Jon Basil Utley

Jon Basil Utley is associate publisher of The American Conservative. He was a foreign correspondent in South America for the Journal of Commerce and Knight Ridder newspapers and former associate editor of The Times of the Americas. He is a writer and adviser for Antiwar.com and edits a blog, The Military Industrial Congressional Complex.

Too Many Dots, Too Many Enemies

As intelligence agencies rush to connect more dots on a page so crowded with dots that they already almost touch, Americans need to focus on the real problem, our foreign policies. We have made ourselves the enemy of over a billion people, nearly a quarter of the world’s population. Aside from President Obama’s Bush-sounding, bombastic … Continue reading “Too Many Dots, Too Many Enemies”

How Bin Laden Bankrupted America

For a man who spent years living in caves, Osama bin Laden sure knows his Sun Tzu and the basics of jujitsu. Sun Tzu’s famous dictum was “know yourself” and “know your enemy.” Jujitsu is based upon using your enemy’s strength against him, e.g., like Jack in “Jack and the Beanstalk,” who used the giant’s … Continue reading “How Bin Laden Bankrupted America”

The Cost of Boots on the Ground in Iraq

It takes half a million dollars per year to maintain each sergeant in combat in Iraq. Thanks to a Senate committee inquiry, an authoritative government study finally details the costs of keeping boots on the ground. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), in its report Contractors’ Support of U.S. Operations in Iraq, compared the costs of … Continue reading “The Cost of Boots on the Ground in Iraq”

It’s Not Only the Israel Lobby

The new, public debate about the Israel lobby is missing a major point – the lobby’s allies, the many other interests in America that want chaos in the Middle East. For example, in the Walt-Mearsheimer book there is no listing in the index for “military-industrial complex.” For all its vaunted power, the Israel lobby could … Continue reading “It’s Not Only the Israel Lobby”

America’s Armageddonites

Utopian fantasies have long transfixed the human race. Yet today a much rarer fantasy has become popular in the United States. Millions of Americans, the richest people in history, have a death wish. They are the new “Armageddonites,” fundamentalist evangelicals who have moved from forecasting Armageddon to actually trying to bring it about. Most journalists … Continue reading “America’s Armageddonites”

Left-Right Alliance Against War?

Americans opposed to war are a distinct minority. If the Iraq War were going well, most Americans would support it. Yet the Iraq venture has been such a disaster for America that peace groups have a chance to expose the pro-war interests in the nation and advance an alternative foreign policy based on law and … Continue reading “Left-Right Alliance Against War?”

After Libby, All Roads
Lead to Feith

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was just a liar and a hatchet man for Vice President Cheney in the White House. Douglas Feith was inside the Pentagon. Lying to cover up the reason for the war is one thing; responsibility for the disastrous occupation policies is another. In 2003 Antiwar.com published “All Roads Lead to Feith” … Continue reading “After Libby, All Roads
Lead to Feith”