed the Patriot Act, signed off on indefinite detention of US citizens, targeted whistleblowers, authorized a coup in oil-rich Libya, and allowed his Justice Department to defend the overseers of Bush-era torture from prosecution.

And yet, by the time the 2012 election rolled around, all of these negatives about the Obama administration became secondary to Democrats. Obama might be bombing multiple countries, they argued, he might be keeping US troops in Iraq, he might be targeting whistleblowers, he might not be overly concerned with torture carried out under the Bush administration, and he might not have closed Guantanamo. He might not be perfect, they said, but we still have to vote for him because if we don’t, his opponent—Mitt Romney—will win.

The argument worked, and that November, Obama was re-elected.

Yet, throughout his second term, Obama continued to prove he was far from a “Lesser Evil”. Over the next four years, he expanded his war on whistleblowers, launched cyber attacks on Iran, doubled down on not holding anyone accountable for torture, oversaw the force-feeding of hunger-striking inmates at Guantanamo and barred the transfer of cleared detainees from the facility, and he vastly expanded drone strikes.

In his last full year as president, Obama dropped at least 26,000 bombs—that’s 72 bombs a day, or 3 bombs every hour.

Perhaps Mitt Romney would have been worse. Maybe he would have doubled Obama’s death count. Maybe instead of dropping 26,000 bombs, Romney would have dropped 52,000. Both men might be warmongers, Democrats said, but hey, 26,000 bombs dropped is better than 52,000 bombs, right? We need to support the lesser warmonger, instead of—you know, not supporting warmongers, period.

Again in 2016, Democrats encouraged voters to come out and support Hillary Clinton for president, their next “Lesser Evil” candidate.

Sure, they said, she might be a career politician who gave paid speeches to banks, flip-flopped on supporting torture, joked about the brutal US-backed murder of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and stood behind every US war from Iraq to Syria. But if we don’t turn a blind eye to all of that, her opponent—Donald Trump—might win.

This time, the “Lesser Evil” argument didn’t work, and after Clinton lost, Democrats spent no time genuinely reflecting as to why. Instead, they went on to blame everything from Russia to Bernie Sanders. Everyone and everything was at fault for her defeat except for Hillary Clinton herself, and the party that decided she was the best person out of some 300 million Americans to beat Trump.

Fortunately for Democrats, it only took a few years for American voters to realize—at least in the short term—that Trump's campaign rhetoric didn’t line up with his actions as president. Trump bombed Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen, left US troops in Iraq, and he kept US troops in Syria “only” for the oil. He attempted a humiliating coup in Venezuela, assassinated an Iranian general, and sent missiles to Ukraine.

At home, his promised healthcare plan never happened. He “drained the swamp” by adding people like Rex Tillerson—former Exxon CEO—and famed neocons like John Bolton. And it did Trump no favors that his response to an unprecedented global pandemic during the last year of his presidency sent destructive shockwaves through the economy which are still being felt to this day.

All of this made it easy to paint Trump as the Greater Evil. So easy, in fact, that Democrats even ran Joe Biden against him—a man as old as time itself who embodied every definition of an establishment politician.

Biden embraced his role as the chosen “Lesser Evil”. He promised to end the “forever wars” and swore “not another foot” of Trump’s border wall would be built. He spoke out against separating families crossing the border, pledged no more offshore drilling, said he’d up the minimum wage, install a public option, and even vowed to cure cancer.

As in past elections, any meaningful criticism of Biden was promptly ignored by Democrats. Sure, they argued, he might have supported all the post-9/11 wars and occupations. He might—like Trump—have numerous accusations of sexual misconduct. He might represent a decades-long record of giving Israel weapons to commit atrocities. He might have flip-flopped on gay marriage and abortion.

But, Democrats said, we have to turn a blind eye to all of that, or Trump might win.

Unsurprisingly, once elected, Biden quickly lived up to his establishment record. He waived federal laws and cleared land to continue building Trump’s wall, and he continued separating families at the border. His public option never materialized, and his minimum wage hike never happened. He kept troops in Iraq, in Syria, and sent more troops to Somalia. He left in place Trump’s scheduled withdrawal from Afghanistan, but then shifted the imperial focus to wage a costly proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, while also fully backing Israel’s genocidal rampage in Gaza.

