Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Paul R Pillar

“Shifting justifications for a war are never a good sign, and they strongly suggest that the war in question was not warranted. In the Vietnam War, the principal public rationale of saving South Vietnam from communism got replaced in the minds of the warmakers — especially after losing hope of winning the contest in Vietnam — by the belief that the United States had to keep fighting to preserve its credibility. In the Iraq War, when President George W. Bush’s prewar argument about weapons of mass destruction fell apart, he shifted to a rationale centered on bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq. Now, with President Donald Trump threatening a new armed attack on Iran amid a buildup of U.S. forces in the region, the Washington Post’s headline writers aptly describe the rationale for any such attack as being ‘in flux’ and, for the online version of the same article, ask, ‘what’s the mission?'” (02/03/26)

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

Source: Paul Krugman
by Paul Krugman

“The Washington Post adopted the slogan “Democracy dies in darkness” in February 2017. Some found it pompous, but it reflected a widespread theory about how authoritarianism could come to America. This theory, based on the experience of democratic erosion in nations like Hungary and the work of scholars like Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, argued that autocracy wouldn’t be imposed by armed men beating and killing the regime’s opponents. Authoritarian rule, would, instead, be installed through a gradual process of subversion. … But it turns out that predictions of creeping authoritarianism both underestimated and overestimated MAGA. Almost everyone, myself included, underestimated how far MAGA would go in engaging in open violence and abuse of power against those it considers enemies. On the other hand, we overestimated the movement’s impulse control, its ability to mask its tyrannical goals until its power was fully consolidated.” (02/03/26)

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/american-democracy-will-not-die-in