Militarization

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 […]

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 […]

Militarization

America’s “Wars on . . .” have become an unhealthy Addiction

contributors

By William J. Astore | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – War on drugs. War on poverty. War in Afghanistan. War in Iraq. War on terror. The biggest mistake in American policy, foreign and domestic, is looking at everything as war. When a war mentality takes over, it chooses the weapons and tactics for you. It limits the terms […]

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 […]

African-Americans

Patterns of Racial Violence in the US: Charleston Shooting wasn’t a “One-Off” Event

contributors

By Ethan Zuckerman | (The Conversation) | – – When you read about Dylann Roof, think about the patterns he represents. There’s more than one. Over the next few days, we’re going to hear about mental illness. We’re going to hear about troubled loners. We’ll hear about a young man’s racist fantasies, so outrageous that […]

Domestic Terrorism

Our Jihadis and Theirs: The Real (Armed) Dangers of American Life

Tom Engelhardt

By Tom Engeldhardt | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – Consider this paragraph a holding action on the subject of getting blown away in America. While I write this dispatch, I’m waiting patiently for the next set of dispiriting killings in this country. And I have faith. Before I’m done, some angry — or simply mentally disturbed […]

Barack Obama

Down the Iraqi Rabbit Hole (Again): Washington in Wonderland

contributors

By Andrew J. Bacevich | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – There is a peculiar form of insanity in which a veneer of rationality distracts attention from the madness lurking just beneath the surface. When Alice dove down her rabbit hole to enter a place where smirking cats offered directions, ill-mannered caterpillars dispensed advice, and Mock Turtles […]

Bush

The Middle East Policy of President John Ellis “Jeb” Bush: Iraq, Iran Wars?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Jeb Bush announced his run for president on Monday. It is hard to know what his Middle East policy would be from his wibbly wobbly pronouncements, but that it would be imperial and aggressive can be deduced from his foreign policy advisory team, including Neoconservatives such […]