Earlier today, the president and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu unveiled the administration’s so-called “Vision for Peace,” which is nothing more than a blueprint for more annexation, continued occupation, and apartheid:

The package is expected to propose a redrawn border between Israel and the West Bank that would formalize Israeli control over large Jewish settlements. It would give U.S. blessing to some forms of Israeli security control over the territory Israel seized in 1967 and has occupied since, according to two people familiar with the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity before the plan’s release.

The proposed plan is a one-sided giveaway to Israel that offers Palestinians an empty shell of a “state” and endorses the annexation of illegal settlements along with the entire Jordan River valley. It goes without saying that Palestinians and their leaders will reject this and will view it as the insult that it is. No Palestinians were involved in the “process” that created this plan, and it is obvious that their interests and rights are of no importance to the plan’s authors. As Khaled Elgindy pointed out last night, this is a U.S.-Israeli plan that is being dictated to Palestinians with no respect for their aspirations and agency:

At the same time, the notion that an American president, in consultation with two Israeli leaders, could decide on the future of Palestinians without any Palestinian involvement seems to epitomize Trump’s overall approach to the conflict, which not only has ruled out the possibility of Palestinian self-determination but seems to hold the very notion of Palestinian agency in contempt.

It is easy to understand why Palestinians would reject it when you look at the map of what they propose:

This is the official White House plan for Palestine — a swiss-cheese like PA with threadbare links to other zones. There is no way this is accepted by the Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/3Dkw862cY5

— Ryan Bohl (@Ryan_Bohl) January 28, 2020

The Trump PLAN/MAP is the design for a PALESTINIAN PRISON. No group of people would ever accept to live unfree under the complete domination of another. Americans would never accept it. The Jewish people will never accept it. And the Palestinian people will never accept it. /1 https://t.co/oyo574x4T8

— Hady Amr (@HadyAmr) January 28, 2020

This is a scheme cooked up by pro-settler ideologues in the administration, and it has nothing to do with resolving conflict and everything to do with making Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory permanent.

As far as one can tell—given the weaselly language at the press conference and the absence of the "80-page document"—this plan is not one that the Palestinians can or will accept. Nor is it a starting point for negotiations. It's a sop to the right in both Israel and America.

— Gregg Carlstrom (@glcarlstrom) January 28, 2020

It is an annexation plan, not a peace plan. https://t.co/cuByScBWhe

— Frederick Deknatel (@freddydeknatel) January 28, 2020

If a state is a 'territory that is sovereign & politically independent of other communities,” then the Palestinians are not getting a ‘state’ in Trump’s deal. But as there’s no agreed definition of a state, once again the interpretation of language is king in this conflict pic.twitter.com/BfilMlhqDH

— Paul Danahar (@pdanahar) January 28, 2020

“Israel will apply its laws to the Jordan Valley and to the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria."

That's the definition of annexation. This is an annexation plan, not a plan for peace.

— J Street (@jstreetdotorg) January 28, 2020

Palestinian official gives me his two-word reaction to the Trump plan: "Apartheid 2.0"

— Joe (@joedyke) January 28, 2020

No one expected that the Trump administration would produce anything resembling a serious proposal to serve as the basis of real negotiations, but what they have produced is still remarkably awful. The next administration should repudiate this plan and the ugly vision of annexation and apartheid that it represents. If Israel proceeds with further illegal annexations, the next administration should cut off all military aid. The U.S. should no longer be enabling an illegal occupation, and our government should end its support for the ongoing dispossession and abuse of millions of people.

Elizabeth Warren wrote an article outlining in general terms how she would bring America’s current foreign wars to an end. Perhaps the most significant part of the article is her commitment to respect Congress’ constitutional role in matters of war:

We will hold ourselves to this by recommitting to a simple idea: the constitutional requirement that Congress play a primary role in deciding to engage militarily. The United States should not fight and cannot win wars without deep public support. Successive administrations and Congresses have taken the easy way out by choosing military action without proper authorizations or transparency with the American people. The failure to debate these military missions in public is one of the reasons they have been allowed to continue without real prospect of success [bold mine-DL].

