By Nick Turse | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – It began more than two decades ago. On September 20, 2001, President George W. Bush declared a “war on terror” and told a joint session of Congress (and the American people) that “the course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain.” If he […]
Was the Afghan War a Schell Game? Getting It Right Is Always the Wrong Approach When It Comes to America’s Wars
( Tomdispatch.com) – I waited almost three months for some acknowledgement, but it never came. Not a bottle of champagne. Not a congratulatory note. Not an email of acknowledgement. Not one media request. Authors wait their whole lives for I-told-you-so moments like these. But mine passed without accolades, awards, or adulation. Being way ahead of […]
The Names You’ll Never Know: A Blue Kia and a Wall of Carnage on the Washington Mall
( Tomdispatch.com) – As a parting shot, on its way out of Afghanistan, the United States military launched a drone attack that the Pentagon called a “righteous strike.” The final missile fired during 20 years of occupation, that August 29th airstrike averted an Islamic State car-bomb attack on the last American troops at Kabul’s airport. […]
Is the flood of War Atrocity Video Coarsening our Souls?
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Recently, I wanted to show my wife a picture, so I opened the photos app on my phone and promptly panicked when I saw what was there. It’s not what you think. A lot of people are worried about what’s lurking on their smartphones. Compromising photos. Illicit text messages. Embarrassing contacts. […]
Will it Ever Be Over? The 20th Anniversary of the War on Terror Arrives
( Tomdispatch.com) – “This is a different kind of war, which we will wage aggressively and methodically to disrupt and destroy terrorist activity,” President George W. Bush announced a little more than two weeks after the 9/11 attacks. “Some victories will be won outside of public view, in tragedies avoided and threats eliminated. Other victories […]
War, Climate Emergency are driving Millions of families from their Homes
(Tomdispatch.com ) – I saw them for only a few seconds. One glimpse and they were gone. The young woman wore a brown headwrap, a yellow short-sleeved shirt, and a long pink, red, and blue floral-patterned skirt. She held the reins of the donkey pulling her rust-pink cart. Across her lap lay an infant. Perched […]
Trump’s Nuclear Threats reveal the long arm of the Enola Gay and Hiroshima
( Tomdispatch.com) – Whether you’re reading this with your morning coffee, just after lunch, or on the late shift in the wee small hours of the morning, it’s 100 seconds to midnight. That’s just over a minute and a half. And that should be completely unnerving. It’s the closest to that witching hour we’ve ever […]
The Outpouring of Grief over George Floyd’s Death gave America a chance at Rebirth: Will we take it?
( Tomdispatch.com) – They were relegated to the protest equivalent of a ghetto. Their assigned route shunted them to the far fringes of the city. Their demonstration was destined for an ignominious demise far from any main thoroughfare, out of sight of most apartment buildings, out of earshot of most homes, best viewed from a […]
Trump threatens Armageddon on yet Another Country: Crimes against Humanity in Afghanistan
(Tomdispatch.com) – On February 4, 2002, a Predator drone circled over Afghanistan’s Paktia province, near the city of Khost. Below was al-Qaeda’s founder Osama bin Laden — or at least someone in the CIA thought so — and he was marked for death. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld put it later, both awkwardly and […]