An Empire of Nothing at All?
This essay is the introduction to Tom Engelhardt’s new book, A Nation Unmade by War, a Dispatch Book published by Haymarket Books. 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... Read more
Donald Trump’s Caliphate
They are the extremists. If you need proof, look no further than the Afghan capital, Kabul, where the latest wave of suicide bombings in May 2018 has proven devastating. Recently, for instance, a fanatic set off his explosives among a group of citizens lining up outside a government office... Read more
Tales of American Hubris
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 what some of the... Read more
Empire of Graveyards
Recently, a memory of my son as a small boy came back to me. He was, in those days, terrified of clowns. Something about their strange, mask-like, painted faces unnerved him utterly, chilled him to the bone. To the rest of us, they were comic, but to him —... Read more
America’s War on Terror Targets 76 Countries
He left Air Force Two behind and, unannounced and “shrouded in secrecy,” flew on an unmarked C-17 transport plane into Bagram air base, the largest American garrison in Afghanistan. All news of his visit was embargoed until an hour before he was to depart the country. More than 16... Read more
Osama Bin Laden’s America
Honestly, if there’s an afterlife, then the soul of Osama Bin Laden, whose body was consigned to the waves by the U.S. Navy back in 2011, must be swimming happily with the dolphins and sharks. At the cost of the sort of spare change that Donald Trump recently offered... Read more
‘Tell Me How This Ends’
It took 14 years, but now we have an answer. It was March 2003, the invasion of Iraq was underway, and U.S. Army major general David Petraeus was in command of the 101st Airborne Division heading for the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Rick Atkinson, The Washington Post journalist and military... Read more
In America’s Wars, Failure Is the New Success
It was bloody and brutal, a true generational struggle, but give them credit. In the end, they won when so many lost. James Comey was axed. Sean Spicer went down in a heap of ashes. Anthony Scaramucci crashed and burned instantaneously. Reince Priebus hung on for dear life but... Read more
High Crimes and Demeanors in the Age of Donald Trump
Let me try to get this straight — from the moment the Soviet Union imploded in 1991 until recently just about every politician and mainstream pundit in America assured us that we were the planet’s indispensable nation, the only truly exceptional one on this small orb of ours. We... Read more
Precision Warfare? Don’t Make Me Laugh
You remember. It was supposed to be 21st-century war, American-style — precise beyond imagining; smart bombs; drones capable of taking out a carefully identified and tracked human being just about anywhere on earth; special operations raids so pinpoint-accurate that they would represent a triumph of modern military science. Everything... Read more