Originally posted at TomDispatch. A new war, a new alibi. When we think about our latest war – the one that began with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, just six months after our Afghan War ended so catastrophically – there is a hidden benefit. As long as American...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. I only hope I’ll be around in 2123 for Henry Kissinger’s 200th birthday celebration. (I’d be a mere 179 then.) Still, at least I made it to his 100th. Imagine, in fact, that when I was in my twenties and in the streets protesting the...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. I can still remember my parents singing a somewhat cleaned-up version of the World War I-era song “You’re in the Army Now.” (“You’re in the Army now, You’re not behind a plow; You’ll never get rich, you son of a bitch, You’re in the...
For more than 18 years, Karen Greenberg has been writing about the crimes the U.S. committed at its offshore prison of injustice at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It would be, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld assured Americans, “the least worst place” (a phrase Greenberg...
Yes, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, would kill staggering numbers of people and be an eerily (if all too grimly) appropriate ending to the war that started with the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7,...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. In 1963, the summer I turned 11, my mother had a gig evaluating Peace Corps programs in Egypt and Ethiopia. My younger brother and I spent most of that summer in France. We were first in Paris with my mother before she left for North...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. I give myself credit for being significantly ahead of my time. I first came across artificial intelligence (AI) in 1968 when I was just 24 years old and, from the beginning, I sensed its deep dangers. Imagine that. Much as I’d...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. All around us things are falling apart. Collectively, Americans are experiencing national and imperial decline. Can America save itself? Is this country, as presently constituted, even worth saving? For me, that last question is...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Allow me to come clean: I worry every time Max Boot vents enthusiastically about a prospective military action. Whenever that Washington Post columnist professes optimism about some upcoming bloodletting, misfortune tends to follow....
Originally posted at TomDispatch. In the Blindman’s Buff variation of tag, a child designated as “It” is tasked with tapping another child while wearing a blindfold. The sightless child knows the other children, all able to see, are there but is left to stumble...
