Author: Tom Engelhardt

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

In late March, I was taken aback by a news story about a drone attack on American troops at a joint base with Kurdish forces in Syria. Though five U.S. soldiers were wounded, there was only one death and, as Eric Schmitt reported read more

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

Here’s the strange thing: in the 1950s, when I was a kid, nuclear weapons were on all our minds. In school, we went through duck-and-cover drills where we read more

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

Honestly, it should take your breath away. We are on a planet prepping for further war in a staggering fashion. A watchdog group, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), just released read more

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

I doubt I ever feel older or more passé than when I’m out in my city — New York — and I still put on a mask before stepping onto a bus, going into the subway, or entering a store. Increasingly, I find myself alone in a world of the unmasked with the exception of a few other ancient types like me. Once upon a time, I could look online at the Guardian read more

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

On both sides, the talk only grows grimmer. Just the other day, speaking about China, Admiral John Aquilino, head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, warned that “I’m responsible [for finding a way] to prevent this conflict today read more

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

Imagine a world in which one in every 20 of us, approximately 6% of the population, owns not just a gun but a military-style assault rifle. We’re talking about a weapon like read more

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

War, What Is It Good For? Remarkably Little If You’re a “Great” Power on Planet Earth in the Twenty-First Century By Tom Engelhardt

I was born on July 20, 1944, amid a vast global conflict already known as World War II.  Though it ended with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 before I could say much more than “Mama” or “Dada,” in some strange fashion, I grew up at war.

Living in New York City, I was near no conflict in those years or in any since. My dad, however, had volunteered read more

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

Today’s remarkable tax-time look at what TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon calls “the non-profit industrial complex” reminded me of just how lucky I’ve been running this website all these years. As a start, I’ve had you, the readers of TomDispatch, read more

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

No wonder I’m wearing a short-sleeved shirt and shorts today! After all, it’s exceedingly warm this July, with temperatures only recently hitting a startling 90 in New York City where I live.

Whoops! What was I thinking? I meant this April, as record spring heat read more

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

In our present social media world, who even remembers that the Internet’s first “mothership,” as Ben Tarnoff put it at the Guardian years ago, was the U.S. military, read more