Pentagon

What Price “Defense”? America’s Nearly $1.3 Trillion National Security Budget Isn’t Making Us Any Safer

By Mandy Smithberger and William Hartung | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – President Biden’s first Pentagon budget, released late last month, is staggering by any reasonable standard. At more than $750 billion for the Defense Department and related work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy, it represents one of the highest levels of […]

Far Right

Gaslighting the Pentagon: Tucker Carlson, who called Iraqis ‘Monkeys,’ Poses as anti-Racist in defending White Supremacy from “Pig” Gen. Milley

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Fox white nationalist (there, I’ve been redundant and repeated myself) Tucker Carlson once called Iraqis “semiliterate primitive monkeys,” managing to be racist, anti-Arab and Islamophobic all at once. Now Carlson is posing as an anti-racist. Funny thing, though. He isn’t out there apologizing for his racism against Iraqis. Then there […]

nuclear weapons

Do We Really need Multi-Billion-Dollar Naval Vessels that can deliver 16,128 Hiroshimas?

Frida Berrigan

( Tomdispatch.com) – Groton and New London, Connecticut, are home to about 65,000 people, three colleges, the Coast Guard Academy, 15 nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed submarines capable of destroying the world many times over, and General Dynamics’ Electric Boat, a multi-billion-dollar private corporation that offers stock options to its shareholders and mega-salaries to its top executives as […]

African-Americans

Top US Officer Gen. Milley Schools GOP Reps. on Critical Race Theory, Need for Military to Study Society: “I Have Read Marx and Lenin”

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Republicans in Congress really miss the days of red baiting and the Communist threat. Dick Nixon made his bones running against leftist labor unions, intimating to then-conservative San Francisco burghers that insurrectionary Communists were hiding under their beds. The party won elections by making people afraid of workers, of […]

Militarization

The other Big Lie undermining Democracy: Why our Recent Wars Began, and how Badly they were Bungled

William J. Astore

( Tomdispatch.com) – Americans may already be lying themselves out of what little remains of their democracy. The big lie uniting and motivating today’s Republicans is, of course, that Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, won the 2020 presidential election. Other big lies in our recent past include the notion that climate change is nothing but […]

Arab World

Biden wants to end America’s 20-Year War on the Middle East: But Can He?

Foreign Policy in Focus

By Walden Bello | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Next September, when the last C-130 cargo aircraft and Chinook transport helicopters take off from the infamous Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan that has doubled as a CIA torture center for suspected jihadists, they will not only be leaving behind the site […]

Feminism

Changing the Way the Military Handles Sexual Assault: Or How Not to Leave the Fox Guarding the Henhouse

Tomdispatch

By Andrea Mazzarino | – (Tomdispatch.com ) – Given the more than 60 Democratic and Republican votes lined up, the Senate is poised to move forward with a new bill that would change the way the military handles sexual assault and other felony crimes by service members. Sponsored by Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Joni Ernst […]

Joe Biden

President Biden can’t Build America Back better until he Takes on the Permanent War Establishment

Juan Cole

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Is President Biden afflicted with the political equivalent of a split personality? His first several months in office suggest just that possibility. On the home front, the president’s inclination is clearly to Go Big. When it comes to America’s role in the world, however, Biden largely hews to pre-Trumpian precedent. So […]

Joe Biden

Why the Pentagon Budget Never Goes Down: Joe Biden’s First 100 Days Were a Pentagon Prize

Tomdispatch

By Mandy Smithberger | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – The first 100 days of President Joe Biden’s administration have come and gone. While somewhat exaggerated, that milestone is normally considered the honeymoon period for any new president. Buoyed by a recent election triumph and inauguration, he’s expected to be at the peak of his power when […]