Reply or comment to share your thoughts on these pieces, or tell me what I should be reading.

You can’t accidentally bomb a school.

You don’t get to claim that building a warplane, manufacturing a bomb, deciding to start a war, mounting the bomb, fueling the plane, taking off, looking through the aiming system, and pushing the button, is an “accident” when that bomb falls in the wrong place, or kills people you didn’t intentionally set out to kill.

You don’t get to claim that designing a missile, testing it, fueling it, arming it, deploying it, entering target coordinates, and pushing the button, is an “accident” when that missile kills those you didn’t intentionally set out to kill.

Bombing a school is not an accident. Bombing children is not an accident. Because if you can’t ensure you won’t bomb a school, you are morally, legally, and ethically required to not initiate the war. Even if a war was justifiable, the execution of that war does not get a blank check.

But in this case, we have joined an unprovoked attack because we were worried we’d be attacked in response to an unprovoked attack.
Because a “Peace President” had moved the largest military mobilization to the doorstep of a country that posed no more threat than 20 other countries we support and supply with weapons.
Because a “Peace President” tore up a peace agreement.
Because, at it’s core, white supremacists couldn’t deal with having a Black President (who killed American citizen children extrajudicially with the same drones bombing children today).

We are responsible for every bomb dropped. We in every sense of the word. We whose taxes bought the bomb. We whose elected leaders decided to send the bomb. We whose neighbor flew the plane that dropped the bomb. We who allowed our neighbors to be othered and dehumanized.

We bombed a school. We killed hundreds of girls. We must not wallow in despair over this, but rather use this fact to fuel our response. Show love for our neighbors, do good in our community, help wipe our moral slate clean. Because while we don’t work in the war machine, and we didn’t push the button, or cast the vote, we are both perpetrators and victims. So what can we do to atone for our participation, and not wrap ourselves in victimhood to block out the pain?

We must hold our elected leaders accountable. Primary them, vote them out, give them not a moment’s peace. We must boycott and divest from companies that fund and build the war machine. We must not allow the use of AI to absorb the accountability. The AI didn’t choose the target or drop the bomb, we did.

An individual decided the nearby family, neighbors, or even hostages weren’t important enough to be spared from death. An individual approved the list of targets. An individual decided to pull the trigger. There are many people individually responsible for those girls’ deaths. 

We are among them.

Does anyone win when children are bombed? by me in Public Square

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Still I Rise By Maya Angelou

Reading

The least human thing you can do by Luke O'Neil

Then there is the opposite of that. The antithesis of bravery. I watched what that looks like this morning as well as the United States and Israel began bombarding Iran. For the sake of their own freedom naturally. Because Iran is "the world's number one state sponsor of terror," as Trump said today.

One of our strikes hit an elementary school in the city of Minab killing over 80 people. Many of them little girls. You can watch a video of the aftermath if you are up for it. I don't think I will soon be able to get the sound of the anguished screams out of my head.

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I cannot think of anything less like bravery than operating an attack drone from the safety of some fucking aircraft carrier or office in D.C. or Tel Aviv or Palm Beach as the case is today. Pressing a button on a missile that will land hundreds or thousands of miles away. The little bottle of water on your desk. Maybe a picture of your family taped up there. Marching around saying "Yes sir" and all that shit. Saluting each other.

Fucking losers. Fucking murderers. Fucking cowards.

And expecting us – with good reason based on history of course – to all thank them for their service. Fuck your service and fuck you.

Saving a life is brave. Being instructed to kill and saying no I will not do that is brave. But murder like this? It is the least human thing you can do.

No imminent threat: Experts dispute Trump admin claims for striking Iran by Laura Rozen

The official made a confusing case that, because Iran might have used its missiles to preemptively-- or simultaneously--attack US forces gathering in the region to attack Iran, Trump decided to preemptively attack Iran.

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The official also said that Iran has refused to negotiate about its ballistic missiles, though there have been other statements that the US and Iran had agreed to discuss the nuclear issue first, then move on to other issues.

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The senior Trump administration officials provided no evidence or claim of an imminent Iranian military threat to the United States from either Iran’s ballistic missiles or its nuclear program, a top arms control expert said.

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“So this is a war of choice, in the middle of negotiations, that were making serious progress, according to neutral mediators,” Kimball said. “This is the flimsiest excuse for initiating a major attack on another country without Congressional authorization, in violation of the UN Charter, in many decades.”

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The Trump administration is also making claims that are not substantiated by US intelligence assessments briefed to the Gang of Eight Congressional leaders last week, or by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Kimball said.

