many of Trump’s liberal opponents have sought to resist his authoritarian tendencies while turning a blind eye to militarism. During the 2024 election, Trump sought to falsely portray himself to a war-wary public as antiwar. Instead of pointing out his lies, his opponents in the Biden and Kamala Harris campaigns presented themselves as better stewards of America’s national security leviathan. They ran ads touting how they kept arms flowing to the stalemated Ukraine-Russia war, paraded around with Liz Cheney, touted the endorsement of Dick Cheney, promised the most lethal fighting force in the world, and ignored their own base’s rightful anger at their role at facilitating a genocide in Gaza. And at no point during Biden’s four years did they seek to undo his sanctions on Venezuela, which drove a humanitarian catastrophe.
Now Trump is back in power. And he has the United States on the brink of war and is expanding the already kinglike war powers of the president. There is no antidote to his authoritarian menace that leaves the national security state untouched.
Any US soldier that follows an order to fire on a vessel that poses no risk to them or their fellow soldiers is also guilty of murder. This applies to the entire chain of command.
Following revelations about CIA assassinations, President Gerald Ford promulgated an executive order banning US participation in “political assassinations.” Jimmy Carter expanded the prohibition to all assassinations. Ronald Reagan campaigned for office with a pledge to unleash the CIA. He rescinded Carter’s executive order designed to limit the intelligence community and replace it with a new order expanding their powers. Yet even though Reagan’s order was the product of “New Right” anger at checks on national security abuses, he kept the assassination ban in place. To date, it remains official US policy. All the orders failed to define assassination, and with some creative lawyering, the executive branch has been able to resume and expand the assassination business.
The United States’ history of extrajudicial killing is intertwined with its alliance with Israel. While many states have used assassinations as a tool of policy, Israel has truly been a pioneer in the practice. Though Israel’s murder of Palestinian leaders was hardly a secret, in the early 2000s, they went public with the fact that they had a program of “targeted killings.” Targeted killings is not a term defined in international law; it is clearly a euphemism designed to get around the prohibition on extrajudicial killings.
Initially the George W. Bush administration publicly opposed Israel’s targeted killings. While Democratic congressman John Conyers pointed out the US weapons were used in the attacks, urging an investigation, other Democrats took a different approach. They criticized the Bush administration’s opposition to Israeli assassinations. Future president Joe Biden was one of the congressional supporters of Israeli targeted killings. And within the Bush White House, there was at least one dissenter: Vice President Dick Cheney made clear his support for the Israeli policy.
Bush’s willingness to arm Israel’s targeted killings always made his administration’s public opposition suspect. But he also clearly warmed up to the practice. In 2008, the CIA worked directly with Israel’s Mossad to carry out an assassination of Hezbollah’s Imad Mughniyeh. The killing took place using a car bomb inside Syria. The United States reasoned Mughniyeh was an imminent threat and thus his killing did not contravene the assassination ban.
More important, after 9/11, the US adopted “targeted killings” as part of its “war on terror.” Many of these killings were conducted via unmanned drones. The Bush administration sought operational expertise from Israel on how to carry out such killings. And it sought out legal advice from Israel on how to justify the targeted killings under international law.
Bush may have started this program, but it was dramatically expanded by Barack Obama. In one of the most shockingly authoritarian acts of any US president, Obama ordered the execution via drone of Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen accused of being an al-Qaeda propagandist. Under the laws of armed conflict, a propagandist is not a military target. Obama’s killing of a US citizen sparked public controversy. As a result, the administration released a highly redacted legal memo justifying the killing. One redacted section cited an Israeli court decision decreeing such targeted killings were permissible under international law.
He’s a murderer and a child rapist
Also adult rapist, fascist, embezzler, grifter, thief, and a weirdo.
We can’t rule out him being a child murderer either.
a mid-1990s panic that the United States’ strident First Amendment protections had made it a haven for terrorist fundraising
Related, I recently learned that the world’s richest man (Larry Ellison) is a zionist that donated to some US foundation, which exists to funnel donations to the Israeli Occupation Forces.
So, unfortunately, the US does allow lots of funding of terrorist organizations. Hell, even Congress approves taxes to go directly to terrorist orgs, both foreign and domestic :(
Epstein was murdered on orders from Trump or Musk, or i daresay someone close to them. We’ll sadly not see that proven in this broken system.
The fact that he’s getting away with blatant murder of foreign citizens is fucking pathetic.
Are you saying we can’t just bomb randos in some other countries waters if we claim we pinkie promise they were drug smugglers?
