Reporters and pundits covering the presidential campaign of Donald Trump have been torn between two conflicting narratives: The first is that Trump is a reckless amateur and, as president with his finger on the nuclear button, he would bring the world to the brink of...
In early 2009 I was walking away from a compound a platoon from the Second Ranger Battalion had just assaulted when a staff sergeant I knew held up something in the dark. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was. It was small and he was bragging about it. I tried to...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. As is often the case, I opened the Monday newspaper curious to find out how the weekend had gone at the movies. The headline read, “‘Ghostbusters’ Is No. 2 Behind ‘Secret Life of Pets.’” That meant...
Shortly after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in 1996 (their rise to power itself a result of the 1979 Soviet intervention in Afghanistan), we began to hear endless stories of the horrors of this student movement turned governing power. They ruled by Sharia law,...
Lately, the tactics of local police departments have been in the news because of mass shootings at Orlando and Fort Myers nightclubs, questionable police killings of civilians in suburban St. Paul and Baton Rouge, and retaliatory slayings of police in Baton Rouge and...
The Chilcot Inquiry, set up to look into the British role in the war in Iraq, reported on July 6, and although it was overshadowed by the political fallout from the Brexit vote to leave the European Union, received a largely favorable reception from the media and...
I recently dug my mother’s childhood photo album out of the depths of my bedroom closet. When I opened it, I found that the glue she had used as a girl to paste her life in place had given way, and on many pages the photos were now in a jumble. My mother was born...
