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.

The Iraq Election: Another Dead End?

In the United States, the long-awaited Jan. 30 Iraqi election, assessed below by Dilip Hiro, might be labeled the “until” election or, more recently, the “in-the-days-before” election. Since “sovereignty” was turned over to the interim Iraqi government last June (a previous “until” event), American officials have been predicting – and American press and TV reports … Continue reading “The Iraq Election: Another Dead End?”

Extra! Extra! Read Nil About It!

“‘It’s a finesse to give power to Rumsfeld – giving him the right to act swiftly, decisively, and lethally,’ the first Pentagon adviser told me. ‘It’s a global free-fire zone.’” (Seymour Hersh, "The Coming Wars," the New Yorker magazine) George Bush’s all-foreign-policy inaugural address offered a globe-enveloping neocon version of a Pax Americana world. Analyses … Continue reading “Extra! Extra! Read Nil About It!”

What Is Wrong With Torture

Recently, I wrote once again about the spread of torture as a way of life in the Bush administration’s offshore imperium. I offered my version of a national “self-portrait” for the New Year (“American Gothic”) and considered the latest torture news, now practically pouring through leaks in the Washington and Pentagon bureaucracy. While I was … Continue reading “What Is Wrong With Torture”

Does the Future Stand a Chance?

Here’s a strange, small tale of our times, as reported from Washington by Guy Dinmore in the sober British Financial Times. According to an anonymous counterinsurgency expert Dinmore evidently interviewed, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has a “brutally accurate” picture of the deteriorating situation in Iraq and “its potential dangers.” But, writes Dinmore, “a member … Continue reading “Does the Future Stand a Chance?”

Desolate Fallujah: City Without a Future?

The other day I posted a Dahr Jamail piece entitled, Iraq: The Devastation, but another word has recently come to mind that, I suspect, might apply no less aptly to Iraq and other areas where the Bush administration is exerting its muscle. That word is “desolation.” Let’s forget for a minute the recent Newsweek report … Continue reading “Desolate Fallujah: City Without a Future?”

American Gothic: Self-Portrait With Shackles

Here we are, because time has some of the qualities of a tsunami, deposited in 2005, whether we like it or not. As the year changed, nature trumped the Bush administration in an appropriately, if horrifyingly Biblical, way, with a preemptive strike against shorelines jammed with rich tourists and poor peasants alike. And even in … Continue reading “American Gothic: Self-Portrait With Shackles”

In the Zone With GI Joe

You come out of the subway at Times Square across the street from the Gap and catty-corner to ESPN Zone, walk past the Drug Enforcement Agency’s temporary museum (“Freedom is … Drug Free!”) with its “Target America: Drug Traffickers, Terrorists, and You” show, stroll past the New York Police Department’s office, its name outlined in … Continue reading “In the Zone With GI Joe”