By Andrea Mazzarino | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – “I got out of the Marines and within a few years, 15 of my buddies had killed themselves,” one veteran rifleman who served two tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq between 2003 and 2011 said to me recently. “One minute they belonged and the next, they were […]
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Iraq
Time for Biden to end the Forever Wars and bring Iran in from the Cold
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Although former president Trump claims to have avoided starting any new wars, he in fact put the US on a war footing in the greater Middle East, and significantly increased the number of US troops in the region. He tried to strangle Iran economically and assassinated one of its foremost […]
In Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestinian territories: Refugee camps contain the hidden victims of Covid-19
( Middle East Monitor) – With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in late 2019, interest in the plight of the world’s most vulnerable populations, refugees, began to wane. A year later, and it is as if the refugee crisis has disappeared completely. It hasn’t, though. In fact, the world’s erstwhile leading humanitarian crisis has […]
Peril in the Middle East, Peril at Home: Our Top 10 Stories of 2020
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – 2020 was a monster of a year, leaving three million Americans dead (a record), probably nearly half a million of them of Covid-19 once everyone is counted. The fecklessness of the outgoing Trump administration was responsible for a good deal of this national catastrophe, one that did not strike our […]
Trump Pardons Blackwater 4 for Nisour Square Massacre in Iraq, because Whites must never Suffer for Killing Innocent Brown People
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Tuesday, Trump the Mad pardoned 4 Blackwater mercenaries who killed 14 Iraqi civilians, including a nine-year-old boy, with indiscriminate fire at Nisour Square in downtown Baghdad on September 14, 2007. The four were convicted at then VP Joe Biden’s insistence, and were serving jail terms. WaPo says, “Investigators for […]
‘Wealth Accumulates and Men Decay:’ Can America learn the Lessons of Iraq and Vietnam
( Tomdispatch.com ) – In choosing a title for his final, posthumously published book, the prominent public intellectual Tony Judt turned to a poem by Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, published in 1770. Judt found his book’s titlein the first words of this couplet: Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey Where wealth […]
It’s almost 20 Years since 9/11; Can we finally End our Constant, Disastrous Wars?
( Tomdispatch.com) – It was the end of October 2001. Two friends, Max Elbaum and Bob Wing, had just dropped by. (Yes, children, believe it or not, people used to drop in on each other, maskless, once upon a time.) They had come to hang out with my partner Jan Adams and me. Among other […]
Anti-War Officer Corps: An American Crisis of Conscience in the Forever Wars
By William J. Astore and Danny Sjursen | If you have a moment, how about joining two retired officers, Bill Astore and me, Danny Sjursen, as we think about this country’s catastrophic forever wars that, regardless of their deadly costs and lack of progress, never seem quite to end? Recently, in a podcast chat about […]
Trump’s Pernicious Military Legacy: From the Forever Wars to the Cataclysms
( Tomdispatch.com) – In the military realm, Donald Trump will most likely be remembered for his insistence on ending America’s involvement in its twenty-first-century “forever wars” — the fruitless, relentless, mind-crushing military campaigns undertaken by Presidents Bush and Obama in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Somalia. After all, as a candidate, Trump pledged to bring U.S. […]