Foreign Policy

By Ben Railton | (The Conversation) | – – With the crowded roster of GOP presidential candidates set to expand to 16 with Ohio Governor John Kasich’s planned July 21 announcement, the importance of the August 6 Republican debate – the race’s first – in starting to winnow down the field becomes increasingly clear. Even […]

Foreign Policy

Why did the US fail in Iraq? Roots of American Overstretch

contributors

By William Polk | (Informed Comment) | – – In The Financial Times of April 23, 2015, Philip Stephens begins a perceptive article with the obvious statement that “It is easier to say that Obama never gets it right than to come up with an alternative strategy.” Of course it is. It was never easy […]

Central Intelligence Agency

The Unbearable Heaviness of the Drone Cowboy

contributors

By Pratap Chatterjee | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – The myth of the lone drone warrior is now well established and threatens to become as enduring as that of the lone lawman with a white horse and a silver bullet who rode out into the Wild West to find the bad guys. In a similar fashion, […]

Foreign Policy

The Confederate Flag flew in Iraq as Symbol of Empire and Militarism (“Valor”)

contributors

By Greg Grandin | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – The Pentagon just can’t let go. In the wake of the Charleston Massacre, Amazon and Walmart have announced that they will no longer sell Confederate flag merchandise. Ebay says it will stop offering Confederate items for electronic auction. Mississippi’s Republican speaker of the house calls his state […]

Civil Rights

Your Fourth of July and My Fourth of July

Juan Cole

Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Revised for the 2010s: Your Fourth of July is invasions and wars. My Fourth of July is the pure sunbeam of peace. Yours is the Confederate flag and nostalgia for the hierarchies of slavery. Mine is ‘all men are created equal.’ Yours is kowtowing to billionaires in […]

Drone Warfare

The Ghost of Soviet Collapse haunts the West: Military Hegemony isn’t what it Used to Be

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – The rise and fall of great powers and their imperial domains has been a central fact of history for centuries. It’s been a sensible, repeatedly validated framework for thinking about the fate of the planet. So it’s hardly surprising, when faced with a country once regularly labeled […]

Barack Obama

Demonizing as Policy: Washington Elites divided over which state to declare Enemy No. 1

contributors

By Michael T. Klare | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – America’s grand strategy, its long-term blueprint for advancing national interests and countering major adversaries, is in total disarray. Top officials lurch from crisis to crisis, improvising strategies as they go, but rarely pursuing a consistent set of policies. Some blame this indecisiveness on a lack of […]

Barack Obama

Top Five ways for Washington to Fail in Iraq

contributors

By Peter Van Buren | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – In one form or another, the U.S. has been at war with Iraq since 1990, including a sort-of invasion in 1991 and a full-scale one in 2003. During that quarter-century, Washington imposed several changes of government, spent trillions of dollars, and was involved in the deaths […]

Arab Americans

Can the GOP live down Donald Trump’s Middle East “Policy”?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Comedians, bloggers, and pundits are ecstatic about The Donald throwing his toupee in the ring for the Republican nomination. The stories write themselves. But the Republican Party establishment is appalled, because Trump will create an image for the party that will hurt it in the general […]