Tomgram: William Astore, Something Is Rotten in the U.S. Military

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Here’s the curious thing: since at least the Vietnam War era of the 1960s and early 1970s, the United States has been almost continuously at war. Certain of those conflicts like the Vietnam War itself and those in Iraq and Afghanistan in this century are still remembered by many of us. Honestly, though, who remembers read more

Tomgram: Engelhardt, A Book to Write?

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Burning Books (or Rather Book Companies) Looking Back on My Years in — And out of — Publishing By

No one listened better than Studs.  For those of you old enough to remember, that’s Studs Terkel, of course. The most notable thing about him in person, though, was this: the greatest interviewer of his moment, perhaps of any moment, never stopped talking, except, of course, when he was listening to produce one of his memorable bestselling oral histories — he essentially read more

Tomgram: John Feffer, The Future of Autocracy

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At the dawn of America’s forever wars, President George W. Bush and his speechwriter David Frum teamed up to create a meaningless, hyperbolic phrase that lumped together Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, setting the stage for two decades of foreign policy fallout.

“States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world,” read more