Pentagon

Why the Pentagon never Wins Wars any More but Needs Bigger and Bigger nearly trillion-dollar Budgets

By Mandy Smithberger | – (Tomdispatch.com) – Call it a colossal victory for a Pentagon that hasn’t won a war in this century, but not for the rest of us. Congress only recently passed and the president approved one of the largest Pentagon budgets ever. It will surpass spending at the peaks of both the […]

Donald Trump

The Emperor’s Clothes: The Absurdity of the US-Iran Conflict

Bahman Fozouni

Sacramento, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment) – The leaders of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, and the United States, President Donald Trump, share an identical strategic aim: ending the US’s military presence in the Middle East. I cannot recall any other conflict where the antagonists fully agree on a specific end goal. This fact alone makes the […]

Afghanistan

The Global War of Error: and No, that is not a Typo

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com) – Yes, our infrastructure stinks, our schools are failing, this country’s a nightmare of inequality, and there’s a self-promoting madman in the White House, so isn’t it time to take pride in the rare institutional victories America has had in this century? Arguably, none has been more striking than the triumphal success of […]

Afghanistan

Trump threatens Armageddon on yet Another Country: Crimes against Humanity in Afghanistan

Nick Turse

(Tomdispatch.com) – On February 4, 2002, a Predator drone circled over Afghanistan’s Paktia province, near the city of Khost. Below was al-Qaeda’s founder Osama bin Laden — or at least someone in the CIA thought so — and he was marked for death. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld put it later, both awkwardly and […]

Afghanistan

An Afghan Perspective on 18 Years of Washington’s Lies about the War and our Suffering

contributors

(Special to Informed Comment) – On December 9, The Washington Post revealed interviews with American officials in Afghanistan who intentionally falsified facts regarding the 18-year conflict. In one of the interviews, Bob Crowley, a counterinsurgency adviser to U.S. military commanders in 2003, remarked that data “was altered to present the best picture possible.” While the […]

Colonialism

When an Imperial U.S. first Tried to Crush a Muslim Movement: Massacres in the Philippines

Danny Sjursen

(Tomdispatch.com) – For a decade and a half, the U.S. Army waged war on fierce tribal Muslims in a remote land. Sound familiar? As it happens, that war unfolded half a world away from the Greater Middle East and more than a century ago in the southernmost islands of the Philippines. Back then, American soldiers […]

Pentagon

The Military-Industrial State Just Keeps Getting More Expensive for the Rest of US

William D. Hartung

By William D. Hartung | – (Tomdispatch.com) – I’ve been writing critiques of the Pentagon, the national security state, and America’s never-ending military overreach since at least 1979 — in other words, virtually my entire working life. In those decades, there were moments when positive changes did occur. They ranged from ending the apartheid regime […]

Climate Crisis

After the Cold War: Is the Climate Crisis the US Military’s Biggest Enemy?

Michael T. Klare

(Tomdispatch.com) – It was Monday, March 1, 2032, and the top uniformed officers of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps were poised, as they are every year around this time, to deliver their annual “posture statement” on military readiness before the Senate Armed Services Committee. As the officers waited for the committee members […]

Donald Trump

Trump Fails again to Bring our Troops Home from Mideast: Mulling Escalation of 14,000 v. Iran

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump’s Pentagon is allegedly mulling sending 14,000 US troops to the Middle East to counter Iran. Although the Pentagon pushed back against the initial report, that had only said they were considering the troop escalation, and the Pentagon did not deny considering it. Trump has sent 14,000 troops to the […]