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Arnold R. Isaacs

Arnold R. Isaacs is a journalist and writer based in Maryland. He has written widely on refugee and immigration issues and is the author of From Troubled Lands: Listening to Pakistani and Afghan Americans in post-9/11 America and two books relating to the Vietnam war.

Cold War
The Trump Team’s Purge of Pentagon Photos Raises Sinister Echoes from the Past

The Trump Team’s Purge of Pentagon Photos Raises Sinister Echoes from the Past

Arnold R. Isaacs

( Tomdispatch.com ) – In early June, the Washington Post published a follow-up to earlier stories on a Trump administration plan to remove thousands of photographs from Defense Department websites because of “DEI-related content.” Illustrated with more than a dozen samples of the targeted photos (which the Post‘s reporters were able to find reproduced on […]

Health
The USAID that Elon Musk Never Knew

The USAID that Elon Musk Never Knew

Arnold R. Isaacs

( Tomdispatch.com ) – What put the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), with an annual budget hovering at just about 1% of federal spending, at the top of Elon Musk’s budget-cutting target list? Was it just a political calculation that foreign aid is a safe target because it’s unpopular with so many Americans and […]

Donald Trump
We Can’t Let Ourselves be overwhelmed: Countering Trump’s Falsehoods Is More Urgent Than Ever

We Can’t Let Ourselves be overwhelmed: Countering Trump’s Falsehoods Is More Urgent Than Ever

Arnold R. Isaacs

( Tomdispatch.com ) – During this year’s presidential election campaign, I was puzzled and increasingly troubled that the issue of truth-telling — and the spectacular lack of it from one candidate — wasn’t getting the sort of focus or emphasis in the news coverage it should have received. We heard or read about Donald Trump’s […]

Far Right
Marjorie Taylor Greene only Cares about some Murders, and not those committed by Far Right with AR-15s

Marjorie Taylor Greene only Cares about some Murders, and not those committed by Far Right with AR-15s

Arnold R. Isaacs

( Tomdispatch.com ) – “Say her name!” Marjorie Taylor Greene shouted from the House floor during President Biden’s State of the Union Address. The same slogan was on the T-shirt she wore under her red jacket, which had a pin with a picture of the person whose name she was referring to — a pin she’d […]

Veterans
A Different Kind of War Wound Afflicts America

A Different Kind of War Wound Afflicts America

Arnold R. Isaacs

(Tomdispatch.com) – When an announcement of a “Moral Injury Symposium” turned up in my email, I was a bit startled to see that it came from the U.S. Special Operations Command. That was a surprise because many military professionals have strongly resisted the term “moral injury” and rejected the suggestion that soldiers fighting America’s wars […]

Donald Trump
MACA or Making America Crueler Again: Targeting Refugees and the Helpless

MACA or Making America Crueler Again: Targeting Refugees and the Helpless

Arnold R. Isaacs

(Tomdispatch.com) – On September 26th, President Donald Trump’s White House announced that, in 2020, refugee admissions to the United States will be limited to 18,000, drastically lower than any yearly ceiling over the past 40 years. Along with that announcement, the White House released a separate executive order intended to upend many years of precedent […]

Donald Trump
America's current Racism, Patriarchy and Fear of Immigrants Eerily look like 1919

America’s current Racism, Patriarchy and Fear of Immigrants Eerily look like 1919

Arnold R. Isaacs

By Arnold R. Isaacs | – (Tomdispatch.com) – Reading about immigration policy, religious and racial bigotry, and terrorism fears in America in 1919 offers an eerie sense of decades melting away and past and present blurring together. The blend isn’t exact. Bigotry was expressed much more explicitly a century ago, not in code as it […]

Immigration
"Make America Cruel Again:" Trump's War on Immigrants

“Make America Cruel Again:” Trump’s War on Immigrants

Arnold R. Isaacs

( Tomdispatch.com) – “Make America Cruel Again.” That’s how journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Shipler has reformulated Donald Trump’s trademark slogan. Shipler’s version is particularly apt when you think about the president’s record over the last two years on refugee resettlement and other humanitarian-related immigration issues. President Trump’s border-wall obsession and the political uproar […]

Pentagon
Making America's Wars Great Again: Caught in the Vietnam Time Loop

Making America’s Wars Great Again: Caught in the Vietnam Time Loop

Arnold R. Isaacs

(Tomdispatch.com) – Here’s a paradox of the last few decades: as American military power has been less and less effective in achieving Washington’s goals, the rhetoric surrounding that power has grown more and more boastful. The cliché that our armed forces are the best and mightiest in the world — even if the U.S. military […]

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