On my watch, that will end. I am committed to seeking congressional authorization if the use of force is required. Seeking constrained authorizations with limited time frames will force the executive branch to be open with the American people and Congress about our objectives, how the operation is progressing, how much it is costing, and whether it should continue.

Warren’s commitment on this point is welcome, and it is what Americans should expect and demand from their presidential candidates. It should be the bare minimum requirement for anyone seeking to be president, and any candidate who won’t commit to respecting the Constitution should never be allowed to have the powers of that office. The president is not permitted to launch attacks and start wars alone, but Congress and the public have allowed several presidents to do just that without any consequences. It is time to put a stop to illegal presidential wars, and it is also time to put a stop to open-ended authorizations of military force. Warren’s point about asking for “constrained authorizations with limited time frames” is important, and it is something that we should insist on in any future debate over the use of force. The 2001 and 2002 AUMFs are still on the books and have been abused and stretched beyond recognition to apply to groups that didn’t exist when they were passed so that the U.S. can fight wars in countries that don’t threaten our security. Those need to be repealed as soon as possible to eliminate the opening that they have provided the executive to make war at will.

Michael Brendan Dougherty is unimpressed with Warren’s rhetoric:

But what has Warren offered to do differently, or better? She’s made no notable break with the class of experts who run our failing foreign policy. Unlike Bernie Sanders, and like Trump or Obama, she hasn’t hired a foreign-policy staff committed to a different vision. And so her promise to turn war powers back to Congress should be considered as empty as Obama’s promise to do the same. Her promise to bring troops home would turn out to be as meaningless as a Trump tweet saying the same.

We shouldn’t discount Warren’s statements so easily. When a candidate makes specific commitments about ending U.S. wars during a campaign, that is different from making vague statements about having a “humble” foreign policy. Bush ran on a conventional hawkish foreign policy platform, and there were also no ongoing wars for him to campaign against, so we can’t say that he ever ran as a “dove.” Obama campaigned against the Iraq war and ran on ending the U.S. military presence there, and before his first term was finished almost all U.S. troops were out of Iraq. It is important to remember that he did not campaign against the war in Afghanistan, and instead argued in support of it. His subsequent decision to commit many more troops there was a mistake, but it was entirely consistent with what he campaigned on. In other words, he withdrew from the country he promised to withdraw from, and escalated in the country where he said the U.S. should be fighting. Trump didn’t actually campaign on ending any wars, but he did talk about “bombing the hell” out of ISIS, and after he was elected he escalated the war on ISIS. His anti-Iranian obsession was out in the open from the start if anyone cared to pay attention to it. In short, what candidates commit to doing during a campaign does matter and it usually gives you a good idea of what a candidate will do once elected.

If Warren and some of the other Democratic candidates are committing to ending U.S. wars, we shouldn’t assume that they won’t follow through on those commitments because previous presidents proved to be the hawks that they admitted to being all along. Presidential candidates often tell us exactly what they mean to do, but we have to be paying attention to everything they say and not just one catchphrase that they said a few times. If voters want a more peaceful foreign policy, they should vote for candidates that actually campaign against ongoing wars instead of rewarding the ones that promise and then deliver escalation. But just voting for the candidates that promise an end to wars is not enough if Americans want Congress to start doing its job by reining in the executive. If we don’t want presidents to run amok on war powers, there have to be political consequences for the ones that have done that and there needs to be steady pressure on Congress to take back their role in matters of war. Voters should select genuinely antiwar candidates, but then they also have to hold those candidates accountable once they’re in office.

The story of Mike Pompeo’s meltdowncontinues:

The State Department will not allow NPR’s diplomatic correspondent on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s government airplane for an upcoming trip, which includes a stop in Ukraine, following the secretary’s extraordinary outburst last week over being questioned about Ukraine during an interview with the network.

