Months back, when protests rocked Algeria and Sudan, toppling two autocratic strongmen, observers almost immediately dubbed it a "New Arab Spring." This, of course, was a reference to the popular demonstrations that rocked the Arab World in 2011, ranging from Tunisia...
The Donald made the right call. Now that’s a rare statement. Calling off – or at least delaying – a military strike on Iran was prudent. Nevertheless, there was something deeply unsettling about the whole thing. The system is broken, perhaps irreparably. The president...
This article originally appeared at TruthDig. He was the first duly elected president in the Arab world and the first in Egyptian history. Now Mohammed Morsi is dead, collapsing on June 17 in his glass cage during his show trial in Cairo—a victim, it seems, of...
Maybe they did; maybe they didn't. That’s not the point. Even if Iran did attack a couple tankers in the Gulf of Oman – as the Trump team assures us it did – there’s no reason for a war. As I’ve written repeatedly, war with the Islamic Republic would be ill-advised,...
It’s a matter of principles over personalities. Whether one loves or hates Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange is besides the point. The First Amendment freedom of the press is at stake now. In this case the government’s tool for oppression is the Espionage Act, an...
This article originally appeared at TruthDig. Just after dawn on March 16, 1968, a company of U.S. Army infantrymen, led by Capt. Ernest Medina and spearheaded by Lt. William Calley, entered the small hamlet of My Lai in Quang Ngai province, South Vietnam. The...
No war yet! That’s the good news…for now. A few weeks have passed since unhinged National Security Advisor John Bolton – who never saw a regime he didn't want to change – reportedly ordered the Pentagon to update plans to send 120,000 additional troops into the...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Think of U.S. policy in the Middle East as the proverbial broken record. Explain it as you will, Washington’s focus always comes back to Iran. Seldom has a country that remains anything but a superpower (even a regional one)...
Time was that a stint, or even a career, in the military did not necessarily translate into any serious combat duty. That may seem hard to believe eighteen years after 9/11, but this middle-aged middling major is just old enough to remember such a bygone era. As a...
What if they called a war and no one came? Well, now’s the time folks. The apparent march to war with Iran represents a pivotal moment in the historical arc – the rise and fall – of our republic come empire. This potential war is so unnecessary, so irrational, that it...
