It wasn’t the good war. But, in our popular imagination, it wasn’t the bad one either. Instead, it’s identified by a vague mixture of concepts, names, and events: the Lusitania, “Wilsonian Idealism,” Versailles, Theodore Roosevelt. The First World...
Why Are We Siding With al-Qaeda in Syria and Yemen?
Last week, I urged the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor to stop protecting al-Qaeda in Syria by demanding that the Syrian government leave Idlib under al-Qaeda control. While it may seem hard to believe that the US government is helping al-Qaeda in...
Is Trump Going Neocon in Syria?
Is President Donald Trump about to intervene militarily in the Syrian civil war? For that is what he and his advisers seem to be signaling. Last week, Trump said of Syrian President Bashar Assad's campaign to recapture the last stronghold of the rebellion, Idlib...
Iraq Parliament Speaker Claims Assassination Attempt; 21 Killed or Found in Mass Grave
Trump, Spinoza, and the Palestinian Refugees
As though we had any ground for doubt heretofore, we can now clearly see – in light of his end to $350 million in annual humanitarian assistance to five million Palestinian refugees – Donald Trump’s cruel and spiteful nature. It was not enough to stack the so-called...
The Seditionists
I’m often asked “How can you claim President Trump is in any way supporting your antiwar agenda when he …” and this is followed by a reference to at least one of the places on earth where he’s violating his “no more regime change” pledge or otherwise supporting the...
Psychologists Say No to Torture
Originally posted at TomDispatch. I offer you this guarantee: there’s an anniversary coming on October 7th that no one in this country is going to celebrate or, I suspect, even think about. Seventeen years ago, less than a month after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush...
Iran Missiles Strike Political Opponents in Kurdistan; 28 Killed, 63 Wounded in Iraq
Iranian Consulate Torched; 37 Killed in Iraq
The Crisis in Myanmar
I sneaked into Myanmar on a tourist visa because the military junta running the country made it almost impossible to travel as a journalist. So I thought I was the only foreign reporter in the capital of Yangon in July of 1995. I was relaxing one morning when BBC TV...


