New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is skewed weekly by libertarian luminaries Robert Murphy and Tom Woods in their "Contra Krugman" podcast. For this episode, RPI Director Daniel McAdams joins the duo to pick apart a column by Krugman criticizing Trump's missile strike on Syria for being merely a "publicity stunt." Asks Woods: "what if what the government and mainstream media are absolutely correct and Assad personally gassed those people? Should the US have responded?" Listen to McAdams' response at Contra Krugman. read on...
At Trump’s command, the US military is adding forces and use of force everywhere: Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and Korea. Victory is ill-defined in all these places, but the question remains. Will Trump win? read on...
Ron Paul, in a new interview with host Anand Naidoo at CGTN, discussed what Paul calls the “accelerated” and “dangerous” United States military actions in the Middle East. Pointing to the fact that there was no Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria until the US began intervening there in support of the ouster of the Syria government, Paul warns “there are a lot of unintended consequences, a lot of blowback” that comes when the US government carelessly intervenes overseas based on a loose “national security” justification. read on...
On Palm Sunday, Syrian President Assad visited a Christian church to mark the beginning of Holy Week, a most important time on the Christian calendar. Though not himself a Christian, Assad, for all his faults, has maintained Syria as a multi-confessional, secular state, where Christians and other religious minorities can worship freely. As RPI's Daniel McAdams tells RT in the below interview, if the Trump Administration has its way and Assad is overthrown, it will likely be the last Palm Sunday for Christians in Syria. McAdams also comments on the Lavrov/Tillerson meeting in Moscow and the UN Security Council vote on Syrian chemical weapons... read on...
After fueling a lot of tensions with his comments during the 2016 campaign that NATO is an obsolete alliance, President Trump today declared that the alliance is “no longer obsolete” following meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
Though Trump presented this in part as NATO having capitulated to his demands for the alliance to be reorganized around fighting against ISIS, the comments will also be seen in the context of soaring tensions between the US and Russia. read on...
If there was a centerpiece to Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign for President of the United States, it was her struggle to convince the American people that Donald Trump was congenitally incapable of reacting rationally when surprised by a dangerous international crisis. She struggled futilely to contrast her experience and gravitas to Trump’s reckless impulsiveness. In a rational world, the recent Trumpian brain fart of firing 59 cruise missiles (worth about $90 million) at a nearly empty — and forewarned — Syrian airfield should be a candidate case study to test Clinton’s psychological theory. But it won’t be. Mr. Trump merely did what Ms. Clinton called on him to do (see this video) a few hours prior to the attack. Moreover, the political response to Trump’s attack has been one of widespread bipartisan support, with particular enthusiasm among senior Democrats [e.g, see 1, 23] read on...
The number of civilians killed in recent US airstrikes in Iraq and Syria is rising. As we bomb villages to save villages isn't it time to look back to 2002, when President Bush was so sure Iraq had WMDs that he launched a war which killed over 1,000,000 innocent Iraqis. Nearly 4,500 US soldiers have been killed. The monetary cost of the war in Iraq will exceed three trillion dollars. The US war in Iraq is in its 14th year. read on...
Police had no right to yank a passenger from his seat and drag him off a United Airlines airplane says Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Andrew Napolitano in a new Fox News interview. read on...
Interviewed Monday by Kennedy at Fox Business, Ron Paul challenged the contention that the United States government was acting in accord with good intentions in attacking Syria last week. Instead, Paul suggests a big motivation was generating profit for the military-industrial complex. Discussing the reason for the attack, the Ron Paul Institute Chairman and former presidential candidate concludes, “I think the only interest that has been involved here is to prop up the province of the military-industrial complex.” read on...
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s tendency to improvise when asked questions about US policy has sparked a new round of speculation about exactly where the Trump Administration stands of launching further attacks against Syria, after he declared barrel bombs to be a red line.
