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.

Prison Planet

The evil nature of our enemies has, it turns out, certain advantages – at least when secret imprisonment and torture are at stake. The Bush administration has proved adamantly unwilling to talk to, or deal with, the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, except when it came to parking terror suspects we wanted tortured on … Continue reading “Prison Planet”

Move Over, GI Joe and
Han Solo

It’s hard even to remember anymore the true state of the U.S. military as the Vietnam War ground toward its bloody end. By the late 1960s, the statistics flowing back to Washington about the American war machine were enough to give any general nightmares. Drug-taking was rampant. (By 1971, up to 60 percent of returning … Continue reading “Move Over, GI Joe and
Han Solo”

Fiasco Then, Fiasco Now

[One of the sections below is devoted to Riverbend, the pseudonymous “girl blogger” of Baghdad. For it, I read the collection of her blog entries that the Feminist Press at CUNY published in 2005, Baghdad Burning, Girl Blog from Iraq, and then the newest volume, Baghdad Burning II, More Girl Blog from Iraq, just now … Continue reading “Fiasco Then, Fiasco Now”

The Bush Administration’s
War of the Images

Recently, speaking of his war in Iraq, George Bush put the Vietnam analogy back in the public eye. He was asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos if New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was on the mark in suggesting that what “we might be seeing now is the Iraqi equivalent of the Tet Offensive.” The president’s … Continue reading “The Bush Administration’s
War of the Images”

The End of Maliki?

In some ways, amid the internecine bloodletting, torture, spiking American casualties, death-dealing confusion, and general mayhem, here’s all you need to know about the Iraqi “government” of Nouri al-Maliki. When the prime minister wanted to check on whether he was going to hang onto his position, he didn’t go to parliament or to the Iraqi … Continue reading “The End of Maliki?”

Snatching Defeat
From Victory’s Jaws

Presidential approval polling figures, so ripe and upward moving in September, are as off-a-cliff-steeply in the first half of October. The likes of the polling gap between Americans likely to cast a generic Democratic and a generic Republican vote in the upcoming midterm elections hasn’t been seen since 1994 – and then in reverse, of … Continue reading “Snatching Defeat
From Victory’s Jaws”

Nine Paradoxes of a Lost War

Here’s how the president described the enemy in Iraq at his press conference last week. “The violence is being caused by a combination of terrorists, elements of former regime criminals, and sectarian militias.” “Elements of former regime criminals,” AKA “bitter-enders,” AKA “Saddamists.” The “sectarian militias” may have been a relatively recent add-on, but this is … Continue reading “Nine Paradoxes of a Lost War”

Debunking the Armitage Story

In the first of her two-part series on the Libby case, former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega suggested that George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their supporters might already be preparing the groundwork for a Libby presidential pardon, perhaps even before the case begins in mid-January. After all, who wants all that ugly 2002-2003 linen … Continue reading “Debunking the Armitage Story”

George Bush’s
War of the Words

[Note for readers: The first TomDispatch book to be published this season has just arrived in the stores. (The second will be not an October, but a late November, surprise.) Mission Unaccomplished, TomDispatch Interviews With American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Nation Books, $14.95) collects the interviews I’ve done at the site – from Howard Zinn, Juan … Continue reading “George Bush’s
War of the Words”