Originally posted at TomDispatch. Here’s the strange thing in an ever-stranger world: I was born in July 1944 in the midst of a devastating world war. That war ended in August 1945 with the atomic obliteration of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. On May 1st, the date Donald Trump signed onto for the withdrawal of the remaining 3,500 American troops from Afghanistan, the war there, already 19 years old, was still officially a teenager. Think of September 11, 2021 – the 20th...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Some things just never seem to end. What came to mind was the way in which, during administration after administration, the Saudis and other foreign powers have poured money into Washington to ensure that their governments and their...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. When it comes to future conflicts or present-day war games, they have all the advantages and we have none! Or as Eric Edelman, a former undersecretary of defense for policy, told CNN recently, “Russia and China are playing a...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Think of it as Cold War II or, as President Biden put it in his first news conference, “a battle between the utility of democracies in the twenty-first century and autocracies.” In other words, it’s us versus...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Assassination has not exactly been a foreign concept to American presidents. After all, there were those CIA-backed plots during the presidency of John F. Kennedy (who was himself assassinated) aimed at killing foreign leaders ranging...
Perhaps the strangest thing about America’s "forever wars" is how little obvious impact they’ve had here. A country – an imperial power, in fact, that liked to think of itself as the planet’s last or "lone" superpower – goes to war for so long (and...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. America has essentially been at war, nonstop, since the weeks after the 9/11 attacks. Those “forever wars,” as they’re now commonly called, have been both truly distant from and eerily close to us, far away and yet a...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. As his time in office ends in a mob invasion of the Capitol and an avalanche of pardons for his pals and cohorts, Donald Trump also pardoned four American guards from the former private security company Blackwater (run by Erik Prince,...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. The American invasion of Iraq began almost 18 years ago in mid-March 2003. By early April, that country's capital, Baghdad, had fallen and before the month ended the war was considered over and won. On May 1st, President George W....
