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 Human Price of Trump’s Wars

Originally posted at TomDispatch. “The wandering scribe of war crimes” is how TomDispatch regular Ann Jones once described me. Indeed, for more than a decade, across three continents, I’ve been intermittently interviewing witnesses and victims, perpetrators and survivors of almost unspeakable atrocities. I can’t count the number of massacre survivors and rape victims and tortured … Continue reading “The Human Price of Trump’s Wars”

Trumping Democracy in America’s Empire of Bases

Originally posted at TomDispatch. War, American-style, in the twenty-first century hasn’t exactly been a sterling success story. (How did the Brits ever manage to run that empire of theirs for so many years with such modest numbers of troops?) Take Afghanistan, for example. We now know something of Washington’s latest plans for pursuing the war … Continue reading “Trumping Democracy in America’s Empire of Bases”

The Globalization of Misery

The closest I ever got to Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, was 1,720.7 miles away – or so the Internet assures me.  Although I’ve had a lifelong interest in history, I know next to nothing about Mosul’s, nor do I have more than a glancing sense of what it looks like, or more accurately what … Continue reading “The Globalization of Misery”

The Hazards of Military Worship

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Here’s a footnote to America’s present wars that’s worth pondering for a few moments. The U.S. Air Force is running out of ordinary bombs, smart bombs, and in some cases missiles. No kidding. The air war over Syria and Iraq that began in August 2014 and is now two-and-a-half years old … Continue reading “The Hazards of Military Worship”

Ignoring the Costs of War

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Wilbur Ross put the matter… well, mouth-wateringly. At a Milken Institute Global Conference in California, the commerce secretary recalled how President Trump was hosting a dinner for China’s president, Xi Jinping, at his Mar-a-Lago club at the moment when a bevy of Tomahawk missiles were being dispatched against an airfield in … Continue reading “Ignoring the Costs of War”

What Obsessing About Trump Causes Us To Miss

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Since the late eighteenth century, the United States has been involved in an almost ceaseless string of wars, interventions, punitive expeditions, and other types of military ventures abroad – from fighting the British and Mexicans to the Filipinos and Koreans to the Vietnamese and Laotians to the Afghans and Iraqis. The … Continue reading “What Obsessing About Trump Causes Us To Miss”

Terror Is in the Eye of the Beholder

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Our lives are, of course, our histories, which makes us all, however inadvertently, historians. Part of my own history, my other life – not the TomDispatch one that’s consumed me for the last 14 years – has been editing books. I have no idea how many books I’ve edited since I … Continue reading “Terror Is in the Eye of the Beholder”

The US Military Moves Deeper Into Africa

Originally posted at TomDispatch. If you’re a reader of TomDispatch, then you know something of real importance about this country that most Americans don’t. As an imperial power, there’s never been anything like the United States when it comes to garrisoning this planet. By comparison, the Romans and imperial Chinese were pikers; the Soviet Union … Continue reading “The US Military Moves Deeper Into Africa”

The Honeymoon of the Generals

Originally posted at TomDispatch. MOAB sounds more like an incestuous, war-torn biblical kingdom than the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, aka "the mother of all bombs." Still, give Donald Trump credit. Only the really, really big bombs, whether North Korean nukes or those 21,600 pounds of MOAB, truly get his attention. He wasn’t even involved … Continue reading “The Honeymoon of the Generals”

From Deterrence to Doomsday?

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Let’s skip the obvious. Leave aside, for instance, the way Donald Trump’s decision to launch 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles against a Syrian air base is but another example of what we already know: that acts of war are now the prerogative, and only the prerogative, of the president (or of military … Continue reading “From Deterrence to Doomsday?”