Originally posted at TomDispatch. I only hope I’ll be around in 2123 for Henry Kissinger’s 200th birthday celebration. (I’d be a mere 179 then.) Still, at least I made it to his 100th. Imagine, in fact, that when I was in my twenties and in the streets protesting the war in Vietnam (Cambodia and Laos), he … Continue reading “Does an Old Henry A. Kissinger Require Rehabilitation?”
Tom Engelhardt
An editor in publishing for the last 25 years, Tom Engelhardt is the author
of The
End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold
War era, now out in a revised edition with a new preface and afterword, and Mission Unaccomplished, TomDispatch Interviews With American Iconoclasts and Dissenters.
He is at present consulting editor for Metropolitan Books, a fellow of the
Nation Institute, and a teaching fellow at the journalism school of the University of California, Berkeley.
Visit his Web site.
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An Exceptional Military for the Exceptional Nation
Originally posted at TomDispatch. I can still remember my parents singing a somewhat cleaned-up version of the World War I-era song “You’re in the Army Now.” (“You’re in the Army now, You’re not behind a plow; You’ll never get rich, you son of a bitch, You’re in the Army now.”) As it happens, though, that song … Continue reading “An Exceptional Military for the Exceptional Nation”
The Forever War’s Forever Legacy
For more than 18 years, Karen Greenberg has been writing about the crimes the U.S. committed at its offshore prison of injustice at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It would be, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld assured Americans, “the least worst place” (a phrase Greenberg turned into the title of her book on the subject). Sorry, Don, … Continue reading “The Forever War’s Forever Legacy”
Oppenheimer and the Birth of the Nuclear-Industrial Complex
Yes, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, would kill staggering numbers of people and be an eerily (if all too grimly) appropriate ending to the war that started with the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and, by August 1945, had resulted … Continue reading “Oppenheimer and the Birth of the Nuclear-Industrial Complex”
The United States Refuses to Play by the World’s Rules
Originally posted at TomDispatch. In 1963, the summer I turned 11, my mother had a gig evaluating Peace Corps programs in Egypt and Ethiopia. My younger brother and I spent most of that summer in France. We were first in Paris with my mother before she left for North Africa, then with my father and … Continue reading “The United States Refuses to Play by the World’s Rules”
The Military Dangers of AI Are Not Hallucinations
Originally posted at TomDispatch. I give myself credit for being significantly ahead of my time. I first came across artificial intelligence (AI) in 1968 when I was just 24 years old and, from the beginning, I sensed its deep dangers. Imagine that. Much as I’d like to brag about it, though, I was anything but … Continue reading “The Military Dangers of AI Are Not Hallucinations”
The End Stage of American Empire
Originally posted at TomDispatch. All around us things are falling apart. Collectively, Americans are experiencing national and imperial decline. Can America save itself? Is this country, as presently constituted, even worth saving? For me, that last question is radical indeed. From my early years, I believed deeply in the idea of America. I knew this … Continue reading “The End Stage of American Empire”
The Compulsion To Intervene
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Allow me to come clean: I worry every time Max Boot vents enthusiastically about a prospective military action. Whenever that Washington Post columnist professes optimism about some upcoming bloodletting, misfortune tends to follow. And as it happens, he’s positively bullish about the prospect of Ukraine handing Russia a decisive defeat in … Continue reading “The Compulsion To Intervene”
Crimes Against Humanity, American-Style
Originally posted at TomDispatch. In the Blindman’s Buff variation of tag, a child designated as “It” is tasked with tapping another child while wearing a blindfold. The sightless child knows the other children, all able to see, are there but is left to stumble around, using sounds and knowledge of the space they’re in as … Continue reading “Crimes Against Humanity, American-Style”
The Army We Don’t See
Originally posted at TomDispatch. In late March, I was taken aback by a news story about a drone attack on American troops at a joint base with Kurdish forces in Syria. Though five U.S. soldiers were wounded, there was only one death and, as Eric Schmitt reported in the New York Times, that “soldier” was … Continue reading “The Army We Don’t See”