Michele Kelemen, who has covered the State Department for nearly two decades, was scheduled to cover Mr. Pompeo’s official visit this week to Europe and Central Asia, traveling with the diplomatic delegation.

She was told on Sunday that she would not be allowed to fly as a member of the press pool on the government airplane with Mr. Pompeo. It was not clear how long the ban on her travel with Mr. Pompeo’s official delegations might last.

The association of journalists covering the State Department issued a statement on Monday criticizing the action as improper retaliation against NPR.

It is unacceptable for the Secretary of State to retaliate against a news organization because he happens to dislike the questions from one of their reporters. Pompeo’s actions in the days since his disastrous interview and blowup on Friday have been even more discrediting and pathetic than his earlier behavior. Retaliation against the press for any reason is disturbing, and to do it because Pompeo made a fool of himself under fairly mild questioning is ridiculous. Punishing a news outlet because a reporter asked the right questions is authoritarian behavior that we should not accept from our government. It reflects very poorly on the State Department, and it is a disservice to the people that work there:

State dept colleagues are dismayed, outraged by @SecPompeo decision to kick esteemed @NPR veteran diplomatic correspondent @MicheleKelemen off his plane for this week's trip to Ukraine in apparent retaliation for her colleague standing up to bullying. #FirstAmendment

— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) January 27, 2020

Government officials work for the public, so they shouldn’t expect to be given kid glove treatment by the press, and they shouldn’t take out their anger on journalists that are just doing their jobs. Pompeo has further disgraced himself by acting as if he is a petty despot with this decision to remove another NPR reporter from the pool that was assigned to cover his upcoming trip. The Secretary of State has all of the vanity and arrogance of a diva, but none of the talent. Every action Pompeo takes just proves that he is unfit for the office he holds, and with each interaction with the press he shows that he cannot cope with being asked serious questions about his conduct and the policies of this administration.

The news report concludes with this criticism from a Fox News host:

Even a Fox News host, Steve Hilton, a self-described big fan of Mr. Pompeo, chided the chief diplomat’s “whining” invective.

“For goodness’ sakes, Mr. Secretary, don’t be such a baby,” Mr. Hilton said on Monday. “You should be able to handle tough questions by now. And don’t be such a bully.”

The anti-diplomat currently running the State Department has boasted about bringing “swagger” to Foggy Bottom, and over the last year and a half we have seen what that “swagger” means in practice: angry tirades, constant dishonesty, and attacks on the free press. Pompeo’s boastfulness and arrogance have been a poor attempt to disguise his pettiness and weakness, and now everyone can see him for what he is. The ugly Pompeo chapter in the State Department’s history will serve as a cautionary tale of what future Secretaries of State should never do.

This Wall Street Journalreport on the Trump administration’s failed Venezuela policy is worth reading, but the Russia-centric framing of the article is strange. The article begins this way:

The Trump administration’s bid to replace Venezuela’s authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro hit a roadblock after a meeting with Russian officials in Rome last year—and has never recovered.

U.S. envoy Elliott Abrams arrived at the Westin Excelsior hotel hoping to persuade Russia to withdraw its support for Mr. Maduro and to recognize Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate leader. Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov instead demanded the U.S. back down from military threats and lift the economic sanctions intended to force Mr. Maduro’s hand.

Trump’s regime change policy in Venezuela ran into other more significant roadblocks than this over the course of the last year, so it’s not clear why Russia’s refusal to cooperate is given such a prominent place in the story. If the administration genuinely expected Russia to throw its support to a U.S.-backed opposition leader and help Washington to overthrow one of their clients, they clearly haven’t been paying attention to the last 30 years of Russian foreign policy. Russia doesn’t acquiesce to U.S.-backed regime change efforts, and the one time they cooperated with the U.S. at the Security Council on a question of outside intervention (Libya in 2011) they ended up regretting it and concluded that they had been deceived. If the administration thought Russia would back Guaido, this is just another example of the absurd wishful thinking that has plagued their handling of Venezuela all along. The article’s title is “How Putin outfoxed Trump,” but it hardly requires vulpine cunning to thwart a dim-witted plan designed by Marco Rubio.