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Two other senior Trump administration officials made assertions about the recent negotiations with Iran that suggested they did not have the expertise or experience to understand the Iranian proposal, or why Iran would not have accepted elements of the US proposal. They therefore claimed Iran was not serious about the negotiations, which seems to be a misunderstanding.

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The third senior Trump administration official, discussing the recent negotiations with Iran, also revealed a profound lack of experience or expertise to understand the issues involved, including claiming-- bizarrely--that the Iranians thought the US negotiators, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, would somehow never bother to read their proposal closely.

https://diplomatic.substack.com/p/no-imminent-threat-experts-dispute

Iran war roundup: March 1 2026 by Derek Davison

I think Rozen makes a very good point when she argues that any US frustration with Iran’s negotiating positions may have been borne out of the fact that the two US negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, didn’t understand them and they were the   only   people at the table for the US. Neither has any relevant background in international negotiations or nuclear issues, and so they didn’t understand why, for example, the Iranians didn’t accept a US offer to provide them with reactor fuel in lieu of a uranium enrichment program (how could they trust that arrangement?) or how significant it was that the Iranians offered a years-long suspension of enrichment activity followed by a commitment not to stockpile any enriched uranium. Nor did they have any technical staff who could have explained these things to them. They didn’t see the words “zero enrichment” in the Iranian proposal and they reported that back to Trump, who also doesn’t know anything about these matters beyond whatever version of Baby’s First Nuclear Talks briefing he’s gotten from the ideologues in his administration.

Most nepobaby failsons just manage to tie up some mid-level elected position for decades, or run their family car dealership into the ground while getting caught with sex workers and drugs. Jared Kushner, on the other hand, is making a run at Henry Kissinger levels of death and destruction not through steering the military directly, but by repeatedly failing to understand what he’s negotiating about, much less succeeding in those negotiations, other than forming side deals to enrich himself personally. He even fails at vulture capital, which is nearly impossible. Truly staggering levels of stupidity and ignorance in a single human package.

Five Uncomfortable Truths About War with Iran by Van Jackson

First, there is no “national” (US) purpose in war with Iran. It’s what the Israeli government wants, and US foreign policy pretends that Israeli primacy in the Middle East is good for US global dominance. That’s a farce, but it’s also official policy. If the US were a real democracy, this would not be happening.

Second, they (the US and Israel) don’t want regime change; they want Iranian state collapse. Trump and Netanyahu both now say they’re hoping for regime change, and indeed these latest strikes have decapitated the regime. But if that’s what they sought, they wouldn’t be targeting hospitals, schools, and critical infrastructure. These were not solely counterforce (ie, military to military) strikes.

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Fifth, the part of all this that even many smart people seem not to get is that imperial decline is not randomly happening, and it’s not happening because the US state is run by politicians with poor judgment. Neither is it because America’s political leadership are evil. The root source of imperial decline is a crisis of capitalism that gets managed through zero-sum patches, improvisational fixes that sacrifice others…and that aim at sustaining oligarchy. How oligarchic capitalism sustains its wealth- and power-hoarding is through the permanent war economy. Oligarchy cannot survive the tendency of the declining rate of profit within capitalism without pouring resources into the permanent war economy. And the permanent war economy requires a permanent war footing.

https://www.un-diplomatic.com/p/five-uncomfortable-truths-about-war

Regime Change in Iran (Terms And Conditions Apply) by Spencer Ackerman

To say the first thing first: This is dying-empire behavior. The bellicosity of the late-phase Ottoman Empire comes to mind. But we're in no danger from breakaway territory, nor have we missed out on a leap in military technology, though the economic foundations of the country display atrophy. Dying is not the same as dead. I'm not trying to predict where we are on a trajectory of historical collapse. I'm only pointing out that launching an unprovoked war to overthrow a longstanding enemy under cover of negotiation to resolve a pretextual crisis is the sort of aggression typical of empires in, at a minimum, steep decline.

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The next thing to say: This is an unambiguous aggression by the United States and Israel. Trump spoke of "imminent threats from the Iranian regime." There were none. Out of one side of the warmongers' mouths comes the satisfaction that Iran has difficulty projecting power after the 2024 Israeli decimation of the Resistance Axis< and the 2025 Twelve-Day War. Out of the other side, this claim of imminence that no one believes and no one, certainly not Trump, devotes much effort to presenting as believable. Already the Israelis have bombed a girls' elementary school—not the only school they hit today—and killed dozens. That's not what you do when you face an imminent threat. That's what you do when you want to seize a sick opportunity. 

