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.

Alaska in the Crosshairs

Originally posted at TomDispatch. In 2003, not long after the American invasion, Dahr Jamail, a youthful freelance journalist from Alaska, headed to Iraq. He wasn’t then a reporter for anyone or, put another way, he was at that moment perhaps the most "unembedded" reporter on the face of the Earth. In the years to come, … Continue reading “Alaska in the Crosshairs”

Believe the Autocrat

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Human whats? In the Middle East and elsewhere, the Trump administration has begun to signal that human rights aren’t exactly on its agenda. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has taken the lead in this process in a round of personal diplomacy in the Middle East (with Trump’s generals not far behind). … Continue reading “Believe the Autocrat”

The Teflon Wars

Originally posted at TomDispatch. On successive days recently, I saw two museum shows that caught something of a lost American world and seemed eerily relevant in the Age of Trump. The first, “Hippie Modernism,” an exploration of the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s (heavy on psychedelic posters), was appropriately enough at the Berkeley Art … Continue reading “The Teflon Wars”

Body Count for the American Century

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Recently, the historian Marilyn Young, an old friend, died. She spent her life writing about America’s wars and a country at war. Her New York Times obituary quoted this telling passage from a speech she gave to the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations: “I find that I have spent … Continue reading “Body Count for the American Century”

Winning World War II in the Twenty-First Century

Originally posted at TomDispatch. U.S. Marines are, for the first time, deploying to Syria (with more to come). There’s talk of an “enduring” U.S. military presence in Iraq, while additional U.S. troops are being dispatched to neighboring Kuwait with an eye to the wars in both Iraq and Syria. Yemen has been battered by a … Continue reading “Winning World War II in the Twenty-First Century”

Winning World War II in the Twenty-First Century

Originally posted at TomDispatch. The other day, I walked across much of Manhattan Island on the street where I grew up. Once upon a time, in a space of just four blocks along that very street there were four movie theaters (no small wonder in the 1950s). Only The Paris Theater, somewhat the worse for … Continue reading “Winning World War II in the Twenty-First Century”

Surging to Failure: An Iraq War Anniversary to Forget

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Every now and then, I think back to the millions of people who turned out in this country and across the globe in early 2003 to protest the coming invasion of Iraq. Until the recent Women’s March against Donald Trump, that may have been the largest set of demonstrations in American … Continue reading “Surging to Failure: An Iraq War Anniversary to Forget”

The President Who Loved Generals

Let’s think about the logic of it all for a moment. The 2016 Pentagon budget came in at just over $600 billion and that royal sum, larger than the combined military investments of the next seven countries, was hardly the full measure of the money U.S. taxpayers spent on what we like to call "national … Continue reading “The President Who Loved Generals”

The Forever Prisoners of Guantanamo

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Here’s a little fact of our age: Rear Admiral Peter Clark is the 16th commander of America’s notorious prison complex at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, opened in January 2002, and it seems he won’t be the last. As the New York Times recently reported, the Trump administration is already readying a draft … Continue reading “The Forever Prisoners of Guantanamo”

In Afghanistan, America’s Biggest Foe Is Self-Deception

Originally posted at TomDispatch. If you had asked Americans about Afghanistan before 1979, it’s a reasonable bet that most of us wouldn’t have known much about that country or even been able to locate it on a map. Perhaps only to the “freaks” of that era, in search of a superb hashish high, would its … Continue reading “In Afghanistan, America’s Biggest Foe Is Self-Deception”