Russia has been one of Maduro’s important international supporters, but they are hardly the only ones that have been skirting sanctions to continue their trade with Venezuela. The administration’s failure here is caused by their overreliance on sanctions and their assumption that they can get other countries to go along with U.S. economic warfare against multiple countries at the same time. India, Turkey, and others already resent U.S. efforts to cut off their trade with Iran, so telling them that they also can’t trade with Venezuela isn’t likely to go over well. The Trump administration has handled Venezuela with their typical obliviousness to the interests of other states, and then they sound surprised when other governments don’t play along with their regime change fantasy.

One year after the Trump administration began this farcical pursuit of regime change in Venezuela, Maduro is as firmly entrenched in power as ever, and U.S. sanctions are contributing to the worsening humanitarian crisis. The smart thing to do now would be to end the economic war that is only hurting the civilian population and support a return to negotiations for new elections. Venezuela hawks have led the U.S. down a dead end, and it is time to stop following them before things get even worse.

Former ambassador William Taylor wrote an op-ed on Ukraine in an attempt to answer Pompeo’s question about whether Americans care about Ukraine. It is not very persuasive. For one thing, he starts off by exaggerating the importance of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine to make it seem as if the U.S. has a major stake in the outcome:

Here’s why the answer should be yes: Ukraine is defending itself and the West against Russian attack. If Ukraine succeeds, we succeed. The relationship between the United States and Ukraine is key to our national security, and Americans should care about Ukraine.

Taylor exaggerates what the conflict is about by saying that Ukraine is defending “the West.” That’s not true. Ukraine is defending itself. The U.S. does not have a vital interest in this conflict, but Taylor talks about it as if we do. He says that the relationship with Ukraine is “key” to our national security, but that is simply false. To say that it is key to our national security means that we are supposed to believe that it is crucially important to our national security. That suggests that U.S. national security would seriously compromised if that relationship weakened, but that doesn’t make any sense. We usually don’t even talk about our major treaty allies this way, so what justification is there for describing a relationship with a weak partner government like this?

The op-ed reads like a textbook case of clientitis, in which a former U.S. envoy ends up making the Ukrainian government’s argument for them. The danger of exaggerating U.S. interests and conflating them with Ukraine’s is that we fool ourselves into thinking that we are acting out of necessity and in our own defense when we are really choosing to take sides in a conflict that does not affect our security. This is the kind of thinking that encourages people to spout nonsense about “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.” If we view Ukraine as “the front line” of a larger struggle, that will also make it more difficult to resolve the conflict. When a local conflict is turned into a proxy fight between great powers, the local people will be the ones made to suffer to serve the ambitions of the patrons. Once the U.S. insists that its own security is bound up with the outcome of this conflict, there is an incentive to be considered the “winner,” but the reality is that Ukraine will always matter less to the U.S. than it does to Russia.

If this relationship were so important to U.S. security, how is it that the U.S. managed to get along just fine for decades after the end of the Cold War when that relationship was not particularly strong? As recently as the Obama administration, our government did not consider Ukraine to be important enough to supply with weapons. Ukraine was viewed correctly as being of peripheral interest to the U.S., and nothing has changed in the years since then to make it more important.

Taylor keeps repeating that “Ukraine is the front line” in a larger conflict between Russia and the West, but that becomes true only if Western governments choose to treat it as one. He concludes his op-ed with a series of ideological assertions:

To support Ukraine is to support a rules-based international order that enabled major powers in Europe to avoid war for seven decades. It is to support democracy over autocracy. It is to support freedom over unfreedom. Most Americans do.

These make for catchy slogans, but they are lousy policy arguments. This rhetoric veers awfully close to saying that you aren’t on the side of freedom if you don’t support a particular policy option. In my experience, advocates for more aggressive measures use rhetoric like this because the rest of their argument isn’t very strong. It is possible to reject illegal military interventions of all governments without wanting to throw weapons at the problem.

