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.

Are the US and Israel Heading for a Showdown?

Here’s the question no one is asking as 2012 ends, especially given the effusive public support the Obama administration offered Israel in its recent conflict with Hamas in Gaza: Will 2013 be a year of confrontation between Washington and Jerusalem?  It’s on no one’s agenda for the New Year. But it could happen anyway. It’s … Continue reading “Are the US and Israel Heading for a Showdown?”

Torture Superpower

On New Year’s Eve 2003, Khaled el-Masri, an unemployed car salesman from Germany on vacation in Macedonia, was removed from a bus and kidnapped by the CIA due to a confusion of names. His evidently bore some similarity to an al-Qaeda suspect the Agency wanted to get its hands on. Five months later, after spending … Continue reading “Torture Superpower”

The Visible Government

Weren’t those the greatest of days if you were in the American spy game? Governments went down in Guatemala and Iran thanks to you. In distant Indonesia, Laos, and Vietnam, what a role you played! And even that botch-up of an invasion in Cuba was nothing to sneeze at. In those days, unfortunately, you — … Continue reading “The Visible Government”

The True Costs of Empire

Mars? Venus? Earth-like bodies elsewhere in the galaxy? Who knows? But here, at least, no great power, no superpower, no hyperpower, not the Romans, nor imperial China, nor the British, nor the Soviet Union has ever garrisoned the globe quite the way we have: Asia to Latin America, Europe to the Greater Middle East, and … Continue reading “The True Costs of Empire”

Washington’s Iranian Future

Imagine, for a moment, a world in which the United States is a regional power, not a superpower.  A world in which the globe’s mightiest nation, China, invades Mexico and Canada, deposing the leaders of both countries.  A world in which China has also ringed the Americas, from Canada to Central America, with military bases.  … Continue reading “Washington’s Iranian Future”

The Barack Obama Story (Updated)

President Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear President Obama, Nothing you don’t know, but let me just say it: the world’s a weird place. In my younger years, I might have said “crazy,” but that was back when I thought being crazy was a cool thing and only … Continue reading “The Barack Obama Story (Updated)”

Generals Behaving Badly

He was “an ascetic who… usually eats just one meal a day, in the evening, to avoid sluggishness. He is known for operating on a few hours’ sleep and for running to and from work while listening to audio books on an iPod… [He has] an encyclopedic, even obsessive, knowledge about the lives of terrorists… … Continue reading “Generals Behaving Badly”

Is Gaza Outside Israel?

On returning from his first trip to the Gaza Strip, Noam Chomsky told Democracy Now‘s Amy Goodman, “It’s kind of amazing and inspiring to see people somehow managing to survive as caged animals subject to constant, random, sadistic punishment only to humiliate them, no pretext. Israel and the United States keep them alive basically. They … Continue reading “Is Gaza Outside Israel?”

The Fall of the American Empire (Writ Small)

History, it is said, arrives first as tragedy, then as farce. First as Karl Marx, then as the Marx Brothers. In the case of twenty-first century America, history arrived first as George W. Bush (and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith and the Project for a New America — a … Continue reading “The Fall of the American Empire (Writ Small)”

America’s Profligate Nation-Building Abroad Continues

Part of a slogan from my hometown past sticks in my mind.  “Build we must,” it went.  Such an American phrase, really.  Evidence of a can-do spirit from another country in another age.  Now, in can’t-do America with its disintegrating infrastructure, “build we mustn’t” seems more in the spirit of the times — with one … Continue reading “America’s Profligate Nation-Building Abroad Continues”