Category: Opinion

Source: Washington Post
by Robert Satloff

“From FDR to Bush, promises of Middle East freedom ended badly.” (03/02/26)

https://archive.is/cXtD4

Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Nico Perrino

“The most acute challenges to free expression often come during times of war. The Sedition Act of 1798 criminalized criticism of the federal government amid fears of war with France. During World War I, the Espionage Act led to more than 2,000 prosecutions for speech ranging from teaching that Christians should not kill in war to protests over draft exemptions. The Cold War brought McCarthyism, blacklists, and loyalty oaths. After each of these periods, Americans came to regret the country’s censorship frenzy. … Not every war needs to be followed by censorship and then regret. We can learn from this historical pattern and refuse to censor in the first place.” (03/02/26)

https://www.fire.org/news/calls-censorship-are-familiar-wartime-mistake

Source: Persuasion
by Damon Linker

“There is no real principle behind the president’s foreign policy. The war against Iran proves it.” (03/02/26)

https://www.persuasion.community/p/donald-trump-interventionist

Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Corynne McSherry

“Who should be directly liable for online infringement – the entity that serves it up or a user who embeds a link to it? For almost two decades, most U.S. courts have held that the former is responsible, applying a rule called the server test. Under the server test, whomever controls the server that hosts a copyrighted work — and therefore determines who has access to what and how — can be directly liable if that content turns out to be infringing. Anyone else who merely links to it can be secondarily liable in some circumstances (for example, if that third party promotes the infringement), but isn’t on the hook under most circumstances. The test just makes sense.” (03/02/26)

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/eff-court-dont-make-embedding-illegal

Source: The Price of Liberty
by Nathan Barton

“The various news and political talk shows have pretty much responded as expected to the massive naval and air attack by combined American and Israeli forces on the Iranian Islamic Republic this weekend. As have the various national leaders around the world. But in doing so, we find some oddities, and how divided the American people and many around the world are: great joy and absolute horror across a wide range. With a few exceptions, it seems.” (03/02/26)

https://thepriceofliberty.org/2026/03/02/the-conundrum-of-war-in-the-21st-century/

Source: The American Prospect
by Jonathan Guyer

“Nobody wants this. President Trump stands ready to expand his war against Iran, but the numbers already show how unpopular it is. Six out of ten Americans disapprove of U.S. military action against Iran, according to a new CNN survey. Fifty-six percent of Americans think the president is too willing to use military force, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll fielded over the weekend. If public opinion had a strong bearing on U.S. foreign policy, then this would be a blinking-red indicator that the new war is neither sustainable nor desirable, an all-around destructive campaign. That the president has failed to make a coherent argument in favor of the Iran strikes, to seek congressional approval, or to make any outreach to the public may well end up backfiring. This illegal war will undoubtedly have major unintended consequences that will be felt for decades in Iran, the Middle East, and across the world.” (03/03/26)

https://prospect.org/2026/03/03/blowback-unpopular-iran-war-trump-foreign-policy/

Source: Liberal Currents
by Paul Henry Rosenberg

“Belief in a ‘Great Replacement’ unites the factions of conservatism like ‘fusionism’ never could.” (03/03/26)

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-great-replacement-of-conservative-ideology/

Source: The Intercept
by Hooman Majd

“The Iran war shows that Trump is loving his military interventions — but they are never what he claims them to be.” (03/02/26)

https://theintercept.com/2026/03/02/trump-regime-change-iran-venezuela/

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Ben Armbruster

“A series of new polls show that the American public is overwhelmingly opposed to President Trump’s war on Iran. … Americans’ sentiment about Trump’s attack now lines up with where they were before the war, as a series of polling from a variety of firms leading up to the U.S. attack found them to be against getting into another Middle East conflict. But these latest numbers are also quite significant, especially when compared with polling released just days after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Back then, a whopping 72% of Americans supported then-President Bush’s war on Iraq.” (03/02/26)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/polls-trump-iran-war/

Source: Exiled Policy
by Jason Pye

“What makes this moment so dangerous is not simply the risk of escalation with Iran. It’s the continued erosion of the process that is supposed to restrain exactly this kind of decision-making. The administration has offered shifting justifications for the strikes — imminent threats that weren’t imminent, a nuclear program that was supposedly destroyed less than a year ago, deterrence rationales retrofitted after the fact — while bypassing Congress entirely. That is not how the Constitution envisions the country entering hostilities, nor is it how public consent for war is built or sustained. If this conflict widens, if American casualties mount, or if ground troops are ultimately deployed, the question won’t just be whether the strikes were strategically wise. It will be whether the United States drifted into war without ever deciding, collectively, that war was necessary.” (03/02/26)

https://exiledpolicy.substack.com/p/the-administration-needs-to-make