When I was young, the Philadelphia Bulletin ran cartoon ads that usually featured a man in trouble — dangling by his fingers, say, from an outdoor clock…
Tomgram: Engelhardt, The Arrival of the Warrior Corporation
In the American mind, if Apple made weapons, they would undoubtedly be drones, those remotely piloted planes getting such great press here. They have generally been greeted as if they were the sleekest of iPhones armed with missile…
Tomgram: Engelhardt, Kicking Down the World’s Door
Make no mistake: we’re entering a new world of military planning…
Tomgram: Engelhardt, Iran Through the Looking Glass
Reverse the story, though, and it immediately becomes a malign, if unimaginable, fairy tale. Of course, no Iranian elite forces will ever operate along the U.S. border…
Tomgram: Engelhardt, Superpower Adrift in an Alien World
Here’s the ad for this moment in Washington (as I imagine it): Militarized superpower adrift and anxious in alien world. Needs advice. Will pay. Pls respond qkly. PO Box 1776-2012, Washington, DC…
Tomgram: Engelhardt, Lessons from Lost Wars in 2012
It was to be the war that would establish empire as an American fact. It would result in a thousand-year Pax Americana. It was to be “mission accomplished” all the way. And then, of course, it wasn’t. And t…
Tomgram: Engelhardt, Restless Planet
On the streets of Moscow in the tens of thousands, the protesters chanted: “We exist!” Taking into account the comments of statesmen, scientists, politicians, military officials, bankers, artists, all the important and attended …
Tomgram: Engelhardt, The 1% Election
Sometimes words outlive their usefulness. Sometimes the gap between changing reality and the names we’ve given it grows so wide that they empty of all meaning or retain older meanings that only confuse us. “Election,&rdquo…
Tomgram: Engelhardt, Into the Whirlwind
He was 22, a corporal in the Marines from Preston, Iowa, a “city” incorporated in 1890 with a present population of 949. He died in a hospital in Germany of “wounds received from an explosive device while on patrol in Helm…