The Face of War (Don’t Look!)
You'd think that people always seeking “lessons” from war would draw one from our latest wonder weapon, which fights our wars for us without an American in sight. I'm talking, of course, about the drone aircraft that have, in recent years, become a signature form of...
Big Men, Big Money, Big Voting Scam
Handicapping the Global Midterms
You can't turn on the TV news or pick up a paper these days without stumbling across the latest political poll and the pros explaining how to parse it, or some set of commentators, pundits, and reporters placing their bets on the midterm elections. The media, of...
How Permanent Are America’s Afghan Bases?
American Warscapes
The other day, at the invitation of economics professor Marty Melkonian, I took a rare jaunt out of my hometown to Hofstra University on Long Island and gave a talk in that college's lecture series, The International Scene, to a group of lively young students. It was...
Publish or Perish
Pipelineistan’s New Silk Road
Back before e-mail, a world traveler who wanted to keep in touch and couldn't just pop into the nearest Internet café might drop you a series of postcards from one exotic locale after another. Pepe Escobar, that edgy, peripatetic globe-trotting reporter...
The Long War: Year Ten
Surveillance, America’s Pastime
The dried blood on the concrete floor is there for all to see, a stain forever marking the spot on a Memphis motel balcony where Martin Luther King Jr. lay mortally wounded by a sniper's bullet. It is a stark and ghostly image speaking to the sharp pain of absence....
