Antiwar.com Weekly Newsletter for November 24, 2020

Your source for foreign policy news.

November 24th, 2020

Joe Bidens Interventionist Secretary of State Pick

On Monday, Joe Biden announced he will nominate his long-time advisor Anthony Blinken to be the secretary of state for the incoming administration. Blinken has a long history of advocating for intervention in places like Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen.

Blinken was Bidens top aide in 2002 when Biden was leading the charge in the Senate to give George W. Bush his invasion of Iraq. In 2006, Biden penned an Op-ed for The New York Times that called for dividing Iraq into three separate autonomous zones with a central government in Baghdad, later referred to as a soft partition. According to the Times, Blinken helped craft Bidens proposal.

By Dave DeCamp

What If They Held an Election and Nothing Changed in the War State?

In this mystifying moment, the post-electoral sentiments of most Americans can be summed up either as "Ding dong! The witch is dead!" or "We got robbed!" Both are problematic, not because the two candidates were intellectually indistinguishable or ethically equivalent, but because each jingle is laden with a dubious assumption: that President Donald Trumps demise would provide either decisive deliverance or prove an utter disaster.

By Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.)

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Pompeo Says All Options Are On the Table to Counter Iran

Wrapping up a controversial trip to Israel that included visits to settlements in the West Bank and the Golan heights, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo discussed the Trump administrations Iran policy with The Jerusalem Post on Friday.

Pompeos interview came after a report from The New York Times said President Trump reviewed options to strike an Iranian nuclear site during an Oval Office meeting last week. According to the Times, Trump was talked out of a military attack by Pompeo and other advisors.

By Dave DeCamp

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Will Biden Jettison the Anti-Russia Hysteria?

Joe Bidens administration will face the daunting challenge of repairing the badly frayed U.S. relationship with Russia. Unfortunately, the president-elect is not well-positioned to undertake that task, and he should blame himself and his political associates for that situation. For four years, the Democratic Party and its media allies relentlessly pushed the narrative that Donald Trump was nothing more than a puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

By Ted Galen Carpenter

Hey Joe, Where You Going With That Pentagon in Your Hands?

By all accounts, the frontrunner to be Joe Bidens pick for Secretary of Defense is Michle Flournoy. Its a prospect that should do more than set off alarm bells it should be understood as a scenario for the president-elect to stick his middle fingers in the eyes of Americans who are fed up with endless war and ongoing militarism.

Warning and petitioning Biden to dissuade him from a Flournoy nomination probably have scant chances of success. But if Biden puts her name forward, activists should quickly launch an all-out effort to block Senate confirmation.

By Norman Solomon

Should Americans Die for the Senkaku Islands? Joe Biden Says Yes.

President-elect Joe Biden says Americans might have to die for the Senkaku Islands. You know, the 51st state. Er, a distant U.S. territory. Er, a vital geographic outpost blocking invasion routes into America. Er, some uninhabited rocks claimed by both China and Japan.

By Doug Bandow

Pompeo: State Department to Designate BDS Movement as Anti-Semitic

Kevin Gosztola on the Profiteers and War Hawks of the Biden Transition Team

Killing al-Qaedas No. 2 Man Multiple Times and Using the IAEA Report as Excuse for Attacking Iran

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