Originally posted at TomDispatch. As you read today’s piece by historian and TomDispatch regular Alfred McCoy, author most recently of In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, think of Afghanistan as the gateway drug for three...
War Making in the Age of the Imperial Presidency
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Seventeen days after the Twin Towers fell in an apocalyptic mushroom cloud of smoke and ash, Congress passed with a single dissenting vote an "Authorization for Use of Military Force," or AUMF, stating: "That the...
Doing Bin Laden’s Bidding
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Honestly, if there’s an afterlife, then the soul of Osama bin Laden, whose body was consigned to the waves by the U.S. Navy back in 2011, must be swimming happily with the dolphins and sharks. At the cost of the sort of spare...
A Red Scare in the Gray Zone
Memo to Senator John McCain: Senator, the other day I noticed that, as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, you threatened to subpoena the Trump administration for information about the recent attack in Niger that killed four American soldiers. “There’s a mindset...
Take Your (Tiny) Fingers Off the Button
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Trump's Nuclear Dreams – Nightmares Past and Present Preventing a nuclear war between the United States and North Korea may be the most pressing challenge facing the world right now. Our childish, ignorant, and incompetent president...
Teaching Revisionist History 101 at West Point
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, a former businessman who had helped run companies into the ground, he was widely considered ill-prepared for the presidency, out of his depth, a lightweight in a heavyweight world....
Nixon’s Children
Originally posted at TomDispatch. It took 14 years, but now we have an answer. It was March 2003, the invasion of Iraq was underway, and Major General David Petraeus was in command of the 101st Airborne Division heading for the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. Rick...
Gitmo’s Living Legacy in the Trump Era
Originally posted at TomDispatch Karen Greenberg first arrived at TomDispatch in January 2005 in tandem with defense attorney Joshua Dratel. Their book The Torture Papers was just being published and they were asking questions. Thirty-seven of them, to be exact, all...
Embracing Our Inner Empire
Originally posted at TomDispatch. “Bring the war home”: once, a long, lost time ago – in October 1969, to be exact – that slogan represented a promise made by the most radical wing of the vast movement against the war in Vietnam. Wearing football helmets...
How the Military-Industrial Complex Preys on the Troops
Originally posted at TomDispatch. I’m sure you’ve heard about the $65 million. Or was it $86 million? Or was it even more? You know, the funds the Pentagon sunk into that hotshot plane it was preparing for its Afghan drug interdiction program. You...


