Originally published at TomDispatch. It was truly another world. I’m thinking of my childhood years when to “duck and cover” under our school desks, imagining that those modest structures might somehow protect us from an atomic blast, was a normal part of life. And...
Originally appeared at TomDispatch. I was born on July 20, 1944, barely a year before the world (potentially) ended. On August 6 and 9, 1945, the U.S., which had already been torching Japanese cities from the air, dropped the first atomic bombs on the cities of...
Reprinted from TomDispatch. It’s one of the stranger phenomena on this planet. By 2023, the U.S. was estimated to spend more money on its “defense budget” than the next 10 countries combined. Yes, the next 10! And yet, whether you’re talking about Korea and Vietnam in...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. So that classic late 1960s song claimed. Still, for Bill Astore and me (and, I have little doubt, Joe Biden, too), such a thought didn’t cross our minds as we played with toy soldiers on...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. Martin Luther King, Jr., hero for peace. It’s sad that the word “hero” is so often modified by or married to “war” in history. He’s a war hero, we say, without giving it too much thought. As if wars are...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. What will historians say decades or centuries from now when the U.S. empire collapses into ruin? How will they explain it? Consider the United States in the big picture. I see a country with unique strengths....
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,...
