After Attacking Iran, The World Must Boycott, Divest, & Sanction The United States of America
The U.S. does not abide by international law, its own Constitution, or basic human decency. External punishment is needed to stop our rogue government and save lives.
It is time for the free and democratic nations of the world to take drastic steps to end the violent imperialism and domestic repression of the United States of America, which is the greatest threat to global peace, human rights, and individual dignity on planet Earth.
Many will protest this call to action, arguing that other nations are currently waging more destructive wars or have tighter limitations on civil liberties. This is only true if we wilfully accept the comforting blinders of nationalism and delude ourselves with a selective, narrow view of the modern world. America’s war on Iran has not killed as many people as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, nor is the United States as internally restrictive as a nation like Thailand, which outlaws criticism of the monarchy. If we protect our self-image by deceptively viewing each issue in isolation, then Americans can continue to live in plausible denial, telling ourselves that “We’re not as bad as X” or “We’re lucky we don’t live in Y.” But from an honest, global view, one that considers the total harm done by each government within and without its own borders, there is no question that the United States of America is the world’s leading architect of death, destruction, and destabilization. While the current Trump administration bears responsibility for the last year of aggressive escalation of American violence, it is not the only culprit. Nearly every American institution, from the media, to universities, to the business class, to the Democratic Party, has enabled the President’s many killing sprees, either by turning a blind eye or outright collaborating. Almost always, these actions reject the will of the American people.
As the United States government has shown it cannot abide by the principles of international sovereignty and cooperation outlined in the United Nations Charter, the responsibilities of the Genocide Convention, or even the civil liberties enshrined in its own Constitution, the international community must act to protect themselves, each other, and the American people from the global menace that is the government of United States of America.
In the twilight hours of Saturday morning, the United States and Israel illegally and immorally bombed Iran. Given the colonial nature of Zionism, I see no reason to differentiate between the American and Israeli governments, which are, in practice, a single political entity. So far, over five hundred and fifty-five Iranians are dead, the vast majority civilians. Of particular atrociousness, one hundred and sixty-five people were killed when either the U.S. or Israel bombed a girls’ school, a repetition of the tactic of state terrorism used against civilians in Gaza. While many in the media play dumb about why the United States launched this attack, they are choosing blissful ignorance instead of acknowledging painful truths: the United States government is built for war and killing. President Trump is using the nation for its foremost purpose.
Trump justified the war with the pitiful excuse that Iran “started it” by overthrowing the U.S.-installed Shah and taking hostages at the U.S. embassy in 1979. As expected, reporting shows Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government pushed America to strike Iran. After months of stringing Iran along with fake diplomacy designed to bide time to position military assets for the strike, both governments repeated their lie that Iran was “days away” from building a nuclear bomb, despite the White House claiming to have destroyed Iranian nuclear capabilities last summer. Now, the entire Middle East is at war. Iran has retaliated by striking U.S. military assets across the Gulf Nations (as is their right) and bombing Israel’s capital, Tel Aviv, where the IDF hides its military base underneath its civilian population. Hezbollah and Israel are back to fighting, plunging fractured Lebanon into even more chaos. Never wasting an opportunity, Israel resumed its tactic of starving Gaza by closing all border crossings, ceasing the flow of food and humanitarian aid. World Central Kitchen Chef José Andrés warned Gaza would “run out of food this week.”
Unfortunately, the war on Iran was not caused by one senile man or even one fascist political party. At best, Democratic leadership has been ambivalent to the illegal war. The only criticism Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer could muster was saying President Trump must “brief the Senate,” as if incomplete information sharing was a bigger objection than massacring five hundred people. The lack of serious opposition isn’t surprising. While the typical Democrat is more militant towards Iran than any of their voters, Chuck Schumer has retained control of the Democratic Senate body despite repeatedly breaking from his party to echo the Likud Party line on the need to fight Iran. Of the three Democratic senators who voted against President Obama’s Iran Nuclear Deal, Chuck Schumer is the only one still in politics. With Democrats remaining loyal to Israel over their voters’ wishes, it’s no surprise several are joining Republicans to block a bill limiting Trump’s war powers brought by Congressmen Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna.
