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.

Wars of Unintended Consequences

Originally posted at TomDispatch. TomDispatch began with the Afghan War — with a sense I had from its earliest moments that it was a misbegotten venture of the first order. Here, for instance, is a comment I wrote about that disaster in December 2002, a little over a year after the U.S. began bombing and … Continue reading “Wars of Unintended Consequences”

Will the Forever Wars Become Forever Policy?

Originally posted at TomDispatch. If it hasn’t been forever, it’s certainly felt like it. Almost 20 years after George W. Bush and crew invaded and occupied Afghanistan, the American-installed government there collapsed, its leader fled the country, and its American-trained military (already well staffed with plenty of “ghost” troops) evaporated. Many of the government soldiers … Continue reading “Will the Forever Wars Become Forever Policy?”

The All-American Base World

Originally posted at TomDispatch. In January 2004, Chalmers Johnson wrote “America’s Empire of Bases” for TomDispatch, breaking what was, in effect, a silence around those strange edifices, some the size of small towns, scattered around the planet. He began it this way: “As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize – or do … Continue reading “The All-American Base World”

Why Are So Many of Our Military Brothers and Sisters Taking Their Own Lives?

In what seems like another life, I used to interview American veterans of the Vietnam War. Over the course of a decade, I spoke with hundreds of them, mostly about one topic: war crimes. Some were unrepentant. An interrogator who had tortured prisoners, for instance, told me that such actions – beatings, waterboarding, electric shock … Continue reading “Why Are So Many of Our Military Brothers and Sisters Taking Their Own Lives?”

Pivoting the Military to America

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Seven years after the Soviet Union collapsed in a heap of post-Afghan-War rubble and seven years after President George H.W. Bush fought the First Gulf War against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to what looked like typical all-American success, we were on a planet that seemed unimaginably all-American. That February of 1998, Secretary … Continue reading “Pivoting the Military to America”

A Failing Empire With a Flailing Military

Originally posted at TomDispatch. It was all so long ago, in a world seemingly without challengers. Do you even remember when we Americans lived on a planet with a recumbent Russia, a barely rising China, and no obvious foes except what later came to be known as an “axis of evil,” three countries then incapable … Continue reading “A Failing Empire With a Flailing Military”

Why America’s Wars Never End

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Almost 20 years after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, as the Taliban takes district after district, withdrawing American troops are discarding vast piles of junk on bases they are now abandoning. In the process, the war on terror has become a retreat of terror, leaving behind horrified Afghans in a wrecked … Continue reading “Why America’s Wars Never End”

An All-American Path to War?

Originally posted at TomDispatch. The single scariest night of my life may have been on October 22, 1962, when I thought that all the duck-and-cover moments of my childhood were coming home to roost. President John F. Kennedy appeared on national television (and radio) to warn us all to duck and cover. The Soviet Union, … Continue reading “An All-American Path to War?”

Living With World’s End in Plain Sight

Originally posted at TomDispatch. This editor’s note introduced the single article that took up almost every inch of space in the August 31, 1946, New Yorker magazine: “TO OUR READERS: The New Yorker this week devotes its entire editorial space to an article on the almost complete obliteration of a city by one atomic bomb, … Continue reading “Living With World’s End in Plain Sight”

A Wide World of War Porn

Originally posted at TomDispatch. In this century, Memorial Day, a civic holiday, has gained an almost religious tinge. That third Monday in May is meant, of course, to honor the dead of this country’s wars and has a history that goes back to the period after the Civil War when, thanks to the bloodshed of … Continue reading “A Wide World of War Porn”