By 2024, it was becoming increasingly apparent that Democrats needed a new “Lesser Evil” candidate to replace Biden, especially after his disastrously incoherent debate with Trump. Primaries be damned, Democrats quickly rushed in Biden's VP, Kamala Harris, to take his spot. And like clockwork, they encouraged voters to ignore her backing of the war in Ukraine and to disregard her support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. They shrugged off her endorsement from Dick Cheney, along with more than 200 staffers who worked with Mitt Romney, John McCain, and George Bush. They dismissed her flip-flops on fracking and building a border wall. Democrats encouraged voters to put all of this aside, or else Trump might win.

Decades of “Lesser Evil” voting culminated in a Democratic candidate who supported fracking, border walls, genocide, and one who carried an endorsement from a monster like Dick Cheney.

Decades of voting against our better judgment in favor of the “Lesser Evil”, and at the end of it? Trump is president—again.

Downplaying the support of candidates for things like war, torture, and corporate pandering hasn’t resulted in the progress Democrats promised; instead, it has resulted in a slippery slope where voters increasingly sacrifice their values, vote for the perceived “Lesser Evil”, and get absolutely nothing in return for it.

Considering the ineffective history of “Lesser Evil” voting, maybe—just maybe—it’s finally time to stop putting millions of Americans into an unwinnable situation every four years where they’re encouraged to choose between two candidates who barely represent their interests and values.

Maybe it’s time to stop voting for the “Lesser Evil”.

On the evening of September 10th, two war criminals—one named Donald Trump, one named Kamala Harris—met on a Pennsylvania stage before an audience of millions to “debate”. With both presidential candidates wearing American flag pins almost identical to their policies, the event kicked off with a remarkably honest confession from Harris, who said, “in this debate tonight, you’re going to hear from the same old, tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling.”

While she was referring to Trump, her comment was nonetheless a perfect summation of the absolute shitshow which followed.

1. Harris bragged about her economic plan being endorsed by Goldman Sachs

“What Goldman Sachs has said is that Donald Trump’s plan would make the economy worse,” Harris said. “Mine would strengthen the economy.”

We’ve truly come a long way since the days of Occupy Wall Street, with presidential candidates now willing to openly brag about their endorsements from banking firms like Goldman Sachs. And while Goldman did put out a report suggesting Harris will be good for the economy, one might be left to wonder whether “good” for Goldman Sachs really translates into “good” for working class people.

Harris also has lots of other friends on Wall Street willing to endorse her—much like they did four years ago, when Biden and Harris raked in five times as much as Trump in donations from the securities and investment industry.

“Harris has a better relationship with Wall Street than even Joe Biden had,” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, founder and president of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, told CNN. Sonnenfeld argues that Harris has a solid relationship with Wall Street because she toned down the “class warfare” rhetoric: “She went after abuses but didn’t see the scale of enterprise itself as misconduct. She knows that thriving businesses are good for the economy and the average American worker.”

And it’s worth pointing out that for his part, Trump unsurprisingly has his own share of endorsements from Wall Street.

2. Harris vowed to restore Roe v. Wade—but with a catch

“I pledge to you when Congress passes a bill to put back in place the protections of Roe V Wade, as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law.”

While on the surface this might sound like Harris is vowing to restore Roe, what she is actually saying here is that she will sign Roe back into law when Congress passes a bill that reaches her desk.

But why wait? Harris doesn’t need to be president for this to happen. She doesn’t need to be in the White House to push Congress when she can push them right now, as Vice President, between September 2024 and January 2025. And then Biden—who has flip-flopped on his abortion position over the years but now claims to support Roe—can sign it into law before he leaves office.

3. Trump said “they’re eating dogs” in Ohio

“What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country. And look at what’s happening to the towns all over the United States. And a lot of towns don’t want to talk—not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

When moderators questioned Trump, he cited “television” as his source: “The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food.”

While anything is possible in a state like Ohio, claims of Haitian immigrants eating dogs have been debunked. The BBC, for example, looked at archive video of every major US broadcaster, including FOX, CNN, and CBS, but could not identify “any televised interview” of this nature. They also managed to pinpoint the source of the claim, which involved a woman who was arrested for killing and eating a cat:

“Many right-wing commentators have referred to the woman as Haitian and pointed to the report as evidence for the baseless claim that Haitian immigrants have been engaged in similar activity. However, the incident took place in Canton, Ohio, about 170 miles away from Springfield. Canton Police told the BBC that the suspect was born in 1997 and that she was a US citizen.”

4. Harris bragged about her endorsements from Republicans—and later called the “late great” John McCain “an American hero”

Harris said she has the endorsement of “200 Republicans who have formally worked with President Bush, Mitt Romney, and John McCain, including the endorsement of former Vice President Dick Cheney and Congressmember Liz Cheney.”

