Month

Archives: National Security State

First, the Soviets Collapsed: Is it America’s Turn Now?

By William J. Astore | ( Tomdispatch.com) | - - Jump into your time machine and let me transport you back to another age. It’s May 2001 and the Atlantic Monthly has…

The Mystery of Washington’s Iran Derangement Syndrome

By Danny Sjursen | ( Tomdispatch.com) | - - “Everywhere you look, if there is trouble in the region,” Secretary of Defense James Mattis told reporters on a mid-April visit to Riyadh,…

Erdogan, Trump, the Russians and General Flynn: The Tangled Web

By Carl Max Kortepeter | (Informed Comment) | - - When Sally Yates testified that she had told the Trump Organization, before his appointment as National Security Adviser, that General Flynn was…

Was Chelsea Manning trying to stop the Endless War? Whistleblowing and Morality

By Peter Van Buren | (Tomdispatch.com) | <p>“My guilt will never go away,” former Marine Matthew Hoh explained to me. “There is a significant portion of me that doesn't believe it should…

Clapper Lied & Spied, now charges Trump w/ assault on Gov’t Institutions

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | - - During the past week we've been subjected to hours of testimony by or interviews with James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence. On…

How America’s Myth of the Infallible Generals gets us in Trouble

By Danny Sjursen | ( Tomdispatch.com) | - - More, more, more. I was guilty of it myself. Commanding a small cavalry troop of about 85 soldiers in southwest Kandahar Province back…

End the Imperial Presidency: Do we Really Want Trump Assassinating and Launching Wars at Will?

By Andrew Bacevich | ( Tomdispatch.com) | - - Since the late eighteenth century, the United States has been involved in an almost ceaseless string of wars, interventions, punitive expeditions, and other…

Don’t want to lose the Next Mideast War? Don’t Fight One

Danny Sjursen | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | - - Make no mistake: after 15 years of losing wars, spreading terror movements, and multiplying failed states across the Greater Middle East, America will…

Who Profits from Trump’s dramatic but useless Bombings?

By William Astore | (Tomdispatch.com) | - - What does an “America-first” foreign policy look like under President Donald Trump? As a start, forget the ancient label of “isolationism.” With the end…

How our Standing Wars are Warping Us

Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com) | - - On successive days recently, I saw two museum shows that caught something of a lost American world and seemed eerily relevant in the Age…

Dems Should be Careful about using Deep State to get at Trump

By Ian Berman | (Informed Comment) | - - Ever since the November election, Democrats have been looking for a reason to take down President Trump and vindicate Clinton’s loss. Refusing to…

How the Iraq War came Home & brought us Trump

By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com) | - - If you want to know where President Donald Trump came from, if you want to trace the long winding road (or escalator) that…

I Am an Enemy of the People (Feffer)

By John Feffer | ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) | - - If Trump cracks down on journalists, there might be less uproar than you'd think. Even before the election of…

Trump bankrupting us w/ Pentagon Budget suited to 1943

By Michael T. Klare | (Tomdispatch.com) | - - If you are an American male of a certain age -- Donald Trump’s age, to be exact -- you are likely to have…

Zombie America: Is it too late to Fight Trump’s Real-Life Dystopia?

By John Feffer | (Tomdispatch.com) | - - Dystopias have recently achieved full-spectrum dominance. Kids are drawn to such stories -- The Giver, Hunger Games -- like Goths to piercings. TV shows…

Surging Trump’s America: What didn’t work in Baghdad won’t work in Washington

By Danny Sjursen | ( Tomdispatch.com | - - The other day, I found myself flipping through old photos from my time in Iraq. One in particular from October 2006 stood out.…

Is Trump at war with Oceana this Week, or Eastasia?

Rebecca Gordon | Tomdispatch.com | - - In his inaugural address, President Trump described a dark and dismal United States, a country overrun by criminal gangs and drugs, a nation stained with…

All the President’s Generals: Do they Want War with Iran?

By William D. Hartung | ( Tomdispatch.com) | - - In the splurge of “news,” media-bashing, and Bannonism that’s been Donald Trump’s domestic version of a shock-and-awe campaign, it’s easy to forget…

Trumpocalypse: How the U.S. Invaded, Occupied, and Remade Itself

By Tom Engelhardt | (Tomdispatch.com) | - - It’s been epic! A cast of thousands! (Hundreds? Tens?) A spectacular production that, five weeks after opening on every screen of any sort in America…

Could Trump’s War of Words with China turn Hot?

By Rajan Menon | ( Tomdispatch.com) | - - Forget those “bad hombres down there” in Mexico that U.S. troops might take out. Ignore the way National Security Adviser Michael Flynn put…