Iraq War

( Code Pink) – At Bagram air-base, Afghan scrap merchants are already picking through the graveyard of U.S. military equipment that was until recently the headquarters of America’s 20-year occupation of their country. Afghan officials say the last U.S. forces slipped away from Bagram in the dead of night, without notice or coordination. The Taliban […]

Bush

Donald Rumsfeld, Torturer, Serial Liar, Butcher of Baghdad, dies at 88

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s death at 88 is an occasion for me to recall some of my own writing on his sinister role in the Iraq War. Rumsfeld wanted to invade Iraq so badly he just made up shit to justify that action. In a Salon article I […]

Featured

Not only Should Congress repeal 2002 Authorization for use of Force in Iraq, it should Apologize for that Pack of Lies

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Jacob Pramuk at CNBC reports that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Biden White House are backing an attempt to repeal the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force that allowed the Bush administration to launch the Iraq War. The repeal is driven in part by the Trump […]

Authoritarianism

Chickens coming home to Roost: Liz Cheney’s Father Pioneered the GOP Big Lie and Authoritarian Tactics in Iraq War

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Rep. Liz Cheney has emerged as a voice for truth-telling in Trump’s Republican Party, standing up to the Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election and denouncing her fellow representatives who sought to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory and who thus helped provoke the Capitol Insurgency. Cheney […]

Bush

How Bush’s Wars led to Trump’s Insurrection: From Occupying Iraq to Occupying the Capitol

Tomdispatch

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 […]

Iraq

‘Wealth Accumulates and Men Decay:’ Can America learn the Lessons of Iraq and Vietnam

Andrew J. Bacevich

( 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 […]

Afghanistan

It’s almost 20 Years since 9/11; Can we finally End our Constant, Disastrous Wars?

Rebecca Gordon

( 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 […]

Afghanistan

Anti-War Officer Corps: An American Crisis of Conscience in the Forever Wars

Tomdispatch

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 […]

Afghanistan

US Troops are finally returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, but what to kind of American are they returning

Tomdispatch

By Andrea Mazzarino | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – By the end of this year, the White House will reportedly have finally brought home a third of the 7,500 troops still stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq (against the advice of President Trump’s own military leaders). While there have been stories galore about the global security implications […]