Category Archives: Iraq

UPDATED (10/21/023): Gaza And The Meaning Of Mens Rea, Malice Aforethought, Or Intent

Bush, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Israel, Just War, Justice, Middle East, Morality, Russia, War

If you know in advance that you will be killing thousands of civilians; you have, attached to your actions, malice aforethought, or mens rea, aka intent ~ilana

From the Ukraine-Russia conflict’s inception; your columnist wrote many an essay  (https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/03/uncle-sam-still-king-invaders-ukraine-realpolitik-wests-failure/) motivating against the Neocons, Neolibs and NATO Inching Us Closer To Nuclear War With Russia, via the Ukraine proxy war.

The rejection by Joe and his Uniparty accomplices of diplomacy, framed by myself as realpolitik, was my focus. “It’s Biblical, Zelensky,” I urged. “A Leader Who Fails To Haggle For The Lives Of His People” is a failed leader.

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/03/biblical-zelensky-leader-fails-haggle-lives-people-failed/

I vehemently now protest the greenlighting of the razing of Gaza by Joe Biden and his Uniparty accomplices.

About “intent,” a bedrock of Western judicial philosophy and Jurisprudence, I said the following on the Hard Truth podcast last Tues (Oct. 10)  (https://rumble.com/v3oicx4-hamas-israel-and-the-anatomy-of-state-treason.html):

If you know in advance that you will be killing thousands of civilians; you have, attached to your actions, malice aforethought, or mens rea, aka intent.

Moreover, just pretend for the sake of argument that there is no way to kill the Hamas culprits other than via a ground invasion; why-oh-why would Israel throttle the supply of water, food and power to millions of Gazans, when Israel knows this will also kill thousands of civilians indirectly?

Israel has, sadly, squandered much of the goodwill generated by the heinous, diabolical, October 7 pogrom, executed by spawns of Satan.

BACKGROUND: “Hamas, Israel And The Anatomy Of State Treason

* Screen capture credit here:
https://www.strategiccriminaldefence.com/faq/mens-rea-vs-actus-rea/

UPDATE (10/21/023): Yes, this is refreshing via Josh Paul (even though I don’t share his support for other incursions and foreign-policy “moral compromises”)—I didn’t know there were people in our bureaucracy who could speak English, much less write it and reason in it.

Paul, who worked for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, has resigned from this Biden-staffed bureau, because of its policy of transferring lethal weapons to be used, invariably, against civilians in Gaza. Paul recounted in interviews how he had been instrumental in drafting a cessation to arms transfers under Biden’s new Conventional Arms Transfer policy, which allegedly reconsidered “weapons sales to countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over the civilian toll of the war in Yemen.”

It was the policy of Donald Trump, as this columnist’s warned, in 2018, through weapons supplies to the Saudis, to enable “our bosom buddies the Saudi’s” in their “barricading of Yemeni ports. No aid gets through her hermetically sealed ports. Yemenis are dying. Some Twitter followers twittered with joy at the sight of starving Yemeni babies, like this one. Oh well, Yemeni babies can be sinister.”

Whatever one’s political sympathies, as I wrote here above, “If you know in advance that you will be killing thousands of civilians; you have, attached to your actions, malice aforethought, or mens rea, aka intent.”

The same obtains if you are a third party, aiding and abetting the carnage that is collective punishment. These are natural, immutable laws. They attached to George Bush’s actions in Iraq. (https://www.ilanamercer.com/2002/09/why-so-many-americans-don-t-support-attacking-iraq/ The Hague ought to have long since nabbed him. They apply to the razing of Gaza following Hamas’ monstrous mass murder on October 7.

NEW COLUMN: Win Or Die: Ukraine’s America-Engineered ‘Options’

Foreign Policy, Iran, Iraq, Multiculturalism, Neoconservatism, Russia, War

America has engineered Ukraine’s current existential reality to dislodge Vladimir Putin ~ilana

By America’s prescriptions, Russia should be a woke, minority white, multicultural sewer, awash with MeToo, BLM, and ANTIFA sensibilities ~ilana

NEW COLUMN is “Win Or Die: Ukraine’s America-Engineered ‘Options’.” It is a feature on The New American, The Unz Review, and WND.

Now on IlanaMercer.com

Excerpt:

… America has engineered Ukraine’s current existential reality by purging the pursuit of diplomacy and peace from its duties as the world Super Power. Mention of a negotiated truce between Ukraine and Russia is practically labeled treason by the command-and-control US media.

That the Ukraine-Russia “war is the health of the US State” was top-of-mind with one Dan Sullivan, Republican representative from Alaska, on August 3.

Following a recent NATO Summit, which determined that faithful stooge Ukraine would not be rewarded with NATO membership—Fox News, an establishment shill, entertained Sullivan for a comment.

With a demented grin you’d expect to see on a patient with end-stage syphilis (a career-destroying line I used on Genghis Bush in 2003)— Sullivan griped that Ukraine has not yet won. The question was not Ukraine’s admission into NATO, said this Republican reptile; the question was Ukraine vanquishing Russia.

“Win or die, dummies” is what Ukrainians are being instructed by the US UniParty, its NATO marionettes and their leader Zelensky, who is protected by the above forces.

The “win or die” policy imperialism, vis-à-vis Ukraine, was seconded, on August 7, by Joni Ernst, junior senator from Iowa. Ernst proves, in the end, that it is as Dr. Johnson said: “There is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea.” Neoconservative or neoliberal; louse or flea, a pest is a pest is a pest.

SHOCK-‘N-AWE THE BOOBS

The words of this particular political pest were as follows, and I paraphrase their gist accurately with added cynical embellishment:

Once Republicans explain to Americans the nature of the mission to Iraq, oops, Ukraine—yes, where have we heard such Machiavellian GOP rhetoric before?—The People, being boobs, will somehow get behind the mission.

