Call it a summer whim or something about this grim moment of ours, but I had an urge to post at TomDispatch my very first piece of published writing. It appeared 48 years ago in what was, at the time, one of the more obscure journals on the face of the Earth, one I...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Imagine this for a moment: the bipartisan debt and budget bill just passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate will soon become the law of the land. In the next two years, that means, American taxpayers will spend a...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Recently, at a confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Mark Esper, President Trump’s nominee to be the new secretary of defense, faced questioning on all sorts of subjects, including on his past position...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Congratulations to us! Talk about the art of the deal! Whether we know it or not, in the wake of those presidential Fourth of July festivities on the Washington Mall (“the biggest ever fireworks”), we’re all Saudis...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. What more did you need to know once Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted that a suicide bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, claimed by the Taliban, was Iranian-inspired or plotted, one “in a series of attacks instigated by the...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. It’s no small thing to lodge a word or phrase of your own in our language. So give Dwight D. Eisenhower credit. In his presidential farewell address to the American people in 1961, the former five-star general of World War II...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Headlined “U.S. Seeks Other Ways to Stop Iran Shy of War,” the article was tucked away on page A9 of a recent New York Times. Still, it caught my attention. Here's the first paragraph: “American intelligence and...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Of all the things I don’t remember anymore, here’s one I do. As a boy, I dreamt about being a foreign correspondent, a war reporter in particular – and I think that Bob Shaplen must have been the reason why. He was a...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Yes, they’re now known as the “greatest generation,” while the generation that followed them is sometimes referred to as the “silent” one. In my own limited experience, however, those World War II vets,...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. How about a little round of Auld Lang Syne? After all, when it comes to war crimes, whatever he ends up doing, Donald Trump will still be a johnny-come-lately. Remember, for instance, that top officials in the administration of George...
