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. This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com.

Gaza Struggling Under Siege

From Chiapas, Mexico, and Vietnam’s Mekong Delta to West Africa (where a war against women is now underway), TomDispatch has lately been traveling to some of the more scarred places on the planet. Today, Jen Marlowe, a documentary filmmaker and human rights activist (as well as the author of Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival) offers … Continue reading “Gaza Struggling Under Siege”

Visiting the Torture Museum

According to the New Yorker’s Paul Kramer, here’s what A.F. Miller of the 32nd Volunteer Infantry Regiment wrote in a letter to the Omaha World-Herald in May 1900 from the Philippines about the treatment of a prisoner taken by his unit: “Now, this is the way we give them the water cure. Lay them on … Continue reading “Visiting the Torture Museum”

How Never to Withdraw
From Iraq

Think of the top officials of the Bush administration as magicians when it comes to Iraq. Their top hats and tails may be worn and their act fraying, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Their latest “abracadabra,” the president’s “surge strategy” of 2007, has still worked like a charm. They waved their magic wands, paid … Continue reading “How Never to Withdraw
From Iraq”

The Lost Kristol Tapes

As Eric Alterman has written, he’s the “journalist” of “perpetual wrongness” (as well as an “apparatchik” of the first order and a “right-wing holy warrior”). And for that, he’s perpetually hired or published: Fox News, the Washington Post op-ed page, Time Magazine, and most recently, the New York Times where, in his very first column, … Continue reading “The Lost Kristol Tapes”

The Growing Military-Industrial Complex in Asia

Often what is hidden in our world is so simply because no cares or thinks to look. Yes, a fair amount of attention has recently been given to the staggering new Pentagon budget request, the largest since World War II, that the Bush administration has just submitted to Congress for fiscal year 2009. It comes … Continue reading “The Growing Military-Industrial Complex in Asia”

Normalizing Air War From Guernica to Arab Jabour

A Jan. 21 Los Angeles Times Iraq piece by Ned Parker and Saif Rasheed led with an inter-tribal suicide bombing at a gathering in Fallujah in which members of the pro-American Anbar Awakening Council were killed. (“Asked why one member of his Albu Issa tribe would kill another, Aftan compared it to school shootings that … Continue reading “Normalizing Air War From Guernica to Arab Jabour”

Missing Voices in the Iraq Debate

There’s an old joke in which a fellow natters on endlessly about himself. Finally, he turns to his friend and says, “Well, enough about me, how about you? What do you think of me?” Sometimes, we in the U.S. seem to be that guy. There are so many voices crucial to understanding our world that … Continue reading “Missing Voices in the Iraq Debate”

America’s Forgotten Vietnamese Victims

On January 30-31, 1968, the Tet holiday, the North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front (NLF, known to Americans as “the Vietcong”) struck at five of the country’s six largest cities, 34 provincial capitals, 64 district capitals, and numerous military bases. NLF sappers even briefly captured part of the heavily fortified American embassy compound in … Continue reading “America’s Forgotten Vietnamese Victims”