War

Tacitly or openly, officials and observers on all sides of the deal—even those who otherwise seem to inhabit different universes—acknowledge that the US has lost the war. And should the war resume, as Israel hopes, the US will lose again. “You can’t kill your way out of . . . every national security problem”; but you can sure as hell die trying.

If we are to avoid the worst possible outcomes of this conjuncture, we need an electoral left willing to countenance the collapse of liberalism and to be honest about the need to deconstruct our overseas empire.

The ongoing uprising is rooted in the political economy of structural adjustment, which forms the unstable medium through which revolt becomes contagious.

As the Western media and politicians breathlessly celebrated the return of the final Israeli prisoners, a number of them soldiers captured in combat, Israel began returning hundreds of captives it had snatched from Gaza over the previous two years and held in abominable conditions ever since. Having released some 2,000 people, Israel still holds around 9,000 Palestinian men, women, and children in captivity, hostages for a future day.

The Trump Administration’s reliance on ICE underscores a transformation toward a domestic politics of domination that mirrors its lawlessness abroad. Just as Trump felt no obligation toward any kind of established diplomatic processes before invading Iran, he has positioned himself entirely against the courts, attacking the bedrock concepts of judicial review and due process as interfering with the project of mass deportation.