I have been called to testify at courts-martial as an expert witness on servicemembers’ duty to disobey unlawful orders. The courageous action of six Democratic members of Congress has thrust into the national discourse the duty of military and CIA personnel to disobey Donald Trump’s illegal orders. As the Trump administration continues to unlawfully murder… Read more »
Donald Trump has ignored UN rules about attacking other nations, but he is not the first US president to do so. In his inflammatory September 23 speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Donald Trump expressed contempt for the UN, falsely claiming he had ended seven wars and stating, “I realized that the United Nations wasn’t… Read more »
Trump says he will decide within two weeks whether to join Israel’s war on Iran. As Donald Trump threatens to further enmesh the U.S. in Israel’s war against Iran with direct strikes, legal experts warn that Israel’s attacks violate international law, and that U.S. attacks would also violate constitutional and statutory law. Israel began its… Read more »
Iran’s attack on Israel was lawful self-defense carried out in compliance with international humanitarian law. On April 1, Israel mounted an unprovoked military attack on a building that was part of the Iranian Embassy complex in Damascus, Syria, killing seven of Iran’s senior military advisers and five additional people. The victims included Gen. Mohamad Reza… Read more »
On the eve of the 18-year anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks and the illegal U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the United States and the Taliban completed nine rounds of peace talks with no deal. Although they had reportedly reached an agreement in principle, Donald Trump insisted on a secret meeting at Camp David with the Taliban… Read more »
The New York Times is reporting that on June 20, President Trump ordered military strikes against Iran to retaliate for its shootdown of a U.S. drone, but then pulled back and didn’t launch them. Officials told the Times that Trump had approved attacks on Iranian radar and missile batteries. Trump tweeted, “We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on… Read more »
As President Donald Trump, National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rattle their sabers, there is no evidence that Iran poses a threat to the United States. It was Trump who threatened genocide, tweeting, “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran.” The Pentagon is now considering… Read more »
As Venezuela’s second president, Simon Bolivar, noted in the 19th century, the US government continues to “plague Latin America with misery in the name of liberty.” From engineering coups in Chile and Guatemala, to choreographing a troop landing at the Bay of Pigs intended to establish an exile government in Cuba, to training Latin American… Read more »
On July 19, 2018, the Israeli Knesset enacted a law that illegally enshrines a system of apartheid. The legislation, which has the force of a constitutional amendment, strips away any pretense that Israel is a democracy. Moreover, it violates customary and treaty-based international law. The “Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People” says,… Read more »
This coming Monday, April 23, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is set to review a bill that would virtually give President Donald J. Trump a blank check to wage war anywhere in the world any time he pleases. The Constitution places the power to declare war exclusively in the hands of the Congress. However, for… Read more »