While the bombs fall on the regime and its opponents alike, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu say that they come as liberators. Only they won't be the ones who do the dirty work. "The time has come for all sections of the people in Iran… to remove the yoke of tyranny… and bring a free and peace-loving Iran," al-Jazeera quotes a statement from Netanyahu. "Our joint operation will create the conditions for the brave Iranian people to take their fate into their own hands."

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But because there were never any consequences for it, we are right back here, only worse now. Will there be consequences for the warmongers this time?

https://www.forever-wars.com/regime-change-in-iran-terms-and-conditions-apply/

Feeble Criticism of War With Iran Echoes the Lead-Up to War With Iraq by Joseph Stieb

The case against the current war with Iran is so overwhelming as to hardly need articulation. The war is illegal, unprovoked, unethical, strategically blinkered, and likely to further destabilize the region. It is a direct result of President Trump’s gratuitous shredding of former President Obama’s 2015 deal with Iran, which had constrained Iran’s nuclear program.

Nonetheless, many Democrats and liberal commentators have adopted a feckless, procedural critique of Trump’s aggression. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer faulted Trump for not providing details about the Iranian threat and called on Secretary of State Marco Rubio to “be straight with Congress and the American people about the objectives of these strikes and what comes next.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called on the Trump administration to “explain itself,” “clearly define the national security objective” at hand, and “seek authorization for the preemptive use of military force” from Congress before going any further.

The end of this piece gives me pause.

There are better options available.   Kamala Harris, for instance, issued an unambiguous statement: “I am opposed to a regime-change war in Iran, and our troops are being put in harm’s way for the sake of Trump’s war of choice.” It is “unwise, unjustified, and not supported by the American people.” Harris has it right: stalwart opposition to Trump’s goals, not merely his means and his shoddy “case” for war, is the proper posture toward this war of aggression.

Harris refused to break with Biden on Gaza, and it cost her the election. Maybe she’s learned from that experience, but it seems more likely that while she may have refused to drop bombs on Iran directly, when Israel pushed forward on this plan, she would have used US resources to help defend Israel from the backlash to their aggression. She would have likely helped beat the drums of war, manufacturing consent and amplifying the ideas that Iran was building a nuclear weapon (they weren’t) or that their missile capacity was to attack not deter Israel (it isn’t). So while our participation would be different, it’s hard to imagine there would be any difference in the outcome.

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/feeble-criticism-of-war-with-iran-echoes-the-lead-up-to-war-with-iraq

Trump’s Iran Attack Was Illegal, Former U.S. Military Officials Allege by Austin Campbell

Some national security analysts sharply questioned the administration’s humanitarian rationale for the strikes, noting that the threshold for unilateral presidential force is typically tied to imminent threats to the United States. Critics also argue that the administration’s broader domestic record — including policies affecting women’s bodily autonomy, aggressive immigration enforcement, and the detention of some government protesters — undercuts its stated moral justification for military action against Iran

https://theintercept.com/2026/03/01/trump-iran-attack-war-powers-resolution-united-nations-charter-legal/

Lawmakers Demand DHS Define ‘Domestic Terrorist’ As It Uses Vast Array of Surveillance Tools by Joseph Cox

“You and your underlings appear to be labeling untold numbers of people as ‘domestic terrorists’ or individuals of concern at will without evidence, operating wildly invasive spy tools to identify targets—and then using such labels as an excuse for yet more surveillance,” the letter, addressed to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, reads. The office of Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security, shared a copy of the letter with 404 Media.

“This self-reinforcing spiral of civil liberties violations ratchets in only one direction: toward an authoritarian surveillance state that punishes dissent and inflicts state violence,” the letter adds.

https://www.404media.co/lawmakers-demand-dhs-define-domestic-terrorist-as-it-uses-vast-array-of-surveillance-tools/

How OpenAI caved to the Pentagon on AI surveillance by Hayden Field

One source familiar with the Pentagon’s negotiations with AI companies confirmed that OpenAI’s deal is much softer than the one Anthropic was pushing for, thanks largely to three words: “any lawful use.” In negotiations, the person said, the Pentagon wouldn’t back down on its desire to collect and analyze bulk data on Americans. If you look line-by-line at the OpenAI terms, the source said, every aspect of it boils down to: If it’s technically legal, then the US military can use OpenAI’s technology to carry it out. And over the past decades, the US government has stretched the definition of “technically legal” to cover sweeping mass surveillance programs — and more.