An Empire of Failed States
Imperial powers hedge their bets. The most striking recent example we have of this is in Egypt. While the Pentagon was pouring money into the Egyptian military (approximately $40 billion since 1979), it turns out—thank you, WikiLeaks!—that the U.S. government was...
Sleepwalking Into the Imperial Dark
The Great Israeli Security Scam
Recent uprisings and rumblings across North Africa and the Middle East from Tunisia and Egypt to Saudi Arabia and Yemen have shone a bright, unflattering light on long-time U.S. allies in the region—despotic kleptocrats whom we supported sometimes to the tune of...
Obama Still Hammering Away
Was there ever an American president who publicly told more people on this planet what they must do than George W. Bush? I suspect not. He’s gone, of course, but America’s version of a “must-do” foreign policy didn’t exactly leave the scene with him—the only...
Chalmers Johnson vs. the Empire
Chalmers Johnson was a stalwart of TomDispatch. He first wrote for this website on Jan. 8, 2003 (“Iraqi Wars”), barely more than a month after it was launched. The last piece he wrote in his life (“Portrait of a Sagging Empire”) was for TomDispatch as well. In the...
Intolerance ‘R’ Us
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: As of Wednesday, I’ll be off the grid for a week. Back April 8. TomDispatch will be unaffected and will post as usual thanks to associate editors Nick Turse and Andy Kroll. But for those writing in with comments, requests, or anything...
Taking the ‘War’ Out of Air War
Murder in Bahrain
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has been one busy official of late. Last week, on a surprise visit to Afghanistan, he managed to apologize for U.S. helicopters killing nine boys collecting wood on a hillside in Kunar Province, even as he announced that a negotiating...
Mummies and Models in the New Middle East
They can’t help themselves. Really, they can’t. Like children, the most monstrous of secret police outfits evidently come to believe themselves immortal. They lose all ability to imagine that they might ever go down and so keep records to the very moment of their...
