Iraq is a reminder: US crimes against humanity predate Trump

Guardian:

People talk a lot about “totalitarianism” in the Trump era. I’ve never really loved the category: it seems to paper over some pretty deep differences between the entities one might call totalitarian. But if there was a “totalitarian” moment in my lifetime, it is unquestionably the period between 9/11 and the Iraq war….

This was not the failure of the rule-of-law: this is the rule-of-law in a system in which any attempt to transform power or even challenge it has been silenced.

This was not because “norms” or the constitution were violated; this was the absolute functioning of norms and the constitution.