Pentagon

New York ( Tomdispatch.com) – For almost 20 years, U.S. drone warfare was largely one-sided. Unlike Afghans and Yemenis, Iraqis and Somalis, Americans never had to worry about lethal robots hovering overhead and raining down missiles. Until, that is, one appeared in the skies above Florida. But that’s a story for later. For now, let’s […]

Pentagon

Blowback Machine: How our forever Wars are opening the Gates of Hell

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com) As I was putting the finishing touches on my new book, the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute published an estimate of the taxpayer dollars that will have gone into America’s war on terror from September 12, 2001, through fiscal year 2018. That figure: a cool $5.6 trillion (including the […]

Houthi

US Troops fighting for Saudis against Houthis in Yemen

AFP

Washington (AFP) – A team of elite US Green Beret commandos deployed to the Saudi border of Yemen last year to help find and destroy Huthi rebel missile caches, the New York Times reported Thursday. Since Yemen’s brutal conflict erupted three years ago, Huthi rebels have fired multiple ballistic missiles toward Riyadh and other Saudi […]

Militarization

“Infinity War?” After 17 fruitless years in Afghanistan & elsewhere the US Military needs to Rethink

Arnold R. Isaacs

“This time, they think they have it right.” So declared an Associated Press story reporting an upbeat assessment by this country’s top military officer at the end of a five-day visit to Afghanistan earlier this spring. Marine General Joseph Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was heading home from the war zone, […]

Pentagon

Top 5 Lessons from the History of America’s Defeats

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – The lessons of history? Who needs them? Certainly not Washington’s present cast of characters, a crew in flight from history, the past, or knowledge of more or less any sort. Still, just for the hell of it, let’s take a few moments to think about […]

Militarization

America’s Forever Wars as Spectator Sport

contributors

By Andrew J. Bacevich | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – The purpose of all wars, is peace. So observed St. Augustine early in the first millennium A.D. Far be it from me to disagree with the esteemed Bishop of Hippo, but his crisply formulated aphorism just might require a bit of updating. I’m not a […]

China

Oceania and Eastasia? New Cold War, this Time against both Russia and China?

Michael T. Klare

( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – Think of it as the most momentous military planning on Earth right now. Who’s even paying attention, given the eternal changing of the guard at the White House, as well as the latest in tweets, sexual revelations, and investigations of every sort? And yet it increasingly looks as if, […]

Donald Trump

Voters & Congress need to Stop Warmongers like Bolton via War Powers Act

contributors

By Sarah van Gelder | (Yes! Magazine) | – – A widespread show of support at the local level could embolden lawmakers toward a no-first-use policy on nuclear weapons. “Yes, John Bolton Really Is That Dangerous” read a headline from the New York Times. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said he “can’t imagine a more reckless, […]

Donald Trump

Trumpism: Why having US Ambassadors in 1/3 of Countries & Spec Ops in 3/4s is Bad

contributors

Monica Duffy Toft | (The Conversation) | – – A strong legacy of U.S. leadership and engagement in global politics has been reduced today to what I call kinetic diplomacy – diplomacy by armed force. As of March 2018, the Trump administration has appointed only 70 of 188 U.S. ambassadors. At the same time, it […]