National Security State

By Andrea Mazzarino | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – As a Navy spouse of 10 years and counting, my life offers an up-close view of our country’s priorities when it comes to infrastructure and government spending. Recently, my husband, a naval officer currently serving with the Department of Energy, spent a week with colleagues touring a […]

Militarization

The Pentagon as Penta-god: America’s Abyss of Weapons and Warmaking

William J. Astore

( Tomdispatch.com) – Who is America’s god? The Christian god of the beatitudes, the one who healed the sick, helped the poor, and preached love of neighbor? Not in these (dis)United States. In the Pledge of Allegiance, we speak proudly of One Nation under God, but in the aggregate, this country doesn’t serve or worship […]

Afghanistan

Was the Afghan War a Schell Game? Getting It Right Is Always the Wrong Approach When It Comes to America’s Wars

Nick Turse

( Tomdispatch.com) – I waited almost three months for some acknowledgement, but it never came. Not a bottle of champagne. Not a congratulatory note. Not an email of acknowledgement. Not one media request. Authors wait their whole lives for I-told-you-so moments like these. But mine passed without accolades, awards, or adulation. Being way ahead of […]

National Security State

The World the “American Century” Made: Quagmires, Wars and Serial Demonization

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com ) – On February 17, 1941, less than 10 months before the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor and the U.S. found itself in a global war, Henry Luce, in an editorial in Life magazine (which he founded along with Time and Fortune), declared the years to come “the American Century.” He then urged this […]

Australia

Taking the World to the Brink: The Australia-UK-US Nuclear Sub Alliance against China

Tomdispatch

By David Vine | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – Before it’s too late, we need to ask ourselves a crucial question: Do we really — I mean truly — want a new Cold War with China? Because that’s just where the Biden administration is clearly taking us. If you need proof, check out last month’s announcement […]

Afghanistan

Celebrating Rep. Barbara Lee, our Cassandra who warned against the Failed 20-Year Wars

Rebecca Gordon

( Tomdispatch.com ) – For decades, I kept a poster on my wall that I’d saved from the year I turned 16. In its upper left-hand corner was a black-and-white photo of a white man in a grey suit. Before him spread a cobblestone plaza. All you could see were the man and the stones. […]

Afghanistan

“A Horrible Mistake”: Recovering from America’s Imperial Delusions

Andrew J. Bacevich

( Tomdispatch.com) – The bad news stemming from the ill-planned and ill-managed U.S. evacuation of the Afghan capital just kept coming in. The Washington Post put it this way in blowing the whistle on the culminating disaster: “U.S. military admits ‘horrible mistake’ in Kabul drone strike that killed 10 Afghans.” Following the August 26th terrorist […]

Drones

The Names You’ll Never Know: A Blue Kia and a Wall of Carnage on the Washington Mall

Nick Turse

( Tomdispatch.com) – As a parting shot, on its way out of Afghanistan, the United States military launched a drone attack that the Pentagon called a “righteous strike.” The final missile fired during 20 years of occupation, that August 29th airstrike averted an Islamic State car-bomb attack on the last American troops at Kabul’s airport. […]

Militarization

A Parable of (All-American) Violence: Accountability and the War of Terror

Tomdispatch

By Kelly Denton-Borhaug | ( Tomdispatch.com ) – As a religious studies professor, I know a parable when I see one. Consider the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the final events in this country’s war in Afghanistan as just such a parable taken directly from the history of our moment. The heart-wrenching last […]