( Tomdispatch.com) – There is no significant anti-war movement in America because there’s no war to protest. Let me explain. In February 2003, millions of people took to the streets around the world to protest America’s march to war against Iraq. That mass movement failed. The administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had […]
The Art of the Deal, Pentagon-Style: Wars Without Victories, Weapons Without End
By William J. Astore | – (Tomdispatch.com) – The expression “self-licking ice cream cone” was first used in 1992 to describe a hidebound bureaucracy at NASA. Yet, as an image, it’s even more apt for America’s military-industrial complex, an institution far vaster than NASA and thoroughly dedicated to working for its own perpetuation and little […]
Is American Exceptionalism Killing the Planet? The Many Abuses of Endless War
( Tomdispatch.com) – Ever since 2007, when I first started writing for TomDispatch, I’ve been arguing against America’s forever wars, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, or elsewhere. Unfortunately, it’s no surprise that, despite my more than 60 articles, American blood is still being spilled in war after war across the Greater Middle East and Africa, even […]
Killing Me Softly with Militarism: The Decay of Democracy in America
(Tomdispatch.com) – When Americans think of militarism, they may imagine jackbooted soldiers goose-stepping through the streets as flag-waving crowds exult; or, like our president, they may think of enormous parades featuring troops and missiles and tanks, with warplanes soaring overhead. Or nationalist dictators wearing military uniforms encrusted with medals, ribbons, and badges like so many […]
The Ultra-Costly, Underwhelming F-35 Fighter: Lockheed Martin Remains Top Gun in the Pentagon’s Cockpit
(Tomdispatch.com) – How are you with numbers? I can deal with $1.5 million. I think I can even imagine $1.5 billion, a sum a thousand times greater. But how about a million times greater: $1.5 trillion? That happens to be the estimated cost of the Pentagon’s program to build, deploy, and maintain the no-longer-so-new F-35 […]
In Wars and Weapons We Trust: America’s Militarized Profession of Faith
(Tomdispatch.com ) – When I was a teenager in the 1970s, I looked to the heavens: to God and Christianity (as arbitrated by the Catholic Church) and to the soaring warbirds of the U.S. military, which I believed kept us safe. To my mind then, they were classic manifestations of American technological superiority over the […]
Wars R Us: Our Best and Brightest have Warned us of Pentagon Propaganda Machine
(Tomsdispatch.com ) – Put up with me for just a moment while I wax literary. It turns out that, if French novelist Marcel Proust lived today, he might have had to retitle his Remembrance of Things Past as Remembrance of Things Present, or even more sadly, Things Future. As an ex-military man who lived through […]
The US Cult of Bombing & Endless War: Ten Tenets of Air Power That I Didn’t Learn in the Air Force
( Tomdispatch.com ) – From Syria to Yemen in the Middle East, Libya to Somalia in Africa, Afghanistan to Pakistan in South Asia, an American aerial curtain has descended across a huge swath of the planet. Its stated purpose: combatting terrorism. Its primary method: constant surveillance and bombing — and yet more bombing. Its political […]
Top 6 Ways to Curb America’s Skyrocketing Military Tab
War is the ultimate audit and, as any American should know, the Pentagon is incapable of passing an audit