Showcasing endorsements from the Bush-Cheney team—aka the same guys who greenlit torture along with an invasion of Iraq which killed hundreds of thousands of people—is a really weird flex, but okay.

Later in the debate, Harris said of John McCain:

“I will never forget the early morning hours when it was up for a vote in the United States Senate and the late great John McCain, who you have disparaged as being, you don't like him, you said at the time because he got caught, he was an American hero. The late great John McCain, I will never forget that night.”

Since Harris has clearly opted to carry on the bipartisan tradition of whitewashing John McCain’s hawkish legacy, here’s a quick reminder of what McCain did while he was alive, some of which included supporting the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2002, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the invasion of Libya in 2011, economic sanctions against Iran, sowing chaos in Syria, and supporting numerous bills which helped keep America’s defense spending the highest of any nation on earth.

5. Harris supports fracking—but also cares about the environment

Harris was asked about her flip-flop on fracking, but dodged the question by saying she made her position "very clear" in 2020.

This does nothing to address her previous positions—like in 2019, when she said “there’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking”—and why her position has changed. And it also doesn’t explain how she can call climate change an “existential threat” while supporting something so environmentally destructive as fracking.

6. Harris said Israel is acting in Gaza because of October 7th

Regarding Israel’s year-long genocide against the people of Gaza, Harris said:

“Let's understand how we got here. On Oct. 7, Hamas, a terrorist organization, slaughtered 1,200 Israelis. Many of them young people who were simply attending a concert. Women were horribly raped. And so absolutely, I said then, I say now, Israel has a right to defend itself.”

But Israel was detaining, torturing, and killing Palestinians long before October 7th, and so to say “we got here” on October 7th seems a bit disingenuous. Republicans and Democrats have been arming Israel for decades. They’ve been turning a blind eye to Israel’s atrocities for decades. They’ve been going on about Israel’s “right to defend itself” against the open-air prison known as Gaza for decades. The big difference this time is the scale at which Israel has killed Palestinians over the last year, and how completely neutered the “international community” has been to stop it.

Harris also touched on the importance of a ceasefire, even as the Biden-Harris administration continues to give Israel weapons.

7. Ukraine would have been different under Trump? Probably not

“If I were president it would have never started,” Trump said. “If I were president Russia would have never. I know Putin very well. He would have never, and there was no threat of it either, by the way, for four years. Have gone into Ukraine and killed millions of people when you add it up.”

But to believe this requires ignoring Trump’s record in office, which consisted of sending missiles and other “defensive capabilities” to Ukraine, parading US troops along Russia’s borders, interfering with the construction of a major gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, and slapping Russia with crushing economic sanctions.

8. Trump warned about WW3—which he could have easily started

“We're playing with World War 3,” Trump said. “Where is our president? We don't even know if he's a president.”

And yet as president, Trump’s own risks of starting a third world war included openly assassinating an Iranian general, boosting the US nuclear stockpile, placing the US military along Russia's borders, selling US weapons to Taiwan, sending missiles to Ukraine, positioning US Navy aircraft carriers near China, and militarizing space.

9. Harris claimed Ukraine is a “free” country

“Through the work that I and others did, we brought 50 countries together to support Ukraine in its righteous defense. And because of our support, because of the air defense, the ammunition, the artillery, the javelins, the Abrams tanks that we have provided, Ukraine stands as an independent and free country.”

Because dissolving opposition political parties, consolidating television outlets, banning news networks, postponing elections, arresting protesters, declaring martial law, and forcing military conscription are clearly signs of a thriving democracy, right?

Ukraine is far from a “free” country under comedian-turned-dictator Volodymyr Zelensky and his vast collection of undersized t-shirts.

10. Trump (again) promised a healthcare plan

“I have concepts of a plan,” Trump said. “I’m not president right now. But if we come up with something I would only change it if we come up with something better and less expensive. And there are concepts and options we have to do that. And you'll be hearing about it in the not-too-distant future.”

This might sound familiar.

In 2016—before he was president—Trump promised a “beautiful” healthcare plan.

In 2017—after becoming president—Trump said he has “a plan that I think is going to be fantastic. It’s going to be released fairly soon. I think it’s going to be something special ... I think you're going to like what you hear.”

In 2019, Trump told ABC News he would soon announce a “phenomenal” new healthcare plan “in about two months, maybe less.”

In 2020, while running for a second term, Trump said “we’re going to be doing a health care plan very strongly, and protect people with pre-existing conditions. I have it all ready, and it’s a much better plan for you.”

Trump has been promising a healthcare plan since he ran for president in 2016, so there is really no reason to believe he will deliver this time around.

