Pentagon

By Andrea Mazzarino | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – “When he first came home, it was tough.” So Aleha, the wife of an airman in Colorado, told me. She was describing her family’s life since her husband, who lives with chronic depression, completed a partial hospitalization program and, in March, along with other members of […]

Afghanistan

If only we Had that $6.4 Trillion we wasted on Iraq and Afghanistan to Lift the Economy and Fight Coronavirus

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Wouldn’t it be nice if the richest country in the world had some resources stored up to deal with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and the worst health crisis since the 1918 Influenza Pandemic that killed 600,000 Americans? I mean, we had a $21 trillion a year […]

Donald Trump

In Pandemic, Trump Must Choose Between a Global Ceasefire and America’s Long Lost Wars

Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies

As President Trump has complained, the U.S. does not win wars anymore. In fact, since 1945, the only 4 wars it has won were over the small neocolonial outposts of Grenada, Panama, Kuwait and Kosovo. Americans across the political spectrum refer to the wars the U.S. has launched since 2001 as “endless” or “unwinnable” wars. […]

Epidemics

Beware the Pentagon’s Pandemic Profiteers: Hasn’t the Military-Industrial Complex Taken Enough of Our Money?

Tomdispatch

By Mandy Smithberger | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – At this moment of unprecedented crisis, you might think that those not overcome by the economic and mortal consequences of the coronavirus would be asking, “What can we do to help?” A few companies have indeed pivoted to making masks and ventilators for an overwhelmed medical […]

Donald Trump

Will the Corruption of Trump’s America End on a Ventilator or in a Mushroom Cloud

Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies

Little by little, Americans are understanding just how badly our government has let us down by its belated and disastrous response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and how thousands more people are dying as a result. But there are two other crises we face that our government is totally unprepared for and incapable of dealing with: […]

Pentagon

Empire and Blowback: Remembering Chalmers Johnson’s Critique of American Imperialism

Richard Drake

( Responsible Statecraft) – It has been nearly ten years since Chalmers Johnson died, and twice that long since the publication of “Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire.” That Johnson’s condemnation of American imperialism originated in a conservative political and philosophical tradition makes him a somewhat unusual figure. Such viewpoints more characteristically come […]

Epidemics

Real Security: Wasted Pentagon Trillions that We Could have Spent on Health Care and Pandemic Preparedness

Tom Engelhardt

It is not like we’ve won any wars since 1945, anyway

Militarization

A General once Warned against Military-Industrial Complex: Today’s West Point Mafia is It

Danny Sjursen

(Tomdispatch.com ) – Every West Point class votes on an official motto. Most are then inscribed on their class rings. Hence, the pejorative West Point label “ring knocker.” (As legend has it, at military meetings a West Pointer “need only knock his large ring on the table and all Pointers present are obliged to rally […]

Donald Trump

Modly and Esper Should have followed Capt. Crozier’s Lead in Blowing Whistle on Trump Coronavirus inaction rather than Firing Him

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Capt. Brett Crozier of the USS Theodore Roosevelt is a national hero, as his crew recognized when they cheered uproariously as he left his ship for the last time. Crozier had provoked the Navy to let the crew of 5,000 debark at Guam. Some 100 of them tested positive for […]