With the media’s favorite storylines being America, Israel, war, and big, scary boogeymen, it’s no surprise that the entirety of American media has celebrated the American-Israeli war on Iran, the ultimate media boogeyman. The loudest cheerleading has come from CBS News, where self-described “Zionist fanatic” editor in chief Bari Weiss is openly celebrating the war and using the opportunity to attack politicians criticizing it. The outlet is now straight-up lying to sell the war to the American people, claiming Iran has nuclear weapons — something not even Donald Trump or Benjamin Netanyahu says.
The supposedly liberal media has aided the war effort, with front-page editorials from some of the most vile warmongers of the 21st-century. Both Brett Stephens and Thomas Friedman, who were instrumental in building consensus for the Iraq War, have written positively about the attacks on Iran. The media, particularly The New York Times, spent many years bemoaning how readers didn’t trust them after their duplicitous reporting about Iraq. But as they are publishing the same arguments for a Middle Eastern forever war from the very same mouthpieces two decades later, it is obvious American media institutions don’t think they did anything wrong. Much like the government, they are constructed to promote war, and are giddy when it happens. If they get caught, they begrudgingly offer a “sorry,” like a child forced to apologize, but never bother to self-reflect on their failings.
The refusal of the American elite to police itself is one of many reasons why the international community must take matters into its own hands. Never once has the United States held itself responsible for its international and domestic crimes. From Iran-Contra, the Iraq War, to January 6th, the United States refuses to punish criminals if they belong to the elite class. This is not only a bastardization of justice, but an enabling of crimes to come. With no policing in sight, the upper levels of American society have grown more violent and erratic, while the lower levels have been numbed with state propaganda and distracted by the increasing difficulty of everyday life. In the fourteen months Trump has been in office, he has attacked drastically more countries than his predecessor, Biden, who attacked more than Trump did in his first term. So far, the second Trump administration has bombed Nigeria, Syria, Somalia, Iran, Yemen, Venezuela, in addition to the numerous killings of South American boaters in territorial and international waters. And there are no signs of stopping. Trump’s allies are already teasing a regime-change war in Cuba, which the administration has been starving for several months, on top of the six-decade strangulation of the island.
Of course, all of these wars and “military actions” are cherries on top of the mountain of bodies left by the Gaza genocide. Though Israel is the foremost perpetrator of that crime, it could not have been committed without the unyielding support, armament, and diplomatic cover supplied by two American administrations, for which there is little chance any culprit will be held to account.
Except for Israel, which is a de-facto American colony, there is no nation on earth responsible for as much destabilization and immiseration as the United States of America. Washington, D.C., is home to more serial killers than any place on earth. The only difference between the Secretary of State and John Wayne Gacy is that Marco Rubio wants to kill more people than the lunatic clown ever could — a missle is more suited to his goals than a knife. The amount of human misery created by plans drawn and implemented in the State Department’s air-conditioned meeting rooms surmounts the wildest dreams of comic book villains, nevermind actual world leaders. The foreign wars engaged in by administration after administration after administration are not “accidents,” “mistakes,” nor “failures of leadership.” Destabilization is the goal. The bombing of Iran has already killed hundreds of civilians and ignited a regional war. While the existing Islamic leadership has been the foremost target of U.S. and Israeli strikes, the aggressors appear to be attempting to kill every possible leader capable of taking power. Former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was killed, and there was an attempted assassination on the leader of the pro-democracy Green Movement, who had been imprisoned by the regime since 2009. The United States has no interest in ushering in a free, pluralistic Iran. With Trump promising at least “four weeks” of bombardment, and pro-Israel activist Jake Tapper reporting the President said “the big one is coming,” it clears America’s goal is to leave Iran in ruin and leaderless, creating a power vacuum that leads to endless civil war and allows Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the U.S. to continue expanding their regional influence.
