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.

Expelled for Life

Originally posted at TomDispatch. There’s an ugliness to war beyond the ugly things war does. There are scars beyond the rough, imperfectly mended flesh of the gunshot wound, beyond the flashback, the startle reflex, the nightmare. War finds peculiar and heinous ways to distort lives, and when children are involved, it can mean a lifetime … Continue reading “Expelled for Life”

Washington’s Great Game and Why It’s Failing

It might have been the most influential single sentence of that era: “In these circumstances it is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.” And it originated in an 8,000 word telegram – … Continue reading “Washington’s Great Game and Why It’s Failing”

The Child Veterans of South Sudan

Originally posted at TomDispatch. It’s been an incredibly quiet show. In recent years, the U.S. military has moved onto the African continent in a big way – and essentially, with the exception of Nick Turse (and Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post), just about no one has noticed. In a sense, it’s a reporter’s dream … Continue reading “The Child Veterans of South Sudan”

The Unknown Whistleblower

Rambo! In my Reagan-era youth, the name was synonymous with the Vietnam War – at least the Vietnam War reimagined, the celluloid fantasy version of it in which a tanned, glistening, muscle-bound commando busted the handcuffs of defeat and redeemed America’s honor in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Untold millions including the Gipper himself, an … Continue reading “The Unknown Whistleblower”

Superpower in Distress

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Think of this as a little imperial folly update – and here’s the backstory. In the years after invading Iraq and disbanding Saddam Hussein’s military, the U.S. sunk about $25 billion into “standing up” a new Iraqi army. By June 2014, however, that army, filled with at least 50,000 “ghost soldiers,” … Continue reading “Superpower in Distress”

One Boy, One Rifle, and One Morning in Malakal

President Obama couldn’t have been more eloquent. Addressing the Clinton Global Initiative, for instance, he said: “When a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed – that’s slavery.” Denouncing Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, and offering aid to Uganda and its neighbors in tracking Kony … Continue reading “One Boy, One Rifle, and One Morning in Malakal”

America’s Mutant Military

Originally posted at TomDispatch. In September 2001, the Bush administration launched its “global war on terror,” to which its supporters later tried to attach names like “the long war” or “World War IV.” Their emphasis: that we were now engaged in nothing less than a multi-generational struggle without end. (World War III had theoretically been … Continue reading “America’s Mutant Military”

Citizen’s Revolt in Afghanistan

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Soon after 9/11, Ann Jones went to Afghanistan to help in whatever way she could, “embedding” with civilians who had been battered by the rigors of that war-torn land. Out of that experience, especially dealing with the crises of women, she wrote a powerful and moving book, Kabul in Winter. In … Continue reading “Citizen’s Revolt in Afghanistan”

The New Age of Counterinsurgency Policing

Originally posted at TomDispatch. In the part of Baltimore hardest hit by the recent riots and arson, more than a third of families live in poverty, median income is $24,000, the unemployment rate is over 50%, some areas burnt out in the riots of 1968 have never been rebuilt, incarceration rates are sky high, 33% … Continue reading “The New Age of Counterinsurgency Policing”

Counting Bodies, Then and Now

In the twenty-first-century world of drone warfare, one question with two aspects reigns supreme: Who counts? In Washington, the answers are the same: We don’t count and they don’t count. The Obama administration has adamantly refused to count. Not a body. In fact, for a long time, American officials associated with Washington’s drone assassination campaigns … Continue reading “Counting Bodies, Then and Now”