If journalism was once considered the first rough draft of history, now, when it comes to American military policy at least, it’s often the first rough pass at writing a script for "The Daily Show." Take, for example, a little inside-the-paper piece that...
As I write this, Hillary Clinton’s appearance before the House panel investigating the 2012 terrorist attacks that killed four Americans is still going on. I wasn’t able to listen to all of it live, and will plow through the transcript in due course. Two things...
On October 22, US Army Master Sergeant Joshua L. Wheeler died near Hawija, in northern Iraq, while taking part in a mission aimed at rescuing prisoners from Islamic State forces. Wheeler is the first American soldier – or at least the first one we’ve been told...
Sometimes, a small incident can pierce the darkness and reveal a frightening picture. This happened last Sunday in Beersheba, the capital of the Negev. The picture was frightening indeed. The incident started as a routine attack, one of many we have become used to in...
"If the Cold War is over, what's the point of being an American?" said Rabbit Angstrom, the protagonist of the John Updike novels. A haunting remark, since, for 40 years, America was largely united on the proposition that our survival depended upon our...
I am writing this on October 22, the fifty-third anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, the day when President John F. Kennedy made a speech to the nation announcing that the US had detected Soviet missile bases being constructed in Cuba – and demanding that they be...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Sometimes I imagine the last 14 years of American war policy in the Greater Middle East as a set of dismal Mad Libs. An example might be: The United States has spent [your choice of multiple billions of dollars] building up [fill in...