Taylor has set up the policy argument in such a way that there seems to be no choice, but the U.S. doesn’t have to support Ukraine’s war effort. He oversells Ukraine’s importance to the U.S. to justify U.S. support, because an accurate assessment would make the current policy of arming their government much harder to defend. Ukraine isn’t really that important to U.S. security and our security doesn’t require us to provide military assistance to them. Of course, our government has chosen to do it anyway, but this is just one more optional entanglement that the U.S. could have avoided without jeopardizing American or allied security.

We saw how Mike Pompeo made a fool of himself on Friday with his angry tirade against Mary Louise Kelly, a reporter for NPR. That outburst came after an interview that he cut short in which he was asked legitimate questions that he could not answer. His response to the report about this was to malign the reporter with bizarre lies in what could be the most unhinged statement ever sent out by an American Secretary of State:

Official response from Pompeo about his NPR interview. Haven’t seen anything like this before with a State Department seal on it: pic.twitter.com/Hi1P18ZS0A

— Robbie Gramer (@RobbieGramer) January 25, 2020

Pompeo’s accusatory statement confirmed the substance of what Kelly had reported, and absolutely no one believes him when he says that she lied to him. All of the available evidence supports Kelly’s account, and nothing supports Pompeo’s:

On the program, Ms. Kelly said Katie Martin, an aide to Mr. Pompeo who has worked in press relations, never asked for that conversation to be kept off the record, nor would she have agreed to do that.

Mr. Pompeo’s statement did not deny Ms. Kelly’s account of obscenities and shouting. NPR said Saturday that Ms. Kelly “has always conducted herself with the utmost integrity, and we stand behind this report.” On Sunday, The New York Times obtained emails between Ms. Kelly and Ms. Martin that showed Ms. Kelly explicitly said the day before the interview that she would start with Iran and then ask about Ukraine. “I never agree to take anything off the table,” she wrote.

It is the new definition of chutzpah for Pompeo to accuse someone else of lying and lack of integrity, since he has been daily shredding his credibility by making things up about non-existent U.S. policy successes and telling easily refuted lies aboutNorth Korea, Iran, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. We have good reason to believe that the recent claim that there was an “imminent attack” from Iran earlier this month was another one of those lies. For her part, Kelly has a reputation for solid and reliable reporting, and no one thinks that she would do the things he accuses her of doing. Pompeo’s dig at the end is meant to imply that she misidentified Ukraine on the blank map that he had brought in to test her. No one believes that claim, either. This is another preposterous lie that tells us that his version of events can’t be true. Pompeo has been waging a war on the truth for the last year and a half, and this is just the most recent assault. The Secretary’s meltdown this weekend has been useful in making it impossible to ignore this any longer.

Literally nobody thinks Mike Pompeo is telling the truth about this, or anything. He works for Donald Trump, who also lies about everything, always. https://t.co/yTzZDZl5Gw

— Marc Lynch (@abuaardvark) January 25, 2020

All of this is appalling, unprofessional behavior from any government official, and in a sane administration this conduct along with his other false and misleading statements would be grounds for resignation. When Pompeo publicly attacks a journalist for doing her job and impugns her integrity to cover up for the fact that he doesn’t have any, he is attacking the press and undermining public accountability. He is also undermining the department’s advocacy for freedom of the press when he tries to intimidate journalists with his obnoxious outbursts. Pompeo already alienated and disgusted people in his department with his failure to come to the defense of officials that were being publicly attacked and smeared, and this latest display has further embarrassed them. We need a Secretary of State who isn’t a serial liar, and right now we don’t have one.

Mike Pompeo has proven to be a blowhard and a bully in his role as Secretary of State, and nothing seems to bother him more than challenging questions from professional journalists. All of those flaws and more were on display during and after his interview with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly today. After abruptly ending the interview when pressed on his failure to defend members of the Foreign Service, Pompeo then threw a fit and berated the reporter who asked him the questions:

Immediately after the questions on Ukraine, the interview concluded. Pompeo stood, leaned in and silently glared at Kelly for several seconds before leaving the room.

