Militarization

San Francisco (Tomdispatch.com) | – I was teaching the day the airplanes hit the World Trade Center. It was the second meeting of “The Communist Manifesto for Seminarians,” a course for my fellow graduate students. By the time I got to class, both towers had collapsed. A few hours later, Building 7 came down as […]

Foreign Policy

The Hidden Costs of America’s Perpetual Wars

Juan Cole

By Stephanie Savell | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – I’m in my mid-thirties, which means that, after the 9/11 attacks, when this country went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq in what President George W. Bush called the “Global War on Terror,” I was still in college. I remember taking part in a couple of campus […]

Donald Trump

“Do Kids die, Mom?” Facing the Future With Trepidation in the Age of Trump

Juan Cole

Frida Berrigan | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – As a mother and an activist, here’s what I’ve concluded as 2018 begins: it’s getting harder and harder to think about the future — at least in that soaring Whitney Houston fashion. You know the song: “I believe the children are our future, teach them well and […]

Donald Trump

The Map: Costs of 76 ongoing American Wars

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – He left Air Force Two behind and, unannounced, “shrouded in secrecy,” flew on an unmarked C-17 transport plane into Bagram Air Base, the largest American garrison in Afghanistan. All news of his visit was embargoed until an hour before he was to depart the country. More than […]

Donald Trump

Is US National Security Strategy too Important to Leave to the Generals?

contributors

By Ingo Trauschweizer | (The Conversation) | – – President Donald Trump greeted the new year with an angry tweet about U.S. ally Pakistan. Among other things, the tweet accuses Pakistan of giving “safe haven to terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan.” The Pakistani prime minister responded that the tweet was “completely incomprehensible.” While the subjects […]

Donald Trump

Global Spec Ops in Trump’s Pentagon: Elite Commandos in record 149 Countries

Juan Cole

By Nick Turse | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – “We don’t know exactly where we’re at in the world, militarily, and what we’re doing,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in October. That was in the wake of the combat deaths of four members of the Special Operations forces […]

al-Qaeda

Is Bin Laden Shaping America more than our Founding Fathers?

Juan Cole

The ‘War on Terror’ is destroying Democracy

Donald Trump

U.S. Soldiers Died in Niger. What on Earth Are We Doing There?

contributors

By Peter Certo | ( Otherwords.org) | – – When our soldiers kill and die in wars we don’t know about and can’t end, we’re not a democracy anymore. In our military-revering culture, it’s a strange thing for a president to start a war of words with the grieving families of slain soldiers. Strange, yes. […]

Africa

Sen. Lindsey Graham surprised at US Troops in Niger? He could have read Nick Turse

Juan Cole

By Jon Queally, staff writer. | ( Commondreams.org) ” – – Graham Should Read More Nick Turse, TomDispatch, and Common Dreams. What U.S. Senators Don’t Know (and Neither Do You) About What the Pentagon Is Doing in Africa Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the Senate’s most outspoken military hawks and member of the powerful […]