Pentagon

Bearing witness in Afghanistan — a conversation with Kathy Kelly on ending war and listening to its victims

( Waging Noviolence ) – This week, Michael Nagler and Stephanie Van Hook talk to Kathy Kelly, life-long nonviolence activist, co-founder of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and co-coordinator of the Ban Killer Drones Campaign. She discusses her extensive experience in and thoughts about Afghanistan. American intervention, she believes, was — and indeed, continues to be […]

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 […]

Afghanistan

Droning On: Assassins-in-Chief and Their Brood

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com ) – What a way to end a war! Apologies all around! We’re so damn sorry — or actually, maybe not! I’m thinking, of course, about CENTCOM commander General Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr.’s belated apology for the drone assassination of seven children as the last act, or perhaps final war crime, in this […]

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 […]

Climate Crisis

U.S. Militarism’s Toxic Impact on Climate Policy

Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies

( Code Pink ) – President Biden addressed the UN General on September 21 with a warning that the climate crisis is fast approaching a “point of no return,” and a promise that the United States would rally the world to action. “We will lead not just with the example of our power but, God […]

Afghanistan

If US Followed its own Safeguards, the Taliban and IS-K wouldn’t have captured so many US Weapons

The Conversation

By Nolan Fahrenkopf | – The weapons and military equipment left behind by the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, including through the collapse of the Afghan army, are now largely in the hands of the Taliban – and likely other militant groups as well. Though many politicians’ and observers’ reactions have been sensationalized, it does highlight […]

Donald Trump

The military stood up to Donald Trump. Who will now stand up to the military?

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – When he was trying to win the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon famously told his chief of staff that he wanted Communist leaders—in the Soviet Union, in North Vietnam—to think that the U.S. president was a mad man, that he was capable of doing pretty much anything up to […]

Afghanistan

Can We Finally Give Peace A Chance? The U.S. Military, Post-Afghanistan

William J. Astore

( Tomdispatch.com) – Yoda, the Jedi Master in the Star Wars films, once pointed out that the future is all too difficult to see and it’s hard to deny his insight. Yet I’d argue that, when it comes to the U.S. military and its wars, Yoda was just plain wrong. That part of the future […]