"Be assured of one thing: whichever candidate you choose at the polls in November, you aren’t just electing a president of the United States; you are also electing an assassin-in-chief... In previous eras... presidents either stayed above the assassination fray...
The Global War of Error
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Yes, our infrastructure stinks, our schools are failing, this country’s a nightmare of inequality, and there’s a self-promoting madman in the White House, so isn’t it time to take pride in the rare institutional...
America’s Plans To ‘Win’ the Afghan War
Next August 5th and 7th will be the 75th anniversaries of the devastating U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To this day, they remain the only wartime uses of nuclear weapons. Given the giant arsenals developed by the superpowers of the Cold War era...
How War Targets the Young
Originally posted at TomDispatch. America’s forever wars and their fallout over these last 18 years have been hell for kids. Just ask Ismail or any of the other 56 wounded children who survived an August 2018 attack on their school bus in northern Yemen by Saudi...
Remembering America’s First (and Longest) Forgotten War on Tribal Islamists
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Retired U.S. Army Major Danny Sjursen offers a year-ending look at what “forever war” really means in the American experience. To do so, he turns not to the wars in which he personally took part in Afghanistan and Iraq,...
Lessons From Battling the Pentagon for Four Decades
The other day, after a three-year legal struggle, the Washington Post broke a story about a secret Afghan War project of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Its focus was hundreds of interviews with American figures – from top...
Moral Injury and America’s Endless Conflicts
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Many men do monstrous things. And some men are very nearly monsters, capable of killing without compunction or remorse. In the everyday civilian world, we generally seek to lock them up. In war, they have a chance to fully flower. And...
What My Personal War Costs Me
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Think of it as a small miracle of sorts. This country has now been at war continuously for 18 years, ever since President George W. Bush and his top officials announced a "Global War on Terror" within days of the 9/11...
America’s Arms Sales Addiction
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Honestly, if a single corporate entity controlled three-quarters of the global market in a product, you’d call it a monopoly, right? Well, in 2011, that was the situation of the United States when it came to the arms trade. This...
How To Make American Foreign Policy Yours
Originally posted at TomDispatch. In case you hadn’t noticed (and not to notice you’d have to be blind), we’re not exactly alone in this country anymore. We were true pioneers in what might be considered a great American tradition of interfering in...