Attention to the Unseen

Simon Tisdall writes: Murdered children are no longer news. International media coverage of the war in Afghanistan, where child deaths reached an all-time high last year, is sporadic at best. In Yemen it is estimated that at least 85,000 under-fives have died of starvation since 2015, a figure that numbs the mind. In Syria, especially, it is hard to keep count because children are being killed almost every day – and who is really counting? Harrowing images briefly capture public…

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The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration is preparing to withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan in exchange for concessions from the Taliban, including a cease-fire and a renunciation of al-Qaeda, as part of an initial deal to end the nearly 18-year-old war, U.S. officials say. The agreement, which would require the Taliban to begin negotiating a larger peace deal directly with the Afghan government, could cut the number of American troops in the country from roughly 14,000 to between…

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The New York Times reports: The United States on Friday terminates a major treaty of the Cold War, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement, and it is already planning to start testing a new class of missiles later this summer. But the new missiles are unlikely to be deployed to counter the treaty’s other nuclear power, Russia, which the United States has said for years was in violation of the accord. Instead, the first deployments are likely to be intended to…

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Josh Rogin writes: Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) talks often about her January 2017 trip to Syria, when she met Bashar al-Assad, toured Aleppo after it had been reduced to rubble (by the Assad regime), and interviewed Syrian civilians and the regime-approved “opposition,” who unanimously told her Assad was a better option for Syria than the “terrorists.” But Gabbard never talks about her other trip — to the Turkish-Syrian border with a group of lawmakers in June 2015, when she met…

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Josh Rogin writes: About 10 miles from a U.S. military outpost in southern Syria, some 30,000 civilians are in crisis — with almost no food, water or medicine — and, for complicated reasons, the U.S. government refuses to feed them. These innocent people are living under the protection of the United States, fearing the Bashar al-Assad regime, Iranian militias and the Islamic State. But the U.S. government, which bears primary responsibility for their fate because of its control over the…

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The Washington Post reports: Afghans were startled to hear President Trump’s remarks that he could end the war in Afghanistan “in a week” but that it would cause the deaths of millions of people. The office of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Tuesday immediately asked for “clarification” about Trump’s statement “via diplomatic means and channels.” “If I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth,” Trump said Monday. “It would be over in…

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The New York Times reports: Iran’s most revered Revolutionary Guards commander says talking with President Trump would be admitting defeat. The country’s supreme leader has ruled out any dealings with Washington. But now, in a surprising split among Iranian hard-liners, some are expressing a different opinion: It’s time to sit down and resolve 40 years of animosity with the United States, by talking directly to Mr. Trump. And the most striking voice in that contrarian group is former President Mahmoud…

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The Associated Press reports: Iran and Britain appeared to signal Saturday that they are not seeking confrontation, a day after Iran seized a British-flagged tanker in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a flashpoint in rising tensions between Tehran and the West. Iran’s state news agency said it had seized the Stena Impero for an investigation after it had collided with an Iranian fishing boat — an explanation that avoided portraying the incident as a tit-for-tat move in the current tense…

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  Alex Billington: “Wow wow wow. How much of a difference there is when a woman makes a war documentary. The story of a young mother in Syria, made as a film for her daughter to watch one day. It’s remarkable. Truly horrifying & astoundingly beautiful all at once, an unfiltered story of humanity. I would even call this is a seminal film in the documentary genre. The fresh perspective we get from Waad Al-Khateab making this is phenomenal. There’s…

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The New York Times reports: The House voted Friday to curb President Trump’s ability to strike Iran militarily on Friday, adopting a bipartisan provision that would require the president to get Congress’s approval before authorizing military force against Tehran. The 251-170 vote reflects lawmakers’ growing desire to take back long-ceded authority over matters of war and peace from the executive branch, a reclamation legislators contend has grown increasingly urgent amid escalating tensions with Iran. It also reflected a war weariness…

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Patrick Wintour writes: A chain of events has been triggered that is increasingly exposing the UK diplomatically and militarily in the Gulf. The UK has put British shipping on maximum alert in the Gulf, just as the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, is forced to admit that – due to successive defence cuts – the UK does not have the resources to defend British vessels. Simultaneously, the UK is battling diplomatically to keep the nuclear deal with Iran alive – a…

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Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon write: Who really bombed the oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman three weeks ago? Was it Iran, as the Trump administration assured us? Or was it Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates or Israel—or some combination of the three? Here’s a confession from two former senior government officials: For days after the attacks, we weren’t sure. Both of us believed in all sincerity there was a good chance these actions were part of a…

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Alex Ward writes: A deadly opening attack. Nearly untraceable, ruthless proxies spreading chaos on multiple continents. Costly miscalculations. And thousands — perhaps hundreds of thousands — killed in a conflict that would dwarf the war in Iraq. Welcome to the US-Iran war, which has the potential to be one of the worst conflicts in history. Washington and Tehran remain locked in a months-long standoff with no end in sight. The US has imposed crushing sanctions on Iran’s economy over its…

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Natalie Nougayrède writes: Putin is so good at exploiting our obsessions and weak spots: it’s a tactic he’s long perfected to deflect attention from his own record. Clear the fog a bit, and what is there, really? Russia’s sense of its impunity – I mean big time, murderous, war criminal-style impunity. Think about this: at the end of this year, Russia – whether in its Soviet or post-Soviet incarnations – will have been at war almost continuously for four decades….

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Bill Scher writes: Ploughshares Fund President Joseph Cirincione, an anti-nuclear weapons activist who informally advises Sanders, told me: “I think Senator Sanders would not hesitate to use military force to defend the country from attack, to defend our vital interests, to prevent atrocities like genocide. But he’s made clear that military force should be the very, very last option.” For a small but noticeable anti-Bernie strain on the far left, that wiggle room for military strikes makes Sanders a hypocrite….

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