Pentagon

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Dustin Jones at NPR reports that Trump has instructed the Pentagon to bring most US troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan by January 15, 2021. Some 2,500 would remain in each country. The announcement was made, WaPo reports, by acting secretary of defense Christopher C. Miller. Miller was apparently brought […]

Afghanistan

Trump fires Mark “Yesper” Esper as SecDef; Was it over Afghanistan withdrawal?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Barbara Starr, Ryan Browne and Nicole Gaouette at CNN report on the firing of secretary of defense Mark Esper on Twitter by Trump. Esper appears to have adopted a relatively mild demeanor with Trump for the past 18 months, though he was known gingerly to disagree with the president on […]

Donald Trump

Talking Tough and Carrying a Radioactive Stick: The Nuclearization of American Diplomacy

Michael T. Klare

( Tomdispatch.com ) – On August 21st, six nuclear-capable B-52H Stratofortress bombers, representing approximately one-seventh of the war-ready U.S. B-52H bomber fleet, flew from their home base in North Dakota to Fairford Air Base in England for several weeks of intensive operations over Europe. Although the actual weapons load of those giant bombers was kept […]

Donald Trump

How dangerous are the White Nationalists in the US Military?

The Conversation

By Jennifer Spindel, Matt Motta and Robert Ralston | – White nationalist groups, who make up some of the most serious terror threats in the country, find new members and support in the U.S. military. These groups believe that white people are under attack in America. In their effort to create an all-white country where […]

Donald Trump

How Trump gave $1 bn allocated for Masks for Troops, Families, to Arms Firms Instead

OtherWords

By Phyllis Bennis | – (Foreign Policy in Focus) – As the pandemic continues to claim lives across the country, new information keeps coming out about how the Trump administration has made it harder for Americans to protect themselves. We now know, for example, that early in the pandemic the U.S. Postal Service had planned […]

Barack Obama

Six Years later, remembering how Socialist Kurds and the US Air Force defeated the ISIS Siege of Kobani

Brian Glyn Williams

By Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Troy Souza | – Dartmouth, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – Six years ago, in October, 2014, the brutal ISIS terorist group came for the Kurds in the Syrian enclave of Kobani. It would have been a gateway for them into Turkey, on which it bordered. The US intervened […]

Donald Trump

Ending the Pentagon’s Pandemic of Spending

Tomdispatch

By Mandy Smithberger | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) -The inadequate response of both the federal and state governments to the Covid-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on the United States, creating what could only be called a national security crisis. More than 190,000 Americans are dead, approximately half of them people of color. Yelp […]

Militarization

Generals to the End: Patton and Westmoreland walk into a Bar . . .

Andrew J. Bacevich

( Tomdispatch.com ) – I’ve written a fair number of pieces for TomDispatch, but this one is a bit different — some might even say strange — so Tom asked me to introduce it myself. By almost any measure, we Americans are living through trying times. As a nation, we are long accustomed to being […]

al Qaeda in the Arabian Penisula

Did the US War on Terror Displace 37 Million?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Brown University Watson Institute Costs of War Project has put out a report concluding that the US-led “War on Terror” has displaced 37 million people. While there are parts of the report I agree with, some of the argument seems to me flawed. Let me explain why that is, […]