It’s like taking a trip in a time machine, going all the way back to the darkest days of the cold war era, as headlines scream: Russian spy cabal arrested! Glamorous Russian Mata Hari – “worthy of a 007 movie” – was sending secret messages! Eleven seemingly ordinary – incredibly ordinary – people have been …
Continue reading “Are the Russians Really Coming?”
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: To check out the most recent review of my book, The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s, which just went up at Mother Jones magazine’s Web site, click here (“…as in his daily dispatches, he takes on our war-possessed world with clear-eyed, penetrating precision…”). For all those of …
Continue reading “BP’s First ‘Spill’”
At least 21 Iraqis were killed and 36 more were wounded in a string of attacks that targeted police and other officials. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Maliki met with his rival in talks that could break the political impasse that is fueling some of the violence.
Nearly a week after the abrupt demise of Washington’s top commander in Afghanistan, U.S. strategy for reversing the flood of bad news that has been recently pouring out of that strife-torn country remains as unclear as ever. Led by Sen. John McCain and many of the same neoconservatives who championed the war in Iraq, hawks …
Continue reading “After McChrystal: What Now?”
Click here to listen to this commentary. This past week various news events once again made it abundantly clear that our foreign policy is an abject failure. Unfortunately, in spite of this, the administration is determined to stay on this destructive course, despite any past promises to change it. For Afghanistan especially, if ever there …
Continue reading “Military Spending Must Be on the Table”
Now we know why “King David” Petraeus fainted like a girl at his Senate testimony [.pdf] two weeks ago. Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin put Petraeus on the ropes by asking if his allegiance to President Obama’s withdrawal timeline for Afghanistan reflected his “best personal professional judgment.” Petraeus rope-a-doped his way out of that …
Continue reading “What, Me McWorry?”
Updated at 9:00 p.m. EDT, June 28, 2010
At least seven Iraqis were killed and 19 more were wounded in the latest violence. Also, Turkish warplanes conducted yet another bombing run on suspected Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) hideouts in northern Iraq.
“Your modesty overwhelms me, Yogi.” “Why not, Boo Boo? I’ve got a lot to be modest about.” Those are my two favorite lines from The Yogi Bear Show, a cartoon I watched when I was a kid. After his reply to Boo Boo, Yogi looks self-conscious as he realizes what he has just admitted about …
Continue reading “Supreme Mediocrity”
I am composing these lines while looking through the window at the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea and thinking about the young man who is being held not far from this sea, a few dozen kilometers from here. Can Gilad Shalit look out on the same sea through his window? Does he even have …
Continue reading “Shalit Debacle Shows Netanyahu’s Incompetence”
Much of the time, our wars may hardly exist for us, but in the age of celebrity, our generals do – exactly because they become celebrities. When Barack Obama picked Stanley McChrystal as his Afghan war commander, the general was greeted by the media as little short of a savior. He was, we were told, …
Continue reading “The President Chooses the Guru” 
