( Tomdispatch.com ) – Forty years ago this month, I was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. I would be part of America’s all-volunteer force (AVF) for 20 years, hitting my marks and retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 2005. In my two decades of service, I met a lot of fine […]
Can Militarism in America be Ended?
( Tomdispatch.com ) – I read the news today, oh boy. About a lucky man named Elon Musk. But he lost out on one thing: he didn’t get a top secret briefing on Pentagon war plans for China. And the news people breathed a sigh of relief. With apologies to John Lennon and The Beatles, […]
The New Ugly American: Manifest Destiny Gets a Reboot Under President Donald Trump
( Tomdispatch.com ) – A few years ago, I came across an old book at an estate sale. Its title caught my eye: “Our New Possessions.” Its cover featured the Statue of Liberty against stylized stars and stripes. What were those “new possessions”? The cover made it quite clear: Cuba, Hawaii, the Philippines, and Puerto […]
End Warness, Not Wokeness: Ten Thoughts on Curbing the Worst Excesses of U.S. Militarism
( Tomdispatch.com ) – As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take America back (again!) to greatness, there’s been much talk of Elon Musk’s new DOGE, or Department of Government Efficiency, and whether it will dare tackle Pentagon spending in useful ways. Could it curb rampant fraud, waste, and abuse within military contracting? Will the Pentagon finally pass […]
Is Gaza America’s Heart of Darkness?
( Tomdispatch.com ) – During World War II, American leaders proudly proclaimed this country the “arsenal of democracy,” supplying weapons and related materiel to allies like Great Britain and the Soviet Union. To cite just one example, I recall reading about Soviet armored units equipped with U.S. Sherman tanks, though the Soviets had an even better […]
Missiles and Bombers and Nukes: The Pentagon’s Armageddon Shopping List
( Tomdispatch.com ) – As a late-stage baby boomer, a child of the 1960s, I grew up dreaming about America’s nuclear triad. You may remember that it consisted of strategic bombers like the B-52 Stratofortress, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) like the Minuteman, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) like the Poseidon, all delivery systems for […]
“Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds:” Genocide and Ecocide stalk the Earth
( Tomdispatch.com ) – When I was in the U.S. military, I learned a saying (often wrongly attributed to the Greek philosopher Plato) that only the dead have seen the end of war. Its persistence through history to this very moment should indeed be sobering. What would it take for us humans to stop killing […]
Daring Look a Sacred Cow in the Teeth: Military Spending and National (in)Security
( Tomdispatch.com ) – In an age when American presidents routinely boast of having the world’s finest military, where nearly trillion-dollar war budgets are now a new version of routine, let me bring up one vitally important but seldom mentioned fact: making major cuts to military spending would increase U.S. national security. Why? Because real national […]
Bombing Muslims for Peace: Isn’t It Time to Put Our Toy Soldiers Away (Along with Our Illusions)?
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Like many American boys of the baby-boomer generation, I played “war” with those old, olive-drab, plastic toy soldiers meant to evoke our great victory over the Nazis and “the Japs” during World War II. At age 10, I also kept a scrapbook of the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and […]
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