In recent months, among other uproars and scandals, Americans learned that the Defense Department has been collecting intelligence on and tracking domestic antiwar activists; that, since 2001, the National Security Agency (NSA) has had a presidentially authorized, law-breaking, warrantless surveillance program to listen in on the international phone calls of possibly tens of thousands of … Continue reading “The Tangled Web
of American ‘Intelligence’”
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.
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The Tangled Web
Drifting Down the
Path to Perdition
[This interview is the second of two installments. To read the first, click here.] TomDispatch: I’d like to turn to the issue of oil wars, energy wars. That seems to be what holds all this incoherent stuff together – minds focused on a world of energy flows. Recently, I reread [President Jimmy] Carter’s 1979 energy … Continue reading “Drifting Down the
Path to Perdition”
Path to Perdition”
The Delusions of
Global Hegemony
I wait for him on a quiet, tree and wisteria-lined street of red-brick buildings. Students, some in short-sleeves on this still crisp spring morning, stream by. I’m seated on cold, stone steps next to a sign announcing the Boston University Department of International Relations. He turns the corner and advances, wearing a blue blazer, blue … Continue reading “The Delusions of
Global Hegemony”
Global Hegemony”
How the Bush Administration Deconstructed Iraq
After five months of confusion, bickering, dickering, dithering, and strong-arm tactics from Zalmay Khalilzad, our ambassador to Iraq, and various high American officials arriving on the fly, Prime Minister-designate Nouri al-Maliki has reportedly chosen his cabinet, and a government will evidently be established in Baghdad’s Green Zone. At the moment, its reach seems unlikely to … Continue reading “How the Bush Administration Deconstructed Iraq”
Reflecting Hubris
Recently, a number – one billion – in the New York Times stopped me in my tracks. According to a report commissioned by the foundation charged with building Reflecting Absence, the memorial to the dead in the attack on the World Trade Center, its projected cost is now estimated at about a billion dollars and … Continue reading “Reflecting Hubris”
Fantasies of American Preponderance
“We must perhaps reluctantly accept that we have to help this region become a normal region, the way we helped Europe and Asia in another era. Now it’s this area from Pakistan to Morocco that we should focus on. … The world has gotten smaller and is getting smaller and smaller all the time. … … Continue reading “Fantasies of American Preponderance”
Exporting the American Model
After those weapons of mass destruction never appeared and Saddam’s al-Qaeda connection proved but a figment of the overly vivid neocon (and vice-presidential) imagination, the Bush administration wheeled out the shiniest of American exports, democracy. It had worked for Ronald Reagan in Central America in the 1980s, why not in Iraq, too? Suddenly, actual democratic … Continue reading “Exporting the American Model”
‘I’m Already Against
the Next War’
It’s the perfect day for a march. Sunny, crisp, clear, spring-like. The sort of day that just gives you hope for no reason at all, though my own hopes are not high for New York’s latest antiwar demonstration. I haven’t received a single e-mail about it. Many people I know hadn’t realized it was happening. … Continue reading “‘I’m Already Against
the Next War’”
the Next War’”
A Wake-Up Call
for the President
Just a week back, I suggested that there was no reason to believe the president’s approval ratings had bottomed out. In fact, I wrote, “There is no reason to believe that a polling bottom exists for this president, not even perhaps the Nixonian Age of Watergate nadir in the lower 20 percent range.” Now, the … Continue reading “A Wake-Up Call
for the President”
for the President”
Greeting Hu With
a 21-Gun ‘Salute’
On Tuesday April 18, Chinese President Hu Jintao landed in the United States and, after a tour of a Boeing plant, made his official way, with all due pomp and ceremony, to the expectable “state banquet” in Washington… no, not at the White House but at the Washington State home of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. … Continue reading “Greeting Hu With
a 21-Gun ‘Salute’”
a 21-Gun ‘Salute’”