Pentagon

By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – Recently, sorting through a pile of old children’s books, I came across a volume, That Makes Me Mad!, which brought back memories. Written by Steve Kroll, a long-dead friend, it focused on the eternally frustrating everyday adventures of Nina, a little girl whose life regularly […]

Domestic Terrorism

Dear Generation Z: So sorry for bequeathing to you terrorism hysteria and all those Wars

contributors

By Peter Van Buren | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – I recently sent my last kid off for her senior year of college. There are rituals to such moments, and because dad-confessions are not among them, I just carried boxes and kept quiet. But what I really wanted to say to her — rather than […]

Featured

15 Years after 9/11, can we Recover our Republic?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Founding Fathers thought keeping a standing army was a danger to democracy. The great wars of the twentieth century appear to have imbued the United States with a permanent standing army, and this institution has been reinforced by the September 11 attacks. Or rather it […]

Far Right

The Republicans who fear that Trump isn’t Belligerent Enough

contributors

By Rebecca Gordon | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – What Does It Mean When War Hawks Say, “Never Trump”? The Enemies of My Enemy May Be War Criminals By Rebecca Gordon It’s not every day that Republicans publish an open letter announcing that their presidential candidate is unfit for office. But lately this sort […]

Featured

Near-War: US Planes almost tangle with Syrian MiGs, which bombed area of US troop Embeds

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The fighting that has broken out between Kurdish YPG fighters and the Syrian Arab Army in Hasaka, northeast Syria, is hardly a new thing. There were clashes in April. Syria says that the Kurds brought it on themselves by trying to expand into government-held territory. As […]

National Security State

If the Military had Permission to Speak Freely: They might rescue us from the Politicians’ Forever War

contributors

By William J. Astore | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – The United States is now engaged in perpetual war with victory nowhere in sight. Iraq is chaotic and scarred. So, too, is Libya. Syria barely exists. After 15 years, “progress” in Afghanistan has proven eminently reversible as efforts to rollback recent Taliban gains continue to […]

Guns

Our American Crimes against the Future

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – I recently dug my mother’s childhood photo album out of the depths of my bedroom closet. When I opened it, I found that the glue she had used as a girl to paste her life in place had given way, and on many pages the photos […]

Militarization

Has the US Military become a B Movie Alien for the rest of the World?

contributors

By William J. Astore | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – Perhaps you’ve heard the expression: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Cartoonist Walt Kelly’s famed possum, Pogo, first uttered that cry. In light of alien disaster movies like the recent sequel Independence Day: Resurgence and America’s disastrous wars of the twenty-first […]

Foreign Policy

A new American Century or a Century of Wars and Refugees?

Juan Cole

By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – Vladimir Putin recently manned up and admitted it. The United States remains the planet’s sole superpower, as it has been since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. “America,” the Russian president said, “is a great power. Today, probably, the only superpower. We accept that.” Think […]