( Tomdispatch.com ) – Well before the House select committee’s January 6th investigation began, trust in the classic American system of checks and balances as reliable protection against executive (or, more recently, Supreme Court) abuses of power had already fallen into a state of disgrace. A domestically shackled Biden presidency, a Congress unable to act, […]
The Empire’s New Clothes: The Veneer of Accountability Is Wearing Thin in Twenty-First-Century America
( Tomdispatch.com ) – If you watched TV in the 1960s and 1970s as I did, you would undoubtedly have come away with the idea that this country’s courts, law enforcement agencies, and the laws they aimed to honor added up to a system in which justice was always served. In those years, for instance, […]
Our Ukraine Wake-Up Call: The Global Age is Upon Us
( Tomdispatch.com ) – In recent days, experts have begun laying out the potential hardships the Russian invasion of Ukraine might inflict here in the United States, thousands and thousands of miles from the battle zone. As former White House national security official Richard Clarke bluntly put it, “Russia will bring the war to our […]
Guantánamo’s Forever Elusive Endgame: Will We “Celebrate” Its 30th Anniversary?
( Tomdispatch.com ) – It’s now more than 20 years later and that American offshore symbol of mistreatment and injustice, the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is still open. In fact, as 2021 ended, New York Times reporter Carol Rosenberg, who has covered that notorious prison complex since its first day, reported on the Pentagon’s […]
How to End America’s Forever Wars for Once and for All
( Tomdispatch.com) – As August ended, American troops completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan almost 20 years after they first arrived. On the formal date of withdrawal, however, President Biden insisted that “over-the-horizon capabilities” (airpower and Special Operations forces, for example) would remain available for use anytime. “[W]e can strike terrorists and targets without American boots […]
Failures of 9/11 and the 20-year ‘War on Terror’: Being in the Washington Elite means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry
( Tomdispatch.com) – The anniversary of the 9/11 attacks was marked by days of remembrances — for the courageous rescue workers of that moment, for the thousands murdered as the Twin Towers collapsed, for those who died in the Pentagon, or in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, fighting off the hijackers of the commercial jet they were in, […]
The Endless Shadow of the War on Terror: Living With It Forever and a Day
( Tomdispatch.com) – It ended in chaos and disaster. Kabul has fallen and Joe Biden is being blamed (by congressional Republicans in particular) for America’s now almost-20-year disaster in Afghanistan. But is the war on terror itself over? Apparently not. It seems like centuries ago, but do you remember when, in May 2003, President George […]
Torture, Wars of Aggression, Violations of Bill of Rights: Will there ever be accountability for America’s Orgy of War Crimes in the 21st Century
( Tomdispatch.com) – America has an accountability problem. In fact, if the Covid-19 disaster, the January 6th Capitol attack, and the Trump years are any indication, the American lexicon has essentially dispensed with the term “accountability.” This should come as no surprise. After all, there’s nothing particularly new about this. In the Bush years, those […]
Can Guantánamo Ever Be Shut Down? Dealing with the Forever Prison of America’s Forever Wars
( Tomdispatch.com) – The Guantánamo conundrum never seems to end. Twelve years ago, I had other expectations. I envisioned a writing project that I had no doubt would be part of my future: an account of Guantánamo’s last 100 days. I expected to narrate in reverse, the episodes in a book I had just published, […]
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