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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. What a strange world we’re in! Imagine that only recently Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of the remaining 1,000 U.S. military personnel from Syria (launching a bloodbath in Kurdish-controlled areas on its northern border...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. In January 2004, Chalmers Johnson wrote this about what he called America’s “empire of bases” or its “Baseworld”: “As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize – or do not want to...
