Maha Hilal

Originally appeared at TomDispatch. “To this day I feel humiliation for what was done to me… The time I spent in Abu Ghraib – it ended my life. I’m only half a human now.” That’s what Abu Ghraib survivor Talib al-Majli had to say about the 16 months he spent at that notorious prison in … Continue reading “Torture, Abu Ghraib, and the Legacy of the US War on Iraq”

I was uptown in New York City on September 11, 2001, but I still remember the distant smoke that you could see over the Hudson River. If you had told me then that, thanks to those four hijacked planes and a tiny group of al-Qaeda operatives, my country would launch a 20-plus-year “Global War on … Continue reading “Israel, the United States, and the Rhetoric of the War on Terror”

In a June 2012 piece headlined “Praying at the Church of St. Drone,” I wrote, “Be assured of one thing: whichever candidate you choose at the polls in November, you aren’t just electing a president of the United States; you are also electing an assassin-in-chief.” At that time, President Barack Obama was overseeing what came … Continue reading “22 Years of Drone Warfare and No End in Sight”

Barely a month after President Donald Trump announced plans to deepen and extend the now 16-year-old U.S. war in Afghanistan, reports surfaced of plans to expand another signature Obama-era policy: the drone war. Specifically, The New York Times reported in late September that the administration is relaxing Obama-era restrictions on who can be targeted and … Continue reading “Trump Plans to Make It Easier to Kill Civilians with Drones. Sadly, We Can Thank Obama for That.”