A few moments later, an aide asked Kelly to follow her into Pompeo’s private living room at the State Department without a recorder. The aide did not say the ensuing exchange would be off the record.

Inside the room, Pompeo shouted his displeasure at being questioned about Ukraine. He used repeated expletives, according to Kelly, and asked, “Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?” He then said, “People will hear about this.”

People are certainly hearing about it, and their unanimous judgment is that it confirms Pompeo’s reputation as an obnoxious, thin-skinned excuse for a Secretary of State. Kelly’s questions were all reasonable and fair, but Pompeo is not used to being pressed so hard to give real answers. We have seen his short temper and condescension before when other journalists have asked him tough questions, and he seems particularly annoyed when the journalists calling him out are women. Pompeo probably has the worst working relationship with the press of any Secretary of State in decades, and this episode will make it worse.

When Pompeo realized he wouldn’t be able to get away with his standard set of vacuous talking points and lies, he ended the conversation. The entire interview is worth reading to appreciate how poorly Pompeo performs when he is forced to explain how failing administration policies are “working.” When pressed on his untrue claims that “maximum pressure” on Iran is “working,” all that he could do was repeat himself robotically:

QUESTION: My question, again: How do you stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon?

SECRETARY POMPEO: We’ll stop them.

QUESTION: How?

SECRETARY POMPEO: We’ll stop them.

QUESTION: Sanctions?

SECRETARY POMPEO: We’ll stop them.

Kelly refused to accept pat, meaningless responses, and she kept insisting that Pompeo provide something, anything, to back up his assertions. This is how administration officials should always be interviewed, and it is no surprise that the Secretary of State couldn’t handle being challenged to back up his claims. The questions wouldn’t have been that hard to answer if Pompeo were willing to be honest or the least bit humble, but that isn’t how he operates. He sees every interview as an opportunity to snow the interviewer under with nonsense and to score points with the president, and giving honest answers would get in the way of both.

The section at the end concerned Pompeo’s failure to stand up for State Department officials, especially Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine. Since Pompeo’s support for these officials has been abysmal, there was nothing substantive that he could say about it and tried to filibuster his way out of it. To her credit, Kelly was persistent in trying to pin him down and make him address the issue. He had every chance to explain himself, but instead he fell back on defensive denials that persuade no one:

QUESTION: Sir, respectfully, where have you defended Marie Yovanovitch?

SECRETARY POMPEO: I’ve defended every single person on this team. I’ve done what’s right for every single person on this team.

QUESTION: Can you point me toward your remarks where you have defended Marie Yovanovitch?

SECRETARY POMPEO: I’ve said all I’m going to say today. Thank you. Thanks for the repeated opportunity to do so; I appreciate that.

Pompeo could have defended Yovanovitch and other officials that have come under attack, but to do that would be to risk Trump’s ire and it would require him to show the slightest bit of courage. In the end, his “swagger” is all talk and his rhetoric about supporting his “team” at State is meaningless. Pompeo made a fool of himself in this interview, and it is perfectly in keeping with his angry, brittle personality that he took out his frustrations by yelling at the reporter who exposed him as the vacuous blowhard that he is.

The Pentagon has said that 34 troops suffered brain injuries in the ballistic missile attack on Al-Asad air base two weeks ago:

The Pentagon said Friday that 34 U.S. service members were diagnosed with varying degrees of brain injuries after the Iranian ballistic missile attack in Iraq this month, upping the number of service members understood to be injured by explosions.

The issue has proven controversial because President Trump said the morning after the attack that no U.S. troops were harmed in the Jan. 8 attack, launched in retaliation for the United States killing Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad. Defense officials have said the injury information was not relayed to Washington until after the fact because no service members suffered loss of life, limb or eyesight.

