( Tomdispatch.com ) – As a military professor for six years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in the 1990s, I often walked past the honor code prominently displayed for all cadets to see. Its message was simple and clear: they were not to tolerate lying, cheating, stealing, or similar dishonorable acts. Yet that’s exactly […]
Afraid of *Everything* – The Paranoid Nature of American Foreign and Domestic Policy
( Tomdispatch.com ) – I have a brother with chronic schizophrenia. He had his first severe catatonic episode when he was 16 years old and I was 10. Later, he suffered from auditory hallucinations and heard voices saying nasty things to him. I remember my father reassuring him that the voices weren’t real and asking […]
Why Going “Hard” Is Taking the Easy Way Out: Hardening Schools and Arming Teachers Is the Wrong Approach
( Tomdispatch.com ) – American schools are soft, you say? I know what you mean. I taught college for 15 years, so I’ve dealt with my share of still-teenagers fresh out of high school. Many of them inspired me, but some had clearly earned high marks too easily and needed remedial help in math, English, […]
Destroying the Town Is Not Saving It: Two Unsung Heroes as Role Models for the Air Force
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Twenty years ago, I left the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs for my next assignment. I haven’t been back since, but today I travel there (if only in my imagination) to give my graduation address to the class of 2022. So, won’t you take a few minutes and join me, […]
The Last Good Guys? Five Reasons Why Washington Can’t Break Its War Addiction
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Why has the United States already become so heavily invested in the Russia-Ukraine war? And why has it so regularly gotten involved, in some fashion, in so many other wars on this planet since it invaded Afghanistan in 2001? Those with long memories might echo the conclusion reached more than a […]
It Goes up but Never Comes Down: What Would It Take to Reduce US Military Spending?
( Tomdispatch.com) – I have a question for you: What would it take in today’s world for America’s military spending to go down? Here’s one admittedly farfetched scenario: Vladimir Putin loses his grip on power and Russia retrenches militarily while reaching out to normalize relations with the West. At the same time, China prudently decides […]
The New Cold War and the “Arsenal of Democracy”
( Tomdispatch.com ) – In certain quarters in this country, Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine has generated enthusiasm for a new cold war. At the New York Times, Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin have been described as “children of the [old] Cold War” now involved in a “face off,” an “eyeball to eyeball” confrontation harkening […]
America’s Disastrous 60-Year War: Three Generations of Conspicuous Destruction by the Military-Industrial Complex
( Tomdispatch.com ) – In my lifetime of nearly 60 years, America has waged five major wars, winning one decisively, then throwing that victory away, while losing the other four disastrously. Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, as well as the Global War on Terror, were the losses, of course; the Cold War being the solitary win […]
Only Fools Replay Doomsday: The Cold War, Reborn and Resurgent
( Tomdispatch.com ) – In the early 1960s, at the height of America’s original Cold War with the Soviet Union, my old service branch, the Air Force, sought to build 10,000 land-based nuclear missiles. These were intended to augment the hundreds of nuclear bombers it already had, like the B-52s featured so memorably in the […]
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