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.

What If They Gave a War and Everyone Came?

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Sometimes I imagine the last 14 years of American war policy in the Greater Middle East as a set of dismal Mad Libs. An example might be: The United States has spent [your choice of multiple billions of dollars] building up [fill in name of Greater Middle Eastern country]’s army and … Continue reading “What If They Gave a War and Everyone Came?”

How the US Created Middle East Mayhem

Originally posted at TomDispatch. To this day, it remains difficult to take in the degree to which the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq destabilized the Greater Middle East from the Chinese border to Libya. Certainly, as the recent Republican and Democratic presidential debates suggest, Americans have some sense of what a disaster it was … Continue reading “How the US Created Middle East Mayhem”

Dealing With the Syrian Quagmire

Whatever happened to the “imperial presidency”? In mid-September, in the midst of the serial collapse of a $500-million Pentagon program to train “moderate” Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State (ISIS), President Obama suddenly claimed, through White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, that it wasn’t really either his program or his fault. He was only … Continue reading “Dealing With the Syrian Quagmire”

The Fog of Intelligence

Originally posted at TomDispatch. 1,500. That figure stunned me. I found it in the 12th paragraph of a front-page New York Times story about “senior commanders” at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) playing fast and loose with intelligence reports to give their air war against ISIS an unjustified sheen of success: “CENTCOM’s mammoth intelligence operation, with … Continue reading “The Fog of Intelligence”

The Superpower as Victim

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Three Exceptional Facts About America It’s Safe to Be Paranoid in the US Given the cluttered landscape of the last 14 years, can you even faintly remember the moment when the Berlin Wall came down, the Cold War ended in a stunned silence of shock and triumph in Washington, Eastern Europe … Continue reading “The Superpower as Victim”

A Secret War in 135 Countries

Originally posted at TomDispatch. It was an impressive effort: a front-page New York Times story about a “new way of war” with the bylines of six reporters, and two more and a team of researchers cited at the end of the piece. “They have plotted deadly missions from secret bases in the badlands of Somalia. … Continue reading “A Secret War in 135 Countries”

Privatizing the Apocalypse

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Imagine for a moment a genuine absurdity: somewhere in the United States, the highly profitable operations of a set of corporations were based on the possibility that sooner or later your neighborhood would be destroyed and you and all your neighbors annihilated. And not just you and your neighbors, but others … Continue reading “Privatizing the Apocalypse”

Flying the Unfriendly Skies of America

Rebecca Gordon’s piece today triggered a little repressed memory of mine of a trip I took in 2003. Arriving at the airport, I turned my suitcase over to the ticket agent, only to be told that it had been singled out for special inspection. I was already running TomDispatch and I couldn’t help wondering, somewhat … Continue reading “Flying the Unfriendly Skies of America”

Maintaining American Supremacy in the Twenty-First Century

Originally posted at TomDispatch. It could be a joke of the “a penguin, a rabbi, and a priest walked into a bar” variety, but this one would start, “five Chinese naval vessels operating in the Bering Sea sailed into U.S. territorial waters, coming within 12 miles of the U.S. coast…” And the punch line would … Continue reading “Maintaining American Supremacy in the Twenty-First Century”