11. Harris claimed there is “not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world”

“As of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world, the first time this century.”

Maybe Harris forgot about the “hundreds” of US special forces deployed to Somalia.

Maybe Harris forgot about the “thousands” of US troops in Iraq and Syria, and how they have been repeatedly attacked over the years while occupying these countries.

Not to mention other US troop deployments by the Biden-Harris administration, which have included places like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Taiwan, Poland, and even Ukraine, where “members of the Florida National Guard have been training forces in the western part of the country far from the front lines.”

It might at first seem like the world’s most unlikely duo, but Donald Trump and Kamala Harris running on the same ticket could actually work. Not only are both candidates unequivocally in support of genocide and endless war, not only are both candidates backed by an army of corporations, but both candidates also already had a shot in office to deliver on the promises they made while running, yet failed miserably.

Trump—a convicted felon for every imaginable crime except his war crimes—has a long history of broken promises. While running in 2016, Trump claimed he’d “drain the swamp” but then added legacy goons into his administration such as famed neocon John Bolton and Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson. Trump said he would prosecute Hillary Clinton (again, not for her war crimes), but once elected, backed off. He promised to implement term limits for members of Congress, but never did it. He claimed to be working on a “beautiful” healthcare plan where everybody would be covered and nobody would be “dying on the sidewalk” but it never materialized.

In early 2020, Trump rolled out his “Deal of the Century”, an alleged “peace plan” for Israel and Palestine that was not only heavily biased in favor of Israel, but one that also ignored the Trump administration’s record of giving Israel the weapons it would later use to mow down Palestinians. As with so many of Trump’s promises, the so-called “Deal of the Century” never actually went anywhere.

Four years later, Trump is once again talking about a “peace plan” not just for Israel and Palestine, but also for Russia and Ukraine. And yet to believe him requires ignoring his record in office, which consisted of implementing crushing economic sanctions against Russia, positioning US troops along Russia’s borders, and sending missiles and other “defensive capabilities” to Ukraine.

In March of 2024, Trump told Sean Hannity he will have a Ukrainian peace deal “solved” within 24 hours, but naturally refused to give any other details. In August, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky claimed Trump told him in private that he plans to do everything to “stop the war” and “for Ukraine to remain independent, European, and free.” But Andrii Yermak, a spokesperson for Zelensky, told European Pravda that Trump advised Zelensky’s team against paying attention to “fake news” about his willingness to make concessions and said Trump “understands what kind of war this is, and that the US has supported, and will continue to support Ukraine.”

In light of the contrast between Trump’s words and his actions, it seems very unlikely he will bring about peace to either Palestine or Ukraine. And yet it also makes perfect sense why he is claiming otherwise: Many Americans want these conflicts to end, which might not only explain why Trump has embraced anti-war rhetoric—at times even referring to himself as the “president who delivers peace”—but why Democrats have now also started adopting similar language.

In his resignation speech this summer, Biden—a decaying pile of skin and bones hastily stuffed inside a fancy suit—claimed the US “is not at war anywhere in the world.” Truly a remarkable assertion for a president who has overseen bombing campaigns in places like Syria and Somalia, along with the funding of bloodbaths in Ukraine and Palestine.

In that same speech, Biden then passed on the imperial torch by endorsing his Vice President, Kamala Harris, a former California prosecutor who made a name for herself with such positions as defending the death penalty, refusing to support state-wide body cameras for police, prosecuting the parents of children who miss school, fighting pot legalization, and opposing legislation that would have required her office to independently investigate fatal police shootings.

While running together in the 2020 presidential election, Biden and Harris pledged to be a departure from Trump on things like separating families at the border and putting kids in cages, but then continued doing it. They promised “not another foot” of border wall, but then waived laws and cleared land to build far more than just another foot. They pledged to raise the federal minimum wage to $15/hour—a wage no longer viable in an economy death-gripped by corporate greed thinly disguised as inflation—but it never happened. They said no more fossil fuel drilling on public lands, but then kept drilling. At one point, they even promised to cure cancer. Like Trump, Biden and Harris made countless promises while running, yet failed to deliver.

Four years later, with Biden out of the picture, the Harris-Trump showdown ensures core aspects of the status quo are locked in for at least another four years.

Like Trump, Harris will not end US military support for Israel’s genocide in Palestine, and also like Trump—who said he will silence Israel’s critics by revoking passports of foreign nationals protesting in the US—Harris is also willing to silence Israel’s critics. During an early August campaign rally, she told protesters to be quiet when she’s speaking, and responded to chants of “Kamala, Kamala you can’t hide, we won’t vote for genocide” with “If you want Trump to win, then say that.”

