War

( Tomdispatch.com) – The bad news stemming from the ill-planned and ill-managed U.S. evacuation of the Afghan capital just kept coming in. The Washington Post put it this way in blowing the whistle on the culminating disaster: “U.S. military admits ‘horrible mistake’ in Kabul drone strike that killed 10 Afghans.” Following the August 26th terrorist […]

Drones

The Names You’ll Never Know: A Blue Kia and a Wall of Carnage on the Washington Mall

Nick Turse

( Tomdispatch.com) – As a parting shot, on its way out of Afghanistan, the United States military launched a drone attack that the Pentagon called a “righteous strike.” The final missile fired during 20 years of occupation, that August 29th airstrike averted an Islamic State car-bomb attack on the last American troops at Kabul’s airport. […]

Militarization

A Parable of (All-American) Violence: Accountability and the War of Terror

Tomdispatch

By Kelly Denton-Borhaug | ( Tomdispatch.com ) – As a religious studies professor, I know a parable when I see one. Consider the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the final events in this country’s war in Afghanistan as just such a parable taken directly from the history of our moment. The heart-wrenching last […]

Australia

Is US-Australia Nuclear Sub Deal a Proliferation Danger, and does it Justify Iran’s Civilian Enrichment Program?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Alexander Ward and Quint Forgey at Politico raise a crucial question about the AUKUS alliance among the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia that involves providing Australia with nuclear submarines. Is it a form of proliferation and does it provide justification for Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program? Nuclear submarines […]

Afghanistan

Can We Finally Give Peace A Chance? The U.S. Military, Post-Afghanistan

William J. Astore

( Tomdispatch.com) – Yoda, the Jedi Master in the Star Wars films, once pointed out that the future is all too difficult to see and it’s hard to deny his insight. Yet I’d argue that, when it comes to the U.S. military and its wars, Yoda was just plain wrong. That part of the future […]

Afghanistan

Forty-Two Years in Afghanistan: Can a New US Foreign Policy avoid Hyper-Masculinist Ego?

H. Patricia Hynes

Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – Every member of Congress attended the September 14, 2001 memorial service at the Washington National Cathedral for the nearly 3,000 victims of September 11 attacks in New York City, Washington DC and Pennsylvania. In that service Dean of the Cathedral Reverend Nathan Baxter invoked “Let us also pray […]

Afghanistan

Afghanistan and Wars of Unintended Consequences

Rajan Menon

( Tomdispatch.com)- Disagreements over how to assess the American exodus from Afghanistan have kept the pundits busy these last weeks, even though there wasn’t much to say that hadn’t been said before. For some of them, however, that was irrelevant. Having overseen or promoted the failed Afghan War themselves, all the while brandishing various “metrics” […]

Afghanistan

Afghanistan and 9/11: Finished or Unfinished Business? MIT Starr Forum with B. Posen, Juan Cole, V. Felbab-Brown, C. Saivetz (Video)

Juan Cole

MIT Center for International Studies: “Starr Forum: US, Afghanistan, 9/11: Finished or Unfinished Business?” Chair: Barry Posen, Ford International Professor of Political Science, MIT. He studies US grand strategy and national security policy. His most recent book is Restraint: A New Foundation for US Grand Strategy. Panelists: Juan Cole, Richard P Mitchell Collegiate Professor of […]

Afghanistan

How Can America Wake Up From Its Post-9/11 Nightmare?

Medea Benjamin and Ariel Gold

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies | – ( Code Pink | – Looking back on it now, the 1990s were an age of innocence for America. The Cold War was over and our leaders promised us a “peace dividend.” There was no TSA to make us take off our shoes at airports […]