Pentagon

By Michael T. Klare | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – America’s grand strategy, its long-term blueprint for advancing national interests and countering major adversaries, is in total disarray. Top officials lurch from crisis to crisis, improvising strategies as they go, but rarely pursuing a consistent set of policies. Some blame this indecisiveness on a lack of […]

Militarization

America’s “Wars on . . .” have become an unhealthy Addiction

contributors

By William J. Astore | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – War on drugs. War on poverty. War in Afghanistan. War in Iraq. War on terror. The biggest mistake in American policy, foreign and domestic, is looking at everything as war. When a war mentality takes over, it chooses the weapons and tactics for you. It limits the terms […]

Barack Obama

Top Five ways for Washington to Fail in Iraq

contributors

By Peter Van Buren | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – In one form or another, the U.S. has been at war with Iraq since 1990, including a sort-of invasion in 1991 and a full-scale one in 2003. During that quarter-century, Washington imposed several changes of government, spent trillions of dollars, and was involved in the deaths […]

Barack Obama

Down the Iraqi Rabbit Hole (Again): Washington in Wonderland

contributors

By Andrew J. Bacevich | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – There is a peculiar form of insanity in which a veneer of rationality distracts attention from the madness lurking just beneath the surface. When Alice dove down her rabbit hole to enter a place where smirking cats offered directions, ill-mannered caterpillars dispensed advice, and Mock Turtles […]

Colonialism

The Forgotten Costs of War in the Middle East

contributors

By David Vine | (Tomdispatch.com) | – First, they tried to shoot the dogs. Next, they tried to poison them with strychnine. When both failed as efficient killing methods, British government agents and U.S. Navy personnel used raw meat to lure the pets into a sealed shed. Locking them inside, they gassed the howling animals […]

Drone Warfare

The True Cost of America’s Ongoing Wars: Sebastian Junger, Spencer Ackerman et al.

contributors

Michael Moynihan, “The Business of Life” | VICE News Video | — “The AUMF (The “Authorization of the Use of Military Force”) was a bill passed in the immediate wake of 9/11 and authorized the President of the United States to use all “necessary and appropriate force” against those who had aided the terrorists responsible […]

Iran

The “Bomb Iran!” Lobby Gears Up for 2016

contributors

By Sina Toossi | ( Foreign Policy in Focus) | – “A tight-knit group of neocon dead-enders is pushing Iran to the forefront of the GOP's foreign policy agenda.” In a recent TV ad, a van snakes its way through an American city. As the driver fiddles with the radio dial, dire warnings about the […]

Foreign Policy

Hawks think the US alone can Still Garrison the Planet: How’s that Working Out?

contributors

By Michael T. Klare | (Tomdispatch.com) | – Take a look around the world and it’s hard not to conclude that the United States is a superpower in decline. Whether in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East, aspiring powers are flexing their muscles, ignoring Washington’s dictates, or actively combating them. Russia refuses to curtail its support for […]