Like Harris, Trump’s record in office suggests he will almost certainly not cut off US support for the war in Ukraine.

Like Trump, Harris has made it clear she will be a hawk on Iran.

Like Harris, Trump claims to care about protecting the environment, and yet they both support fracking.

Like Trump, Harris—who said in 2020 that a border wall “is a complete waste of taxpayer money and won’t make us any safer”—now supports one.

Like Harris, Trump will continue amping up military tensions with China.

Like Trump, Harris is now against Medicare for All.

Like the Biden-Harris administration, the Trump-Pence administration also bombed Somalia and kept US troops in Syria and Iraq.

Like the Trump-Pence administration, the Biden-Harris administration has not been shy about going after whistleblowers.

Like the Biden-Harris administration, the Trump-Pence administration supported the renewal of invasive government spying programs.

Like the Trump-Pence administration, which supported sanctions and regime change in oil-rich Venezuela, the Biden-Harris administration also supported regime change.

And although Trump has claimed he is self-funded, Trump—like Harris—also has the backing of corporate interests.

Are there differences between Trump and Harris? Of course there are. But in order to believe those differences translate into anything more than campaign rhetoric, one needs to be willing to grant a level of trust to either candidate which they have not actually earned. Both candidates already attained positions of power, and both candidates failed to deliver on the key promises which brought them there.

Even if we assume every single thing Trump or Harris says is true—and that they will genuinely fight to make their promises happen, we have to then be willing to embrace a trade deal that goes like this: You’ll get something if you vote for Biden or Harris—go ahead and name whatever policy of theirs you fancy—but at what cost? What do they have to promise to get you to turn a blind eye to genocide? What do they have to pledge in order to make you support a hot war with Russia? What do they have to say to get you to ignore the ongoing US occupation of Iraq? What is a fair trade for another round of US drone strikes in Somalia or Syria?

Trump and Harris will make a lot of promises, but don’t believe their words; instead, believe their very public records. For both candidates, such records clearly show two politicians who both agree on all the things that benefit their corporate donors and few of the things that benefit working class people.

In the weeks after October 7th, the Israeli government spent their time—and if you live in the US, your tax dollars—bombing hospitals, mosques, schools, refugee camps, and entire neighborhoods. Generations of families were wiped off the face of the earth. At one point, a Palestinian child was being killed every ten minutes. And through it all, one thing was made very clear: whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden is in the White House, Israel will have a blank check to commit endless atrocities.

“I am a Zionist,” then-Vice President Biden told Shalom TV in 2008. “You don't have to be a Jew to be a Zionist."

In 2013, VP Biden appeared before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to recap the Obama administration’s first-term support for Israel:

“We’ve held the most regular and largest-ever joint military exercises. We’ve invested $275 million in Iron Dome, including $70 million that the President directed to be spent last year on an urgent basis—to increase the production of Iron Dome batteries and interceptors.”

When Israel launched its brutal assault of Gaza over the summer of 2014, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki took a break from defending Obama-Biden’s air wars in seven countries and offered a defense of Israel’s actions, saying “no country should be expected to stand by while rockets are launched into their country.”

That December, Biden spoke before the Saban Forum in DC and admitted “if there weren’t an Israel, we’d have to invent one.” He then proceeded to spend the bulk of his remaining speech fearmongering about Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons program, mentioning the country by name just over 50 times.

Still, none of this stopped Trump in 2015 from calling the Obama-Biden administration “the worst thing” that ever happened to Israel.

After he became president, Trump officially recognized Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, recognized occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, became the fourth US president to sign a letter pledging not to disarm Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal, and cut US humanitarian aid to Palestine.

In 2019, Israel responded to Hamas rocket attacks by launching airstrikes inside Gaza, and Trump wasted no time quickly coming to their defense on Twitter, writing that the US supports Israel “100%” while adding: “to the Gazan people—these terrorist acts against Israel will bring you nothing but more misery.”

The following year, Trump proposed his “Deal of the Century” to once and for all resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict. As reported by the Associated Press in January of that year, it involved “the creation of a Palestinian state in parts of the West Bank, but would allow Israel to annex its settlements in the occupied territory. The plan would allow the Palestinians to establish a capital on the outskirts of east Jerusalem but would leave most of the city under Israeli control.”

Unsurprisingly, the deal was overwhelmingly rejected.

When Biden took office in 2021, one of his first acts was to quickly restore aid to Palestine cut by Trump. Unfortunately, it was all downhill from there.

