Pentagon

Review of Amin Saikal, “How to Lose a War: The Story of America’s Intervention in Afghanistan” (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2024). Munich, Germany (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) –– More than three years have passed since US troops left Afghanistan in August 2021, putting an end to an occupation that lasted two […]

Donald Trump

Seeds of Resistance: Reviving the Peace Movement in the Age of Trump

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com ) – When the election results came in on November 5th, I felt a pain in the pit of my stomach, similar to what I experienced when Ronald Reagan rode to power in 1980, or with George W. Bush’s tainted victory over Al Gore in 2000. After some grieving, the first question that […]

Pentagon

The Battle for the Soul of American Science: The Pentagon goes to School

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com ) – The divestment campaigns launched last spring by students protesting Israel’s mass slaughter in Gaza brought the issue of the militarization of American higher education back into the spotlight. Of course, financial ties between the Pentagon and American universities are nothing new. As Stuart Leslie has pointed out in his seminal book […]

Militarization

Militarism Abuse Disorder: A Very American Malaise

Frida Berrigan

( Tomdispatch.com ) – My name is Frida and my community is military dependent. (I feel, by the way, like I’m introducing myself at a very strange AA-like meeting with lousy coffee.) As with people who have substance abuse disorders, I’m part of a very large club. After all, there are weapons manufacturers and subcontractors in […]

Pentagon

Suicide Squad: U.S. Troops are losing a War with their Deadliest Enemy

Nick Turse

( Tomdispatch.com ) – At the end of the last century, hoping to drive the United States from Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam’s holiest sites, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden sought to draw in the American military. He reportedly wanted to “bring the Americans into a fight on Muslim soil,” provoking savage asymmetric conflicts […]

Pentagon

Our Nearly $1 Trillion Military Budget Won’t Make us Safer

OtherWords

By Lindsay Koshgarian ( Otherwords.org ) – If you looked at the U.S. military budget without knowing otherwise, you’d probably guess we were in World War III. Our military spending is now the highest it’s been at any point since World War II — and Congress keeps adding more. The House of Representatives just passed […]

Militarization

How the Military-Industrial Complex is Killing us All

Tomdispatch

By By David Vine and Theresa (Isa) Arriola | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – We need to talk about what bombs do in war. Bombs shred flesh. Bombs shatter bones. Bombs dismember. Bombs cause brains, lungs, and other organs to shake so violently they bleed, rupture, and cease functioning. Bombs injure. Bombs kill. Bombs destroy. […]

Pentagon

The Pentagon’s .00035% Problem

Nick Turse

( Tomdispatch.com ) – There are constants in this world — occurrences you can count on. Sunrises and sunsets. The tides. That, day by day, people will be born and others will die. Some of them will die in peace, but others, of course, in violence and agony. For hundreds of years, the U.S. military […]

Donald Trump

The Forever Wars, MAGA and the Loneliness of Anger

Andrea Mazzarino

( Tomdispatch.com) – An acquaintance who hails from the same New Jersey town as I do spends his free weekends crawling through the woods on his stomach as part of a firearms training course, green camouflage paint on his face and a revolver in his hand. He considers this both a way to have fun […]