Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. There’s a man who famously crowned himself emperor rather than submit to the otherworldly power of a pope. A new movie will soon be out on his “glories.” Napoleon Bonaparte, a military genius, embraced war and...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, America heard something about “peace dividends” and “a new world order.” With the Soviet Union gone, the Cold War over, America could take all the hundreds of billions it...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. I read Saturday that Israel had already dropped 6000 bombs on Gaza in six days. Here’s the report from the Wall Street Journal: The Israeli Air Force said it has dropped about 6,000 bombs targeted at Hamas in...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. The ancients were wise to make war a god. Violent, unpredictable, destructive, seductive, brutal, and capricious. And of course very, very powerful in its hold on the human mind. I trained as a historian,...
In September 2007, retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and historian William Astore emailed me out of the blue. He’d been reading TomDispatch articles on this country’s Global War on Terror, especially the invasion of, and never-ending conflict in, Iraq. And as a...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. “Integrity First” is the fundamental core value of the U.S. Air Force. Two other core values speak to “service before self” and “excellence in all we do.” But integrity remains the wellspring, and it’s 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...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. In the “liberal” New York Times today, I saw an article on “Putin’s forever war” that has the following short synopsis: “Vladimir Putin wants to lead Russians into a civilizational conflict with the West far...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author's permission. It can’t be coincidence. In the past few days, I’ve seen articles at mainstream media outlets like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal that the much-hyped and much-delayed Ukrainian “spring”...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author's permission. News that the Biden administration is sending cluster munitions to Ukraine highlights the dangerous escalatory nature of wars. These are special bombs and artillery shells with hundreds of “bomblets” that...