In a sign of much worse things to come, fighting broke out between Israel and Hamas in May of that year, resulting in 248 dead Gazans, including 66 children. Biden’s staffers—500 of them—implored him to do more to protect civilians. Instead, he reaffirmed Israel’s “right” to self defense.

According to Al-Jazeera 5/21/21:

“As the Palestinian death toll mounted, and Israel’s bombardment destroyed buildings across the territory – including a tower housing the media offices of Al Jazeera and The Associated Press – calls for action, especially from the Biden administration, grew louder. Thousands of people rallied in cities across the US demanding an end to Israel’s attacks and US legislators spoke out against what they saw as complicit silence from Biden, a longtime Israel defender.”

All of this might sound a little familiar.

Two years later, in October 2023, history repeated itself—a similar story, but with an infinitely more horrifying outcome. Another Hamas attack, but this time Israel responded by killing upwards of 11,000 Palestinians, a large majority children.

Like in 2021, Biden defended Israel’s right to “defend” itself by cutting food, fuel, and water to a population of millions while refusing to call for a ceasefire, effectively allowing Israel to reduce Gaza to a pile of smoldering blood and rubble. Biden also shipped batteries for Israel’s “Iron Dome” defense system, proposed sending billions more in aid, and gave Israel unprecedented access to US weapons reserves. In just one month, Biden sealed his decades-long political legacy as “Genocide Joe”.

Trump likely wouldn’t have been much better.

In late October, he told the Republican Jewish Coalition that the United States supports Israel “without hesitation, without qualification, and any apology” in their goal to “decimate” Hamas. “This is not a conflict between two equal sides,” he said, but a conflict between “civilization and savagery”.

Trump also blamed the Hamas attack on Iran and vowed to levy sanctions against the country, perhaps not realizing Biden already beat him to it. Biden has kept Trump-era sanctions against Iran in place as well.

But in fairness, there are a few differences between the two politicians on recent events in Israel. For example, Trump claims he will ban Palestinians from entering the United States and also ban pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses. Nevermind the many legal challenges that would follow both of these proposals.

And Biden, in all of his great mediocrity, has not proposed a travel ban—and did his part on the college issue by sending along a strongly worded letter to campuses reminding them that they are obligated to fight hate speech against Muslims and Jews. Granted, it took him over a month to do so—a month which he spent repeating just about every propagandistic claim coming out of Israel, including the still unverified claim about Hamas beheading babies. Trump also repeated the claim, telling a Florida crowd in October how “44 babies had their heads cut off. Did you hear that? These are babies.”

Nonetheless, both men seem to have no problem repeating Israeli propaganda, along with giving the country a blank check to commit war crimes with US taxpayer dollars. And both men are pushing the US closer to a hot war with Iran, despite the fact that US intelligence agencies have stated Iran very much wants to avoid that.

Voters will get more bloodshed in Palestine whether Trump or Biden wins in 2024. As usual, the hardest decision will be whether they prefer their warmonger to have a ‘D’ or an ‘R’ next to their name.

At the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in early October, the US military wasted no time deploying ships and troops to the region, effectively sending a message to the world: try to stop what is about to happen here and you will be destroyed.

Since then, the so-called “international community” has failed or refused to act in any meaningful way, allowing Israel to bomb hospitals, schools, and butcher upwards of 11,000 Palestinians as of mid-November. Yes, some countries recalled diplomats, and some countries severed ties, but diplomats can just as easily be returned and ties can just as easily be re-established. Not one of these reactions to Israel’s bloodbath have stopped or slowed it from happening. Whereas Russia was immediately slapped with an onslaught of impactful economic sanctions after invading Ukraine, Israel on the other hand has been spared the same fate. No sanctions. No embargoes. Just symbolic gestures which have done nothing to stem the flow of blood spilled in Gaza. The bulk of world leaders around the world have proven themselves to be either too powerless, too cowardly, or too complicit to act, a tragic recipe for the kind of horrific genocide we have spent over a month witnessing.

Similarly, the United Nations has also proven itself absolutely useless at preventing this massacre, issuing statements with no weight and resolutions with no bite. If any resolution does become a serious threat to Israel’s activities in Gaza, it is swiftly blocked by the United States. What good is an organization like the UN if it can’t prevent a genocide from happening?

As tends to be the case, direct action has made the most impact and picked up the slack where politicians and international organizations have failed. Protests across the world shut down entire cities in their demand for peace. Demonstrators blocked off entrances to weapons manufacturers like Raytheon and Boeing, and some even used their bodies to slow down shipments of armaments to Israel. Chambers of government have been repeatedly slammed with sit-ins, and politicians from both major US political parties willing to support this genocide can’t hold meetings, rallies, go out to dinner, or even enjoy a scenic train ride without being heckled.

