The Destruction of Gaza, Yemen And U.S. Free Speech Are Parts of The Same Project

Here's my Zeteo column from yesterday, along with my Iron Man/military-industrial complex panel and some pre-paywall extras

Prologue edited by Sam Thielman, column edited by Zeteo 

EXHAUSTED, I went to bed early on Monday night and woke to a nightmare: The Israelis had resumed bombing Gaza. Only it was very clear that it wasn't just the Israelis but also, given the full backing of the White House, the Americans, too. It had been before, but what Joe Biden did with a pantomime of reluctance, Donald Trump does with a show of enthusiasm—and also with an escalation of the regional war that the ceasefire had paused. This was my week to write my Zeteo column, so by noon, I banged out the column that follows the paywall on this one. Credit to Mehdi Hasan for his idea for my lede. Zeteo gave the piece a breaking-news-style headline, and since this reprint comes a day afterward, I've retitled it something more essayistic.   

It's March 19. Twenty-two years ago today, the U.S. invaded Iraq, a catastrophe of choice whose emanations we still live with at home and abroad. How not to think of it, watching this week's events unfold? 

Just a couple more scattered thoughts before the column. Barney Rubin, one of the most knowledgeable people ever to advise the U.S. government on Afghanistan, has an excellent reflection on the ways the U.S. consigned Afghan political reconciliation to death early in the war and reaped a whirlwind in return. I wrote a reported history of this a couple years ago, but Barney's is far better, and brings the story up to the present. 

Read Mahmoud Khalil's statement from a for-profit ICE detention center. 

As I read this Washington Post piece about Neo-Guantanamo, it struck me that once again, the early legislative/think-tanky opposition to it is contesting Guantanamo not on principle but on the terrain of its inefficient costs. This happened consistently during the War on Terror and it freed not a single person. A lawless torture camp is what its architects and enthusiasts want to spend lavishly on. It's what they think the government should fund instead of, like, cheaper housing, healthcare or public education. There is no actuarial argument to be had here. The reasons to oppose Guantanamo are opposition to indefinite detention; torture; impunity; and, now, the dehumanization of migrants; and a carceral future for climate/security migration. 

Hat tip to Dave Weigel on this one: Here's Darrell Issa trying to get FBI Director Kash Patel to disrupt ActBlue in the name of counterterrorism (and aimed at Palestine). 

Also, I keep not having the time to write about the books I've read since I got on the plane to Jakarta a few weeks ago, and several of them are highly FOREVER WARS-able. Since today is no exception—I need to read several hundred pages of military-commissions courtroom transcript—I'm just going to recommend the following to you: Disposable: America's Contempt For The Underclass by Sarah Jones; The Years by Annie Ernaux (somehow, this is a social memoir [!] of Fourth and Fifth Republic France); One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad (give this man his National Book Award); and The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar. I reserve the right to write at some point about Omar's book in particular, because once again he's set my mind on fire, as he did with American War and What Strange Paradise. Also, while I haven't finished Death of The Author by Nnedi Okorafor, you really only have to read 50 or so pages to see that it's as ambitious as it is exceptionally crafted. 

Finally, on Monday afternoon, I discussed Iron Man in the context of the military-industrial complex with a number of scholars and activists who oppose the complex but who are, at a minimum, Iron Man-curious. Here's the video:

OK, here's the paywall, and then the column: