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.

How To Ensure a Thriving Caliphate

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Think of the new “caliphate” of the Islamic State, formerly the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s gift to the world (with a helping hand from the Saudis and other financiers of extremism in the Persian Gulf). How strange that they get so … Continue reading “How To Ensure a Thriving Caliphate”

The American Cult of Bombing

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Bombing Iraq, as retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and TomDispatch regular William Astore indicates today, has become an American pastime. (These days, you can’t be president without sending in the bombers and drones.) So let’s try to get our heads around the latest U.S. air strikes in northern Iraq against the … Continue reading “The American Cult of Bombing”

One Nation Under SWAT

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Think of it as a different kind of blowback. Even when you fight wars in countries thousands of miles distant, they still have an eerie way of making the long trip home. Take the latest news from Bergen County, New Jersey, one of the richest counties in the country. Its sheriff’s … Continue reading “One Nation Under SWAT”

Going Wild in the Gaza War

Originally posted at TomDispatch. The carnage in the Gaza Strip has been horrendous: more than 1,900 dead, mainly civilians; its sole power plant destroyed (and so electricity and water denied and a sewage disaster looming); 30,000 to 40,000 homes and buildings damaged or destroyed; hundreds of thousands of residents put to flight with nowhere to … Continue reading “Going Wild in the Gaza War”

The Collapse of America’s Great African Experiment

Originally posted at TomDispatch. On return from his recent reporting trip to Africa, Nick Turse told me the following tale, which catches something of the nature of our battered world. At a hotel bar in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, he attended an informal briefing with a representative of a major nongovernmental organization (NGO). … Continue reading “The Collapse of America’s Great African Experiment”

The Rise to Power of the National Security State

Originally posted at TomDispatch. As every schoolchild knows, there are three check-and-balance branches of the U.S. government: the executive, Congress, and the judiciary. That’s bedrock Americanism and the most basic high school civics material. Only one problem: it’s just not so. During the Cold War years and far more strikingly in the twenty-first century, the … Continue reading “The Rise to Power of the National Security State”

An East-West Showdown in the Heart of Africa?

Originally posted at TomDispatch. For the last two years, TomDispatch Managing Editor Nick Turse has been following the Pentagon and the latest U.S. global command, AFRICOM, as they oversaw the expanding operations of the American military across that continent: drones, a special ops surge, interventions, training missions, bases (even if not called bases), proxy wars. … Continue reading “An East-West Showdown in the Heart of Africa?”

Undue Process in Washington

Originally posted at TomDispatch. What a world we’re in. Thanks to smartphones, iPads, and the like, everyone is now a photographer, but it turns out that, in the public landscape, there’s ever less to photograph. So here are a few tips for living more comfortably in a photographically redacted version of our post-9/11 world. Even … Continue reading “Undue Process in Washington”

How America’s Policies Sealed Iraq’s Fate

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Who even knows what to call it? The Iraq War or the Iraq-Syrian War would be far too orderly for what’s happening, so it remains a no-name conflict that couldn’t be deadlier or more destabilizing – and it’s in the process of internationalizing in unsettling ways. Think of it as the … Continue reading “How America’s Policies Sealed Iraq’s Fate”