“Shock-‘n-awe of the old days,” beamed Joni. That will garner support for the war in Ukraine. …

No worries, Joni. America’s top pundits are with the pols. On August 5, also on Fox News, Victor Davis Hanson turned in his standard neoconservative performance. He critiqued Obama for the scant good 44 did: returning to Iran monies stolen by the American government and maintaining diplomacy with—rather than warring against—Russia. …

… THE REST. Win Or Die: Ukraine’s America-Engineered ‘Options’ can be read on The New American, The Unz Review, and WND.

Now on IlanaMercer.com

 

Twenty Years Ago: Dissident From Day One

Bush, Democrats, Elections, Iraq, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Republicans, The Establishment, War

To be branded Dissident from Day one and cancelled is untenable. Destructive. A career killer

LOOKING FOR mention in my own works of the remarkable Dennis Kucinich, I came across “BUSH’S 16 WORDS MISS THE BIG PICTURE” (July 16, 2003), one of many antiwar columns written at the time.

It still haunts. What passion (as Hillel, Jewish sage and genius, said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”). I believed in the power of pellucid prose and reason to persuade. Instead, I got cancelled from day one.

It’s easy to become a dissident when such a pose is trendy, and is struck once one has enjoyed 20 years of work in the Establishment.  To be branded Dissident from Day One and cancelled is untenable. Destructive. A career killer.

But then I did liken the “bring ’em on” grin on the face of Bush, beloved of most rightists back then, to the grin “on the face of a demented patient with end-stage syphilis.” LOL. Totally worth it. I think.

Reducing this administration’s single-minded will to war to an erroneous 16 words ignores the big picture. First came the decision to go to war. The misbegotten illegality that was this administration’s case for war followed once the decision to go to war had already been made. The administration’s war wasn’t about a few pieces that did not gel in an otherwise coherent framework; it wasn’t about an Iraq that was poised to attack the U.S. with germs and chemicals rather than with nukes; it was about a resigned, hungry, economic pariah that was a sitting duck for the power-hungry American colossus.

By all means, dissect and analyze what, in September 2002, I called the “lattice of lies” leveled at Iraq: the uranium from Africa, the aluminum tubes from Timbuktu, the invisible “meetings” with al-Qaida in Prague, an al-Qaida training camp that existed under Kurdish—not Iraqi—control, as well as the alleged weaponized chemical and biological stockpiles and their attendant delivery systems that inspectors doubted were there and which never materialized. But then assemble the pieces and synthesize the information, will you?

Do what the critical mind must do. The rational individual, wedded to reality, reason, and objective, non-partisan truth saw Bush’s sub-intelligent case for war for what it was. He saw Bush as the poster boy for ‘the degeneracy of manner and morals’ which James Madison warned war would bringthe same ‘bring ’em on’ grin one can also observe on the face of a demented patient with end-stage syphilis. The rational individual saw all this, and understood that when Madison spoke of ‘war as the true nurse of executive aggrandizement,’ he was speaking of the disposition of this dictator.

AND

…. Members of the media aren’t capable of much more than fragmenting and atomizing information. Integrating facts into a conceptual understanding is certainly not what Howard Fineman, Chris Matthew’s anointed analyst, and the brain trust on MSNBC’s “Hardball” does. To disguise his pedestrian politicking, Fineman discussed who, at what time in the afternoon, as well as when in the estrus cycle of the next-door cow, did an official put the infamous 16 words about nukes and Niger on the president’s desk. That ought to make a nation already bogged down in concrete bits of disconnected data see the forest for the trees, wouldn’t you say? … “BUSH’S 16 WORDS MISS THE BIG PICTURE” (July 16, 2003)

https://www.ilanamercer.com/category/war/page/2/
https://www.ilanamercer.com/category/war/

Dennis Kucinich was always there, along for the lost battle ….

THUS, it’s a bad idea for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to tout Mr. Kucinich, his newly nominated campaign manager, as progressive.

Kucinich, like the great Southern senator and gentleman Robert Byrd, RIP (who also greatly opposed Obama’s constitutional usurpations), is noted for voting AGAINST the detestable Democrats and the GOP in opposing the US war machine and the executive dictatorship.

 

Code Pink (Medea Benjamin): Philosophically Solid, Antiwar Pioneer Of The Old Left

Iraq, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Old Right, Russia, War

Ukraine is a proxy for NATO. NATO is surrogate for Uncle Sam. These Dis-United States of America are waging a proxy, regime-change-war on Russia.

The formidable Medea Benjamin of Code Pink, founded in 2002, is hip to all this.

I’ve admired her since she, on the Old Left, stood with us of the Old Right against the destruction of Iraq.

Now, Medea is exactly where she needs to be on the Ukraine proxy-war outrage. With the same principles and depth.

Of course, you don’t see her on TV, on account that she’s brighter than the egos in the anchor chairs—by which I mean Ms. Benjamin has had the philosophical integrity and smarts to be on the right side from the onset.

In other words, Medea hasn’t just recently had a conversion—i.e., “I’ve learned something from Tucker Carlson, and now wanna be on his show.” Concepts like “NATO expansion” and the “events of 2014,” where America fomented a Color Revolution in Ukraine, have been as part of her vocabulary as they have been mine for a long, long time.

At the time “Why So Many Americans Don’t Support Attacking Iraq” (2002) was published in one of Canada’s two national newspapers—it was common for those on the Old Left to find commonalities with the Old Right. Like on matters antiwar.

Code Pink are still my pepes, but they get no backing from the war-loving Woke Left or from dopey ConInc., aka the UniParty.