Oh that’s really cool.
“Our government is treating the suffering of the Iranian people as a backdrop for our own entertainment, as if it’s just another piece of content to be swiped through …But we lose our humanity when we are thrilled by the destructive power of our military.”
www.archchicago.org/en/statement...
“The war with Iran is little more than the joint targeting process unleashed. The Frankenstein’s monster that is the operational level of war, unsatiated after eating strategy, is now feasting on policy”. @bafriedman.bsky.social
“Oppressed beneath the weight of their own corruption and of military violence, they for a long while preserved the sentiments, or at least the ideas, of their freeborn ancestors.”
—Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“It is becoming increasingly hard to avoid the conclusion that the Trump administration has embarked on this operation without a plan, and is making it up as it goes along, as if they killed enough of the right people and destroyed enough Iranian assets everything would fall into place.”
@polgreen.bsky.social
“This is the world Trump tries to disavow — complex and interconnected, resiliently interwoven and yet vulnerable to disruption…More than anything, it shows up — in its grounded flights, shuttered refineries and intercepted missiles — the fallacy of Fortress America”
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/o...
The restrictions Miller and Hegseth railed against were designed to prevent us from doing things like slaughtering children en masse.
“Democracy allows people the freedom to make stupid decisions, so long as they make them collectively. But a system that allows a country to be dragged into war at the whims of a single person is not much of a democracy at all.”
@qjurecic.bsky.social
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Why this war is illegal, and how the Constitution's checks on war powers broke down
“A lot of good people got killed, and for what?” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1990. “And when we left, we left with our tail between our legs.”
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/u...
Lastly, they are for the soul of your nation and your cause. Limits on war preserve humanity. Mercy transcends violence. After the fighting, there has to be something more. Rules of engagement and the laws of armed conflict protect you; abandoning them is dire.
I know that the people who need to read this aren’t here, but here goes:
Rules of engagement aren’t for the enemy. They’re for you. They’re for your soldiers when they’re captured or wounded. They’re for your civilians when they’re in range of the enemy. They’re for your allies, to reassure.
Last night, I spoke to former Army Pfc. Jeremy Watson who said this about Capt. Cody Khork: “[he] enjoyed being in the service…and was a great coach,” who taught him “Compassion, friendship, loyalty…[and] to always try to stay positive when you can.”
I think we learned to somehow do it even more irresponsibly
“Republican lawmakers blocked a measure Wednesday that would have limited President Trump’s power to continue waging war against Iran without congressional authorization, even as the conflict expanded into a wider international crisis”
www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03...
January 31st, 2012. We called in A-10s. Killed four Taliban. I remember the bodies. Teenagers. Twisted wrecked flesh
Making killing a video game isn’t just obscene. It’s a lie. It papers over what violence is and what it does to the human body, and to our soul. Truth is always the first casualty.
Nice. I’m rereading it and my God, what a book.
“By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.”
—Moby Dick
Hegseth has offered more clarity on his war on the Boy Scouts than on the current war with Iran.
Hegseth has offered more clarity on his war on the Boy Scouts than on the current war with Iran.
Hegseth has offered more clarity on his war on the Boy Scouts than on the current war with Iran.
Ooooooh…I need to check that out
“Hard power alone can depose a regime, but it is notoriously incapable of cultivating a better successor.”
www.theatlantic.com/internationa...
Ironic that one of the legacies of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is a presidency that can initiate wars on whim, without even the pretense of building a case to the American people first.
"Whatever happens, though, one thing is clear – that this use of force by the US and Israel is manifestly illegal. It is as plain a violation of the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter as one could possibly have."
@ejiltalk.bsky.social
www.ejiltalk.org/the-american...
Thanks!
Thank you, Kori!
