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.

The Corpse on the Gurney: The ‘Success’ Mantra in Iraq

The other day, as we reached the first anniversary of the President’s announcement of his “surge” strategy, his “new way forward” in Iraq, I found myself thinking about the earliest paid book-editing work I ever did. An editor at a San Francisco textbook publisher hired me to “doctor” god-awful texts designed for audiences of captive … Continue reading “The Corpse on the Gurney: The ‘Success’ Mantra in Iraq”

Repress U: Build a Homeland Security Campus in Seven Steps

Consider the ultimate gift in a homeland security country: the iTaser, a weapon with its own MP3 player and earphones that can deliver a 50,000 volt electrical charge while you catch your favorite tunes. This new Taser, on display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, will be available, reports Richard Wray of the … Continue reading “Repress U: Build a Homeland Security Campus in Seven Steps”

The $100 Barrel of Oil vs. the Global War on Terror: The Bush Legacy (Take Two)

Consider the debate among four Democratic presidential candidates on ABC News last Saturday night. In the previous week, the price of a barrel of oil briefly touched $100, unemployment hit 5 percent, the stock market had the worst three-day start since the Great Depression, and the word “recession” was in the headlines and in the … Continue reading “The $100 Barrel of Oil vs. the Global War on Terror: The Bush Legacy (Take Two)”

An Imperialist Comedy

Open Steve Coll’s aptly titled book, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, at almost any page and you’re likely to find something that makes a mockery of the film Charlie Wilson’s War. There, on p. 90, for instance, is the larger-than-life … Continue reading “An Imperialist Comedy”

Journey to the Dark Side: The Bush Legacy

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” – Emma Lazarus, 1883 If you don’t mind thinking about the Bush legacy a year early, there are worse places … Continue reading “Journey to the Dark Side: The Bush Legacy”

On the Torturable and the Untorturable

In Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, reporter Siobhan Gorman offered a striking little portrait of José A. Rodriguez, who, in 2005, as chief of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, ordered the destruction of those “hundreds of hours” of CIA videotapes of the… Now, what do we want to call it? Gorman refers to “extreme techniques” of … Continue reading “On the Torturable and the Untorturable”

The Zero-Sum Fiasco

Whatever else the release of the 16-agency National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the Iranian bomb may be, it is certainly a reasonable measure of inside-the-Beltway Bush administration decline. Whether that release represented “a preemptive strike against the White House by intelligence agencies and military chiefs,” an intelligence “mini-coup” against the administration, part of a longer-term … Continue reading “The Zero-Sum Fiasco”

Trying to Dispel a Mist with a Machine Gun

Enter his small office at the Nation Institute only if you don’t mind experiencing a slightly vertiginous feeling. Books are everywhere – in boxes on the floor, on every surface, in, along, and perilously stacked above shelves. If you took a wrong step, you could at least imagine disappearing in a tsunami of tumbling books. … Continue reading “Trying to Dispel a Mist with a Machine Gun”

Iraq as a Pentagon
Construction Site

The title of the agreement, signed by President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki in a “video conference” last week, and carefully labeled as a “non-binding” set of principles for further negotiations, was a mouthful: a “Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the United … Continue reading “Iraq as a Pentagon
Construction Site”

Catch 22 in Iraq: Why American Troops Can’t Go Home

Whoa, let’s hold those surging horses in check a moment. Violence has lessened in Iraq. That seems to be a fact of the last two months – and, for the Iraqis, a positive one, obviously. What to make of the “good news” from Iraq is another matter entirely, one made harder to assess by the … Continue reading “Catch 22 in Iraq: Why American Troops Can’t Go Home”