By William J. Astore and Danny Sjursen | If you have a moment, how about joining two retired officers, Bill Astore and me, Danny Sjursen, as we think about this country’s catastrophic forever wars that, regardless of their deadly costs and lack of progress, never seem quite to end? Recently, in a podcast chat about […]
US Troops are finally returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, but what to kind of American are they returning
By Andrea Mazzarino | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – By the end of this year, the White House will reportedly have finally brought home a third of the 7,500 troops still stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq (against the advice of President Trump’s own military leaders). While there have been stories galore about the global security implications […]
The Pentagon couldn’t Protect us from the Pandemic: Will Biden dare Cut its Budget?
By William D. Hartung and Mandy Smithberger | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Now that Joe Biden is slated to take office as the 46th president of the United States, advice on how he should address a wide range of daunting problems is flooding in. Nowhere is there more at stake than when it comes […]
Merchants of Arms: Who wants a Conflict with China?
By Cassandra Stimpson and Holly Zhang | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – War: what is it good for? Apparently, in Washington’s world of think tanks, the answer is: the bottom line. In fact, as the Biden presidency approaches, an era of great-power competition between the United States and China is already taken for granted inside […]
A Well-Armed and Unpatriotic Far Right
By Andrea Mazzarino | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – It was July 2017, a few weeks before the “Unite the Right” Charlottesville riots, when white men marched through the streets of that Virginia city protesting the planned takedown of a confederate statue and chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” I was sitting at a coffee […]
The United States of Paranoia — From the Salem Witch Hunt to Conspirator-in-Chief Donald Trump
By Steve Fraser | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – News is “faked”; elections are “rigged”; a “deep state” plots a “coup”; Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died suspiciously in bed with a pillow over his face; aides of ex-president Barack Obama conspire to undermine foreign policy from a “war room”; Obama himself was a Muslim mole; […]
A House Divided: America’s new Civil Wars
By Andrea Mazzarino | – When it rains, pieces of glass, pottery, and metal rise through the mud in the hills surrounding my Maryland home. The other day, I walked outside barefoot to fetch one of my kid’s shoes and a pottery shard stabbed me in the heel. Nursing a minor infection, I wondered how […]
Taking the Next Knee: Is this Athletic Revolt For Real and Is It a Danger to Donald Trump?
By Robert Lipsyte | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Last year, when LeBron James described some of President Trump’s public statements as “laughable and scary,” Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham ordered the basketball superstar to “shut up and dribble.” LeBron responded thoughtfully by saying that her comment “resonated with me, but I think it resonated […]
Isolation and Opioids During the Pandemic
By Mattea Kramer | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – In our new era of nearly unparalleled upheaval, as a pandemic ravages the bodies of some and the minds of nearly everyone, as the associated economic damage disposes of the livelihoods of many, and as even the promise of democracy fades, the people whose lives were already […]