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.

Out of the Superpower Orbit

Of the two superpowers that faced each other down in an almost half-century-long Cold War, one – the United States – emerged victorious, alone in the world, economically powerful, militarily dominant; the other, never the stronger of the two, limped off, its empire shattered and scattered, its people impoverished and desperate, its military a shell … Continue reading “Out of the Superpower Orbit”

Letting in the Draft?

An overstretched military? You bet. Things going terribly in Iraq? No kidding. Why only yesterday, Jill Carroll and Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor reminded us that, with 140,000 troops (and untold numbers of mercenaries) in Iraq, the Americans can’t defend a crucial six-mile stretch of highway between the two lodestars of the American … Continue reading “Letting in the Draft?”

Iraq ‘Uptick,’ Superpower Downtick?

Quote of the Month (November 1967) “In November, as their plans gelled, General Westmoreland embarked on a whirlwind tour of the U.S. to testify before Congress and drum up support for the Johnson Administration. ‘With 1968,’ he said, speaking before the National Press Club in Washington, ‘a new phase is starting .. we have reached … Continue reading “Iraq ‘Uptick,’ Superpower Downtick?”

New Boys in Town: The Neocon Revolution and American Militarism

On Wednesday, I posted The Normalization of War, the first of two excerpts from a remarkable new book – Andrew J. Bacevich’s The New American Militarism, How Americans Are Seduced by War. In the second excerpt, Bacevich takes up the subject of neoconservatism, which he terms “a singularly inapt label that suggests an ideological rigor … Continue reading “New Boys in Town: The Neocon Revolution and American Militarism”

Oil and the Coming War With Iran

While our media is filled with stories on the Bush administration and Iran, they almost invariably focus on the Iranian nuclear program (or European negotiations and U.S. non-negotiations about the same). You could read our press for weeks at a time – if you didn’t stray onto the business pages – and not be aware … Continue reading “Oil and the Coming War With Iran”

Faking Civil Society

In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the USA PATRIOT Act, the following exchange took place between former White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, now attorney general, and Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.): "GONZALES: Mr. Chairman, let me, kind of, reassure the committee and the American people that the department has no interest in rummaging through the … Continue reading “Faking Civil Society”

Drugs, Bases, and Jails: The Afghan Spring

If Iraq has been the disaster zone of Bush foreign policy, Afghanistan is still generally thought of as its success story – to the extent that anyone in our part of the world thinks about that country at all any more. Before the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan experienced a relative flood of American attention. It … Continue reading “Drugs, Bases, and Jails: The Afghan Spring”