And this is on the external crimes. Internally, the United States government has brutally repressed dissenters and minorities through a bipartisan agreement to apply the tactics and strategies of foreign warfare to those who threaten it from the inside. The President’s secret police have arrested, disappeared, and even executed those publicly opposing the current administration. Dozens of concentration camps have been built across the country, often with draconian torture systems and outlandish barbarism to intimidate those who object to the American Empire. When the courts rule against these practices, the government ignores them. Much like the current outbursts of foreign violence, these domestic crimes are an escalation of the escalation — an increase in the rate of repression that has been building in the United States for as long as I’ve been alive. Throughout the Biden Administration, protestors on college campuses and elsewhere were violently repressed by the state and Zionist gangs for merely demonstrating in public. Flagrant violations of civil liberties were common, with the Democratic President endorsing the state violence by slandering his protesting constituents as “antisemitic.” A particular egregious event was at the University of California, Los Angeles, where a Zionist mob of non-students descended on the encampments, attacking them with improvised explosives, lead pipes, and other small weapons. It was later discovered that the police stood by and and let the attack happen.
Given the systemic imperial and domestic violence perpetrated by the United States government, and the lack of willingness by the national elite and social institutions to oppose it, the international community has a moral obligation to step in and apply pressure to the U.S. until it obeys the rules of modern respectable life. Specifically, pressure should be directed at the elite cultural and financial institutions that enable the U.S. to reap the benefits of the civilized world while consistently violating its principles. The international community should:
Boycott all American companies, events, and academic institutions that do business with or promote the American government. That means cancelling the upcoming 2028 LA Olympics, refusing to play World Cup games in the U.S., barring transfer students from studying at any university that collaborates with the current administration, refusing to show movies, television, or other entertainment projects made in collaboration with the American military, and any other abstention from involvement with government or military contractors.
Divest from American bonds, securities, and the dollar until the American government ceases imperialist military action and brings its foreign policy in line with the values of national sovereignty spelled out in the United Nations Charter. There is already some appetite for this strategy, as global investors are shying away from U.S. Treasury Bonds during financial turmoil. European Union countries hold $8 trillion in U.S. bonds and treasuries, twice as much as the rest of the world combined. France encouraged the E.U. to divest from the U.S. when Trump threatened to invade Greenland, so such divestment is not unheard of. This strategy holds special power in the current moment, as Donald Trump is particularly sensitive to negative financial performances.
Sanction businesses that work with the American government or military, political leaders, American oligarchs, and any other entity that provides material support or profits from American militancy, until the United States of America signs the Rome Statute, recognizes the International Criminal Court, and willingly hands over any and every leader the Court seeks to try.
These would be drastic, unprecedented steps that will come at economic and social cost to Americans and non-Americans alike. But given the United States’ track record over the last half century, that is a price worth paying, as it will be significantly lower than the price the world will be forced to pay if the U.S. is left to its own devices. The current President is openly considering declaring a state of emergency to federalize elections, a clear attempt at a coup, which he has tried once before. Meanwhile, unlike the more robust democracies of South Korea or Brazil, the American Democrats are eager to forget the current administration’s crimes once they’re removed from office, keeping America on its current blood-soaked trajectory. This is what we must understand. Donald Trump is many things. Murderer. Convicted rapist. Decaying. But he is not irrational.
Every day, Trump and his team defy the limits of human depravity with a new act of cruelty. Bombing fishermen, defunding cancer research, or appointing an open White nationalist to the State Department. Much like his predecessors, Trump continues with his cruelty because he is never punished for it. The Democrats don’t challenge him, not in any meaningful way. The judiciary has anointed him King. And Congress is little more than a figurehead, doing as they are told. Until Donald Trump faces a penalty for his crimes, they will continue. And get worse. As the traditional mechanisms of punishment — elections, impeachment, and attack by the opposition party — have been defanged by a political class more concerned with their personal status than the common good, it is time for the free world to make America pay for its many crimes. I urge them to act now. Before it’s too late.
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In Solidarity — Joe
Alas, most countries aren’t free agents. Alliances, supply chains, security cover, the dollar, it all locks you in. Australia likes to talk sovereignty, but we’re rusted to the hull. Everyone knows it. That should worry people more than it does.
So the question isn’t punishment as a mood. It’s what pressure is actually possible, who can apply it, and what they’re willing to wear for it. Start smaller and sharper. Coordinated export controls on specific military tech. Tighten conditions on joint exercises and basing access. Targeted divestment from firms directly tied to operations people actually object to, not the entire economy. Use multilateral forums to raise political cost, even if enforcement is thin.
None of that is clean. All of it has a price. That’s the point.
A clear enumeration of principles, tempered by the reality of a world that can't even get its act together to apply BDS against Israel.