Originally posted at TomDispatch. In March 2007, Karen Greenberg reported on a visit she had made to the war-on-terror prison camp at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and what it felt like to be distinctly offshore of American justice. She began that piece...
What an American Addiction to War Means to Veterans
Originally posted at TomDispatch. I felt it then. I feel far more certain of it now. My dad, who died in 1983, was a member of what came to be known as the Greatest Generation, those who served in World War II. In fact, he volunteered the day after Pearl Harbor...
My War Never Ends
Originally posted at TomDispatch. War is, to say the least, nothing new. In his memorable first book, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges began with a possible quote from Plato (“Only the dead have seen the end of war”). And it’s sadly...
What US Africa Command Doesn’t Want You To Know
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Today’s Nick Turse piece on U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) plunged me into an all-American past that, in light of this planet’s chaotic present, had faded from my mind a bit. After all, TomDispatch began more than 20 years...
The World’s Other Nuclear Flashpoint
Originally posted at TomDispatch. I hope you were suitably cheered up when, on a recent trip to Asia, Vice President Kamala Harris assured American troops in Japan that, in response to China’s “disturbing behavior” in the East China and South China Seas and its...
Something Is Rotten in the US Military
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Here’s the curious thing: since at least the Vietnam War era of the 1960s and early 1970s, the United States has been almost continuously at war. Certain of those conflicts like the Vietnam War itself and those in Iraq and...
Call It the National (In)security Budget
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Yes, Afghanistan went down the drain and Washington’s global war on terror ended (more or less) in disaster 20 years after it began. But the urge to militarize the planet? Not a chance in an American world where, as TomDispatch...
Playing With Fire in Ukraine
Originally posted at TomDispatch. As Alfred McCoy suggests today, we’re now in the latest version of a “cold war” when it comes to Russia and China. Let’s take a minute, though, to think about that grim term, which, until relatively recently,...
A Graduation Speech to Air Force Cadets
Originally posted at TomDispatch. It’s that moment again. Graduation time in high schools and colleges across the country. Because I’ve always thought that graduation speeches had a certain je ne sais quoi, I’ve given a number of them at TomDispatch...
Arsenal of Autocracy?
Originally posted at TomDispatch. There really isn’t a word for it. Bonanza hardly does the trick. Stroke of luck? Not appropriate, given the subject. Hit the jackpot? Well, it wouldn’t be inaccurate, that’s for sure. Not in recent memory has there...