Originally posted at TomDispatch. In January 2004, Chalmers Johnson wrote “America’s Empire of Bases” for TomDispatch, breaking what was, in effect, a silence around those strange edifices, some the size of small towns, scattered around the planet....
After Afghanistan: Apply Obama’s Simple Foreign Policy Precept, Don’t Do Stupid Sh*t!
The U.S. spent 20 years, thousands of lives, and trillions of dollars in Afghanistan. Instead of creating a stable, prosperous democracy beloved by its people and defended by all, Washington did the geopolitical equivalent of digging a big hole and filling it with...
Iraq Daily Roundup: 11 Killed
Baby Teeth Collected Six Decades Ago Will Reveal the Damage to Americans’ Health Caused by US Nuclear Weapons Tests
In 2020, Harvard University’s T. C. Chan School of Public Health began a five-year study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, that will examine the connection between early life exposure to toxic metals and later-life risk of neurological disease. A...
Now, About That Peace Dividend …
As I write this, the Taliban have assumed full political control – to the extent that such a thing can exist – of Afghanistan. They’ve taken Kabul. They’ve put the US occupation’s puppet president, and many Afghans who served the occupation presence,...
Diplomacy, Not Bombs: Anti-War Voices Say Afghanistan Shows Need To Stop Any Further March to War
Amid the lightning collapse of Afghanistan's U.S.-backed government and the all-but-certain return of Taliban rule, anti-war activists on Monday stressed that diplomacy, not bombs or the military-industrial complex, is the only path to lasting peace. The stunning but...
Afghanistan Aftermath: No Firings? No Resignations?
Joe Biden, who says the buck regarding Afghanistan stops with him in the White House, claims that the Taliban's final takeover of the capital, Kabul, provoking mass panic reminiscent of Saigon, 1975, happened more quickly "than anticipated." If that's true –...
Canada’s Disaster in Afghanistan
What a waste of human life and resources!More than 200,000 Afghan civilians and combatants have been killed since the US, Canadian and British invasion two decades ago. A few thousand Canadian, US, British, etc. troops also died in the fighting. Canada’s biggest...
In a World Aflame, an Antiwar Movement Is Needed More Than Ever
America’s Afghan project, to create a modern, democratic, centralized nation state in Central Asia, is over. What took 20 years, thousands of lives, and trillions of dollars to construct disappeared in little more than a week. Only a few days ago administration...
Hurrah! Washington’s Pointless Sojourn in the Graveyard of Empires Is Finally Over
This weekend’s momentous events cry-out for a reformulation of Earnest Hemingway’s famous five word quip in “The Sun Also Rises”. Per his description of the route to bankruptcy: How did the dismal Afghan outpost of Washington’s Potemkin...


