Today's Liberal News

The One Variable that Could Decide the War

When General Mark Milley outlined the U.S. Army’s future priorities in 2017, he said that new long-range missiles, improved tanks, and better-armed, better-trained infantrymen were vital to America’s domination of the next major conflict. But those plans, the then–Army chief and soon-to-be chairman of the Joint Chiefs said, came with an important caveat: The upgrades would be useless unless the military came up with a more effective air defense.

A War for Oil: Economist Michael Hudson on U.S. Quest to Control the World’s Oil Trade

We speak with economist Michael Hudson, who details how President Trump opted to attack Iran despite progress at indirect U.S.-Iran negotiations. “The whole reason that America has attacked Iran has nothing to do with its getting an atom bomb,” but instead the aim was U.S. control of oil, says Hudson. The Trump administration may have been after the ability to “turn off the power” to countries that don’t follow U.S. foreign policy, he says.

“Stop This Bloodshed”: Israeli Lawmaker Ofer Cassif Slams Netanyahu’s “Fascist Government” over Iran

Ofer Cassif, a member of leftist Hadash-Ta’al coalition in the Israeli Knesset, speaks with Democracy Now! from Israel about the war on Iran. As U.S. and Israeli officials claim that their military actions are against the regime, Cassif says their real goal is pursuing “imperialist interest” at the “expense of the peoples, including the people of Iran and the people of Israel​​.

By Attacking Iran, U.S. & Israel Seek Unchallenged Supremacy in Middle East: Rami Khouri

Rami Khouri, Palestinian American journalist and distinguished public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut, speaks with Democracy Now! about the historical context of Western colonialism in the Middle East amid the war against Iran. Khouri says the U.S.-Israeli attack is the latest act “causing people across the world to look at the idea of … Western liberal democratic tradition as a hoax.

“Horror and Anxiety”: Death Toll in Iran Tops 780 as Trump Says U.S. Can Fight “Forever”

The U.S. is sending more troops and fighter jets to the Middle East as the regional war expands four days after the U.S. and Israel assassinated Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and struck sites across Iran. At least 787 people have died so far in Iran, according to local authorities. Iranian American journalist Negar Mortazavi says the feeling on the ground is of “horror and anxiety” and that U.S.

Former St. Louis Congressmember Cori Bush Runs for Seat Again After AIPAC Targeted Her in 2024

Cori Bush is running for Congress again. Bush previously served two terms as a Democratic congressmember for Missouri, until she was unseated in 2024 following a multimillion-dollar attack campaign run by pro-Israel groups. Bush, a community activist who participated in the 2014 Ferguson uprising over the police killing of Michael Brown, was an outspoken critic of Israel in Congress and introduced a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza in October 2023.

Trump Has Given America a Constitutional Dilemma

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Donald Trump has taken America into war with a country whose population is approximately the size of Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s combined. He has done this without making a case to the American people, and without approval of any kind from their elected representatives.

The Fortress We Gave Away

During the planning for President Trump’s latest strike on Iran, Britain refused to allow the United States to launch air attacks from the U.S.-U.K. base at Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean. Only a few hours’ flying time from the Middle East, Diego Garcia offers airfields long enough for the heaviest bombers and has naval docks large enough for aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. It is British territory, left over from colonial times, but was jointly developed under a U.S.-U.K.

The Big Story: The Iran War

On Wednesday, March 4, Atlantic staff writers Tom Nichols, Toluse Olorunnipa, and Missy Ryan will discuss the United States and Israel’s joint attack on Iran with staff writer Vivian Salama. In this virtual event, they’ll discuss the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Trump administration’s response, the complicated history of regime changes, and what comes next. Attendees can submit questions in advance for The Atlantic’s journalists to answer live during the session.

Today’s Atlantic Trivia: Crack Open a Krating Daeng

There’s an old rule of thumb that you retain about 10 percent of what you read, 20 percent of what you hear, 30 percent of what you see via image or video, and so on up the ladder of experiential learning, until you get to a 90 percent retention rate for the things you learn by doing yourself.
The teeny problem is that none of this is backed by science; it’s a bastardization of the “cone of learning” that the education theorist Edgar Dale developed but never intended to be prescriptive.

The Israel of October 6 Is Never Coming Back

Just about the only thing that the administrations of Barack Obama and Donald Trump have agreed on is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was too timid to pull the trigger. “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,” a senior Obama official told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg in 2014, explaining that the Israeli leader was “scared to launch wars.