Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, Requiem for the American Century

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“War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothin’!” So went the famed Vietnam War-era protest lyrics first sung by the Temptations.

Looked at a certain way, however, like so many Americans, war has been the backdrop of my life. After Pearl Harbor, my father, 35, promptly volunteered for what was then the Army Air Corps; my mother, a cartoonist, would, in her own way, read more

Tomgram: Nomi Prins, To Build or Not to Build? That Is the Question

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

My mother died in 1977; my father in 1983; and so many decades later, I think about them ever more often. Partially that’s because, like most kids (I suspect), I wasn’t particularly interested in their lives when they were alive. Only now do I have a thousand-and-one questions for them that can never be answered, including how they first met. I do remember my mother once read more