Whether the president learned of these injuries later on or not, he has made a point of minimizing their significance in recent days. Two days ago, he dismissed the injuries as “headaches,” which is a hell of a cavalier way to describe brain injuries. At best, he has misled the public about the number and seriousness of the injuries even after he learned about them. That would be bad enough by itself, but the president is responsible for much more than that.

There are some other important points to take away from this latest report. First, the Iranian retaliatory strike in response to the Soleimani assassination was much more serious than the government originally told us. The administration wants us to think that the costs of their recklessness are lower than they are. We are extremely lucky that no one was killed in the attack, but it should still outrage us that these troops were put at risk in this way. These troops suffered these injuries as a result of a reckless and illegal decision that the president made.

Half of the injured troops were badly hurt enough to require additional medical care in Germany or here in the U.S.:

Eight service members who were removed from Iraq for additional treatment at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany have returned to the United States for more medical care, while nine other service members remain in Germany, Hoffman said. The remaining 17 who were diagnosed with concussions, a mild form of TBI, have been returned to duty, he said.

Deciding to use force against another government is a grave matter, and it should never be done capriciously or simply because the president feels like doing it. All of the evidence available to date shows that the president broke the law by ordering the assassination, he did it for the wrong reasons, and almost three dozen Americans were hurt as a result. Since then, the president has tried to minimize and trivialize these injuries as much as possible. Adam Mount summed it up best:

The president carelessly put American service-members in harm's way. He has diminished their sacrifice and lied to the American people about casualties we have suffered. It's hard to imagine a greater failure of a CINC's duty. https://t.co/jN0fhqNWlU

— Adam Mount (@ajmount) January 24, 2020

Shame: We stood by while Saudis helped criminals flee the U.S. Kelley Vlahos reports on the latest revelations of how the Saudi government has aided accused Saudi criminals in escaping justice in the U.S.

The new McCarthyism. Paul Pillar explains what is driving the smear campaign by Tom Cotton and other Iran hawks against the National Iranian American Council.

Is Saudi Arabia really seeking de-escalation in the Persian Gulf? Eldar Mamedov observes that the Saudi government has gone back to its usual hard-line rhetoric against Iran and Qatar in recent weeks.

There are massive street demonstrations in Baghdad today calling for the exit of U.S. troops from the country. The demonstrations are in response to call for protests from Muqtada al-Sadr. Estimates of the crowd size vary, but it is a huge turnout of Iraqis that wants us gone:

100’s of thousands protest in Baghdad, calling for all US troops to leave Iraq, close all bases & embassies, if they don’t they will be considered an occupying force. pic.twitter.com/C3CqBqpxyD

— Ali Arouzi (@aliarouzi) January 24, 2020

Some more photos of the march by Sadrists today in Baghdad, the turnout is huge by any measure, perhaps the largest in #Baghdad so far, and perhaps the most noticeable aspect is the lack of violence and troubles despite the scale of it#IraqProtests#Iraq#USpic.twitter.com/2xXGk2dSVY

— Farhad Alaaldin (@farhad965) January 24, 2020

Baghdad today. pic.twitter.com/RlVU5K1RnP

— мυнαммα∂ αℓ-ωαєℓι 🇮🇶 (@muhammadalwaeli) January 24, 2020

The Trump administration has violated Iraqi sovereignty earlier this month by taking military action inside Iraq against both Iraqis militias and the Iranian government without Baghdad’s consent, and their government wants our forces out of the country. Sadr has considerable influence in Iraqi politics, and he has wanted U.S. forces out for a long time. When opponents of our military presence can organize such huge popular demonstrations, it is time for us to go. The U.S. should have withdrawn from Iraq years ago, and it would have been better to leave on our own terms. Now the U.S. cannot stay without provoking armed opposition from Iraqis to our continued presence.

So far the administration position has been to threaten Iraq with punishment for upholding its own sovereignty. That’s a disgraceful and imperialist position to take, and it is also an untenable one. There have been enough American wars in Iraq. Trump should yield to the Iraqi government’s wishes and bring these troops home before any more Americans are injured or killed as a result of his destructive Iran policy.