Let's take a trip down memory lane. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is America's highest civilian award, ranking second only to the Congressional Medal of Honor. According to its official Web site, the medal "is reserved for individuals the president deems to have...
Has anyone noticed that our commander-in-chief no longer plays dress up? He hasn't done so for a while and that's no small thing. It's a phenomenon that came and went almost without comment in the media. I don't remember the first time I noticed that George W. Bush...
Be careful what you wish for – that might be the catch phrase for American relations with Iran since the CIA helped overthrow the elected government of that country in 1953 and installed the young shah in power. Much of our present world – and many of our...
[Note to TomDispatch readers: After a long break, this is the 13th in a series of interviews at the site. The previous 12 were collected in the book Mission Unaccomplished: TomDispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters.] He's a man who knows...
I often think of the letters that come into the Tomdispatch email box as the university of my later life – messages from around the world, offering commentary, criticism, encouragement, but mainly teaching me about lives (and versions of life) I would otherwise...
The former Cockney flower-girl-turned-elegant- English-speaker Eliza Doolittle caught something of our moment in these lyrics from My Fair Lady: "Oh, words, words, words, I'm so sick of words…. Is that all you blighters can do?" Of course, all she had to do was...
[Note for Readers: This is the third in TomDispatch's "by the numbers" series, leading up to this week's White House "Progress Report" from the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker. The first, in July, was "Iraq by...
We live with an administration whose concept of domestic "freedom" went out with those "freedom fries," briefly sold at the cafeterias of the House of Representatives. The Bush team has quite literally been a force for darkness. For those who remember the "memory...
[Note for TomDispatch readers: In the weeks when the first Gulf War was underway – it seems a lifetime ago – I began researching a book on the history of American triumphalism (which I came to call "victory culture"), especially as I had experienced it in my...
It was the highest-tech military of its moment and its invasion of the Arab land was overwhelming. Enemy forces were smashed, the oppressive ruling regime overthrown, the enemy capital occupied, and the country declared liberated? then the first acts of insurgency...