Clear majorities in the United States want the killing to stop, in part driven by Israel’s comically disastrous propaganda efforts. Claim after claim is immediately debunked, each time chipping away a little more at what remains of their lingering credibility. It seems Israel doesn’t care about their propaganda being accurate, or even good—they just want to get the lie out as quickly as possible before the truth has time to catch up.

What has been made clear since October 7th is that US politicians have no interest in listening to anyone but the defense companies lining their campaign coffers, state leaders beyond America’s shores are too complicit or too cowardly to act, and the UN is entirely powerless to prevent a genocide if that genocide has the support of key members such as the United States.

The institutions put in place to stop these kinds of things from happening—along with the overall “international community”—has completely failed Gaza.

CNN must know most people don’t read beyond the headlines, and judging by the article they published earlier this week, they’re apparently banking on it. Marketed as a CNN exclusive, the piece is titled, “Found document suggests Iran sought to help Hamas make its own weapons ahead of attack, sources say”.

Even in the headline itself, CNN shamelessly alludes to the nature of the baseless claims that follow by throwing in “sources say” at the end of the headline, a truly pathetic attempt at backing up what amounts to an explosive allegation.

The article leads off by telling readers that a “document” recovered from a computer “found inside a Hamas pickup truck outside Gaza” shows a Hamas military commander “requesting a scholarship for Hamas operatives” to study engineering, physics, and technology at universities in Iran.

The “document” was supposedly passed on to CNN from “Israeli officials”, marking one of many points throughout the article where the network makes claims and then uses unnamed sources to back them up:

“While it is widely known that Iran provides financial and military support to Hamas, Israeli officials and some former US intelligence officials say the document is evidence that in the run up to the October 7 attack on southern Israel, Iran was seeking to provide technical training that would help Hamas produce its own weaponry.”

“The Israeli government declined to comment on the document, though sources in the government confirmed its authenticity on background.”

In other words, “some” “officials” say the document is evidence, so we should believe them, whoever they are, and “sources” confirmed the document’s authenticity, even though—again—we have no idea who they are.

For a network with as large of a reach as CNN, it seems verifying claims like this should be pretty important. But halfway through the story, CNN admits they have no idea if any of what they’ve published is actually true, writing, “CNN could not independently verify the authenticity of the letter.”

The network also confesses in the article that even some of their nameless “officials” have doubts, writing: “Israeli officials say this is the first known instance of Iran attempting to fund this kind of university-hosted training for Hamas operatives, a claim US officials said they could not confirm.”

More than two decades ago, public support for the US invasion of Iraq was largely sold to the public by news networks such as CNN who were more than willing to use unnamed, unknown “officials” as “sources”.

Once the war had successfully been started, CNN briefly went through a period of reflection, openly lamenting about their willingness to push pro-war propaganda without first verifying it.

Unfortunately, that moment of reflection was short lived and CNN quickly returned to doing what they do best: convincing the American public to support needless wars and interventions around the world.

If there was ever any doubt that Republicans running for president in 2024 will start up another needless war, let that myth be dispelled after the third GOP debate. Whether it’s North Korea, China, Mexico, Iran, Russia, or Venezuela, one major distinction between the candidates seems to be which country they’ll bomb first.

Off the bat, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott shredded “diplomacy only” as a “weak” strategy, saying “appeasement” leads to war. Scott vowed that if elected president, he would “cut the head off the snake” by bombing Iran: “My foreign policy is simple. You cannot negotiate with evil, you have to destroy it.”

Nikki Haley, a former board member at Boeing, echoed Scott’s dream of kicking off another catastrophic war in the Middle East and claimed that without Iran, there would be no Hamas in Gaza, no Hezbollah in Lebanon, no Houthis in Yemen, and no “Iranian militias” in Syria and Iraq to target US troops still occupying both countries.

Vivek Ramaswamy tried to differentiate himself from the hawks by offering a brief monologue about neoconservative wars in Iraq and Syria, yet still neglected to use his platform to call for pulling troops from either country.

Instead, he spent a portion of his time on the debate stage defending Israel’s “right to defend itself”—a phrase which has essentially become a euphemism for Israel’s “right” to bomb and kill with total impunity. According to Ramaswamy, Israel should “smoke terrorists” on their southern border, while in the US, he plans to do the same to “terrorists” along the border with Mexico.

