The 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) recently released by President Donald Trump presents itself as a blueprint for renewed American strength. It is dangerously misconceived in four ways. First, the NSS is anchored in grandiosity: the belief that the United...
Why Are American Troops Still Dying in Syria?
On December 13, 2025, two U.S. soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed near Palmyra, Syria. According to a Pentagon statement, a lone Islamic State (ISIS) gunman disguised as a shepherd opened fire on a joint U.S.–Syrian patrol, killing three and wounding...
The Death of Ukraine’s Dream of NATO Membership
Ukraine’s dream of NATO membership is dead. It died, surprisingly, not on the battlefields of Ukraine nor at the negotiating table with Russia. It died in a document written in the White House to be sent to Congress to explain America’s national security vision. The...
Antiwar.com, Afghanistan, Michael Hastings, and Me
In 2009, I got a call from Eric Garris, founder and editor of Antiwar.com. Would I consider writing a column for the website? As a reporter who covered politics for Fox News, hardly a bastion of skepticism during the second Bush administration, I gratefully agreed. My...
The Siren Song of War
In October of 2002, I shocked many in my Congressional District and beyond by voting against giving President George W. Bush authorization to use military force in Iraq. The night before that vote, my older sister told me a Knoxville television station had conducted a...
Israel’s Biggest Con Trick: Hiding the True Numbers It Has Killed in Gaza
The biggest con trick Israel has managed to pull off over the past two years is imposing entirely phoney parameters on a “debate” in the West about the credibility of the death toll in Gaza, now officially standing at just over 70,000. It is not just that we have been...
Defending Israeli Mass Murder Isn’t Easy
Although much has already been said, I can’t not comment on Sarah Hurwitz, the former Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama speechwriter, who faults young people (especially young Jews) for applying their power of abstraction in thinking about the Holocaust. What do I mean...
‘Kill Them All’
"Does anyone know where the love of God goes When the waves turn the minutes to hours?" — Gordon Lightfoot (1938-2023) "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" As we learn more about the events on Sept. 2, 2025, in international waters 1,500 miles from the United States,...
Trump’s Interference Invalidates the Presidential Election in Honduras
An extraordinary catalog of US interference – amounting to an electoral coup – may have destroyed what was already a struggling democracy in Honduras. Trump has succeeded in closing the door to progressive government and in all likelihood his preferred neoliberal...
Militarism Without Strategy: How the 2025 National Security Document Institutionalizes Perpetual Conflict
On December 4, 2025, the Trump administration released a document claiming to herald a "Golden Age of Peace"; yet a careful reading reveals an entirely different picture: a roadmap for institutionalizing chronic militarism and perpetuating conflict in a new form. The...


