National Security State

( Tomdispatch.com) | – – You want to see “blowback” in action? That’s easy enough. All you need is a vague sense of how Google Search works. Then type into it phrases like “warmest years,” “rising sea levels,” “melting ice,” “lengthening wildfire season,” or “future climate refugees,” and you’ll find yourself immersed in the grimmest […]

Donald Trump

Pentagon bloats the Federal Budget and Small-Gov’t Marks don’t Care

Juan Cole

By William D. Hartung | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – Imagine for a moment a scheme in which American taxpayers were taken to the cleaners to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars and there was barely a hint of criticism or outrage. Imagine as well that the White House and a majority of […]

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 […]

National Security State

An Empire of Graveyards

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | (Tomdispatch.com) |- – Recently, a memory of my son as a small boy came back to me. He was, in those days, terrified of clowns. Something about their strange, mask-like, painted faces unnerved him utterly, chilled him to the bone. To the rest of us, they were comic, but to him […]

Arms Sales

Trump Admin flooding Planet with high Tech Weapons; What could Go Wrong?

contributors

By William D. Hartung | (Tomdispatch.com ) | – – As Donald Trump might put it, major weapons contractors like Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin cashed in “bigly” in his first year in office. They raked in tens of billions of dollars in Pentagon contracts, while posting sharp stock price increases and healthy profits driven […]

National Security State

From Afghanistan to Somalia, Special Ops Achieves Less with More

contributors

By Nick Turse | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – At around 11 o’clock that night, four Lockheed MC-130 Combat Talons, turboprop Special Operations aircraft, were flying through a moonless sky from Pakistani into Afghan airspace. On board were 199 Army Rangers with orders to seize an airstrip. One hundred miles to the northeast, Chinook and […]

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 […]