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.

Flunking Counterinsurgency 101

On the April day in 2003 when American troops first pushed into Baghdad, historian Marilyn Young noted a strange phenomenon. In a single rush, the Vietnam War vocabulary had returned to our media. She promptly dubbed Iraq, “Vietnam on crack cocaine.” It’s true that, for a while, the administration played an eerie opposites game, spending … Continue reading “Flunking Counterinsurgency 101”

Barbarism From Above

Barbarism seems an obvious enough category. Ordinarily in our world, the barbarians are them. They act in ways that seem unimaginably primitive and brutal to us. For instance, they kidnap or capture someone, American or Iraqi, and cut off his head. Now, isn’t that the definition of barbaric? Who does that anymore? The 8th century, … Continue reading “Barbarism From Above”

Too Late for Empire

Jonathan Schell, who ended his Nation magazine column, “Letter From Ground Zero,” last February, now takes up “The Crisis of the Republic” in what will be a series of periodic, longer essays appearing in the Nation under that rubric. For all its wealth, its power, its dreams of military domination over the last half-century-plus, the … Continue reading “Too Late for Empire”

How the Supreme Court
Struck Back

Last week, Attorney General Alberto J. Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the president had personally shut down a Justice Department investigation into the domestic eavesdropping program being run by the National Security Agency. According to Neil Lewis of the New York Times, “Mr. Gonzales made the assertion in response to questioning from … Continue reading “How the Supreme Court
Struck Back”

The Middle East Aflame and the Bush Administration Adrift

So, as the world spins on a dime, where exactly are we? As a man who is no fan of fundamentalists of any sort, let me offer a proposition that might make some modest sense of our reeling planet. Consider the possibility that the most fundamental belief, perhaps in all of history, but specifically in … Continue reading “The Middle East Aflame and the Bush Administration Adrift”

Déjà Vu in Gaza

On the one hand, there’s the madness of devolving Iraq, where dead bodies and sectarian bloodletting are now the daily norm; on the other hand, there’s the eternal madness of the never less than devolving Israeli/Palestinian situation. There, last week, the Israeli government functionally declared Ariel Sharon’s unilateral policy of a no-negotiations withdrawal from Gaza … Continue reading “Déjà Vu in Gaza”

Karl Rove’s Scheherazade Strategy

Here’s how a Washington Post piece soon after the Supreme Court’s smack-down of the Bush administration’s Guantanamo policies began: “Republicans yesterday looked to wrest a political victory from a legal defeat in the Supreme Court, serving notice to Democrats that they must back President Bush on how to try suspects at Guantanamo Bay or risk … Continue reading “Karl Rove’s Scheherazade Strategy”