Ramaswamy has also made it clear in past comments that he would launch strikes inside Mexico with—or without—the country’s permission, a sentiment shared by his more openly hawkish counterpart, Nikki Haley.

Asked what her colleagues at the United Nations would think if her administration launched US attacks inside Mexico without approval from the country’s government, she scoffed and openly admitted she “doesn’t care”.

Likewise, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was also curling his heel-covered toes with absolute joy at the thought of what would likely become a US war with Mexico, openly stating his intent to send US troops to the border: “I’m going to stop the invasion cold,” he said. “I am going to deport people who came illegally and I’m even going to build the border wall and have Mexico pay for it like Donald Trump promised.”

Additionally, DeSantis said he would “turn the screws” on oil-rich Venezuela and reinstate economic sanctions against the country, all while emphasizing that he believes the “top threat” facing the US comes from China.

The other GOP candidates appeared to share his fear.

On at least two separate occasions, Ramaswamy referred to China as “our enemy” and promised to “get tough” with them once the US declares “economic independence”. Ramaswamy also provided what was an otherwise accurate critique of Ukraine’s failing democratic values, but then proceeded to condemn US involvement in the war because it is “driving Russia into China’s hands.”

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie labeled China, along with Iran, Russia, and North Korea, as part of the “Evil Foursome” while warning that if it isn’t stopped, Russia would try to “put the old band back together” and invade Poland.

And Nikki Haley called for arming Taiwan to deter China and bragged about how she once negotiated with both China and Russia to impose the “largest set of sanctions against North Korea in a generation.”

If mentions are any indicator as to which country is next on America’s long imperial hit list, it would be China. According to a debate transcript, China was mentioned by name approximately 61 times. Iran was a close second, coming in at 31. Following these, Russia came in at 21, Mexico at 11, Venezuela at 10, and North Korea at 2.

In any case, it seems pretty safe to wager that if a Republican wins in 2024, they will be starting up a new conflict with any one of these countries—assuming, of course, Biden and the blue wing of the two-party war machine doesn’t beat them to it first.

There are a disturbing number of parallels between the events surrounding September 11th and the October 7th attacks against Israel earlier this month.

For example, as with the dozens of warnings the US received before 9/11, Israel also received numerous warnings about an impending attack by Hamas. As with unverified propaganda stories that emerged after 9/11—such as the widely spread fairy tale about thousands of Muslims dancing and celebrating the attacks—fake stories emerged after October 7th, such as the one about babies beheaded by Hamas. As with the US government’s crackdown on civil liberties following 9/11—such as mass surveillance programs and the censorship of anti-war voices—the aftermath of October 7th has also seen similar acts by the Israeli government, such as the targeting of government critics and the prevention of anti-war protests. And as with 9/11 and Bush administration plans drawn up in years prior to invade Iraq, hawks within the Israeli government have also seized on the attacks as an opportunity to enact long-dreamed plans of forcibly removing millions of Palestinians.

In the years since 9/11, the US government launched wars against Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya, along with routine strikes inside Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, all of which have taken more than 800,000 lives at a financial cost to US taxpayers easily exceeding $8 trillion dollars. There have been other costs as well, such as the creation of invasive spying infrastructure which still exists today, gruesome torture programs with zero accountability, and the opening of Guantanamo Bay, which still holds dozens of individuals who have never been tried or charged with a crime.

Not a single one of these wars or policies was justified by 9/11, nor have they stemmed global terrorism; if anything, there is evidence that the so-called “War on Terror” has actually created more terrorism.

Likewise, the October 7th attack on Israel does not justify their response over the last few weeks, which has included, among other things:

• Bombing bakeries, ambulances, mosques, markets, and evacuation routes, along with entire neighborhoods and family homes

• Killing more than two dozen journalists

• Maiming and/or detaining thousands of people without charge or trial

• Trying to silence news networks like Al Jazeera for continuing to report on the ground in occupied Palestinian territories

• Detaining Israeli citizens and journalists critical of the war effort

• Using white phosphorus in densely populated areas

• Cutting fuel, water, and electricity to millions of people

• Using the attacks as an “opportunity” to enact plans thought up in years prior to exterminate/relocate millions of Palestinians

Collective punishment against Palestinians won’t make Israel safer, and restricting journalism and anti-war voices won’t strengthen Israeli democracy. As the US response to 9/11 demonstrated, these types of hostile responses often bring about the opposite of their stated goals. Instead of preventing further bloodshed, they create more of it; instead of preserving democracy, such policies weaken it.

Unfortunately, it seems these important lessons are being actively ignored by Israel.