After months of failed votes on Democratic war powers resolutions intended to end President Donald Trump’s illegal assault on Iran, the US Senate finally advanced legislation to a final vote on Tuesday, when a fourth Republican broke ranks. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) joined three other Republicans and all Democrats but one for the 50-47 vote on a motion to discharge Sen. Tim Kaine’s (D-Va.)…
Source
This article originally appeared on Dean Baker’s Patreon. It is reprinted here with permission.
Our Secretary of Defense (or War) Pete Hegseth seems to be having a really great time killing people in Iran, but his live action video games come at a big cost, not just in lives, but in budget dollars. To be clear, the main reason to be opposed to this pointless war is its impact on the people of Iran and elsewhere in the region. But it also has a huge economic cost that is seriously underappreciated.
The short-term cost is the shortage of oil, natural gas, fertilizers, and other items that would ordinarily travel through the Straits of Hormuz. This shortage has already sent prices of many items soaring. The impact is not just on the goods themselves, but there is a large secondary impact due to higher shipping costs, and if fertilizer supplies are not resumed soon, higher food prices, due to lower crop yields. This is a big hit to people in wealthy countries, but it is life-threatening to people living on the edge in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
But in addition to the short-term cost, there is also a longer-term cost insofar as we are making new enemies and therefore will have higher bills for military spending long into the future. We already got the first taste of this as the Trump administration floated the idea of a $200 billion special appropriation to cover the cost of the war.
The Military is Really Big Bucks
There is remarkably little appreciation of how much money is at stake with wars and the military. This is because the media
The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran opened not with a declaration, not with diplomacy exhausted, but with airstrikes. Among the first confirmed casualties were more than a hundred schoolchildren killed in a strike on their elementary school in southern Iran. Within a month, 850 U.S.-made Tomahawk missiles were used to strike Iran. President Donald Trump has delivered on his promise to bomb Iran…
Source
Perhaps some things should never be spoken — for, when they are, they leave us aghast, in a state of horror. Think here of the ghostly figure in Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” During the height of the war on Iran, Donald Trump threatened: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Those are words that elicit something frightening, terrifying. Let’s be frank. The words…
Source
Seated behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office in early May, Donald Trump delivered a disturbing lecture to a group of children huddled around him — most of them not yet even teenagers. They had been brought to the White House for what was supposed to be a celebratory event marking the reinstatement of the Presidential Fitness Test, dressed in brightly colored T-shirts bearing the government…
Source
On Thursday, the head of CENTCOM denied reports of U.S. attacks damaging civilian sites in Iran — despite evidence that the U.S. has repeatedly bombed Iranian schools and health care facilities. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Admiral Brad Cooper, the standing commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) — which is responsible for U.S. military operations in the…
Source