AFRICOM’s Gigantic ‘Small Footprint’

Here’s a question for you: Can a military tiptoe onto a continent? It seems the unlikeliest of images, and yet it’s a reasonable enough description of what the U.S. military has been doing ever since the Pentagon created an Africa Command (AFRICOM) in...

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The Lies Behind This War

The American people are "war-weary," we are told, and that’s the only reason they’re overwhelmingly opposed to bombing Syria: this bit of conventional wisdom is invoked by warmongers and peaceniks alike, but is it true? Well, to some degree, no doubt, but...

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War, War, What Is It Good For?

President Obama’s request for express congressional authorization for a limited aerial invasion of Syria raises profound legal and constitutional questions. For starters, there is simply no legal basis in international law to support an American invasion of Syria....

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Splintered Damascus Holds Its Breath

“Life is almost normal in the center of Damascus,” local resident Hisham says from the predominantly Christian neighborhood of Bab Touma. “Only the occasional noise of artillery on the outskirts reminds me that we are at war.” The sound of artillery...

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When In Doubt, Say ‘Hitler’

Poor Pol Pot. He just can’t get any respect. Despite a solid resume as a crazed, brutal dictator responsible for killing approximately 1.7 million of his own people, his name never comes up when the caretakers of American empire set their sights on an enemy du jour....

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Alone and Delusional on Planet Earth

In an increasingly phantasmagorical world, here’s my present fantasy of choice: someone from General Keith Alexander’s outfit, the National Security Agency, tracks down H.G. Wells’s time machine in the attic of an old house in London. ...

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