So are things getting better – or are they getting worse? Every once in a while it's necessary to step back and ask ourselves this question. otherwise, we have no clue as to what effect our efforts are having on the public policy debate – and no sense of where we are....

Originally posted at TomDispatch. It was the end of the road for Chuck Hagel last week and the Washington press corps couldn’t have been more enthusiastic about writing his obituary. In terms of pure coverage, it may not have been Ferguson or the seven-foot...

At least 139 people were killed across Iraq. Bombers struck in the Baghdad area and in Kirkuk, which suffered its first major bombing in several months. Another 116 people were wounded.

For that first week or so after the August 9 shooting of Michael Brown, it seemed like there was momentum towards police reform. During the long months between the shooting and the grand jury’s lack of indictment of Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, though,...

Raed Mu’anis was my best friend. The small scar on top of his left eyebrow was my doing at the age of five. I urged him to quit hanging on a rope where my mother was drying our laundry. He wouldn’t listen, so I threw a rock at him. I didn’t mean for...

A day after the Pentagon said that Iran had launched airstrikes on Islamic State militants in Iraq, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, without confirming the airstrikes, welcomed the new development. Despite the positive reaction, Iranian officials deny the strikes, and the White House continues to resist allowing the Iranians to join the coalition. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi was in Brussels asking the world community for more military and reconstruction help.

Poor Anne Applebaum. Every time she writes one of her interchangeable neocon screeds on how Putin is responsible for all the world's evils or why we need to invade this or that country, her mortal enemies – the commenters! – launch an attack. They wonder why we should...

Several bombs were reported in Baghdad and Tuz Khormato, but they failed to leave a dramatic number of casualties. Most of the dead were militants killed in security operations. At least 205 people were killed and 29 more were wounded.

As U.S. forces withdraw from parts of Afghanistan, the Taliban is making gains in several areas of the country. The Afghan police and army are slowly giving way, despite the United States spending 13 years and tens of billions of dollars training those forces. When...

November closed with fewer reported deaths than did October, but at least 5,640 killed and 2,574 wounded during the month. Our analysis is below. On Monday, at least 465 were killed and 25 more were wounded, mostly in airstrikes and battles.