Author: Tom Engelhardt

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In case you haven’t noticed — and I know you have — this country, as I wrote recently, is being (un)built before our very eyes. As a start, an read more

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Yes, it’s true. After 20 years of war — actually, more like 30 years if you count American involvement in the Russian version of that conflict in the 1980s — the U.S. has finally waved goodbye to Afghanistan (at least for now). Its last act in Kabul was the read more

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What Will We Remember of 2022? Nation (Un)Building and Planet (Un)Building, American-Style By Tom Engelhardt

Let me start 2022 by heading back — way, way back — for a moment.

It’s easy to forget just how long this world has been a dangerous place for human beings. I thought about this recently when I stumbled upon a little memoir my Aunt Hilda scrawled, decades ago, in a small notebook. In it, she commented in passing: “I was graduated during that horrible flu epidemic of 1919 read more

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Here’s the question that comes to my mind as 2022 begins: If soon after the global war on terror began — with no special sources of inside information, nothing — I could see perfectly well that it was going to be a disaster, why couldn’t the people who mattered? It’s not like it was magic or something. It was obvious as hell.

And yet the crew running our government read more

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My Year and Welcome to ItWhat a Boost(er) It Was for Me! By Tom Engelhardt  

Whether the pandemic that’s swept the world started from a bat or not, as 2021 ends, I think it’s safe to say that we’re all far battier than we were when it began.

In my neighborhood at least, as this year draws to a close, that old Lone Ranger line, “Who was that masked man?,” again applies to just about anyone. In fact, as Delta cases read more

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“There’s no such thing as a free lunch” is an old American adage. Venerable, time-tested, and seemingly true, though here’s an exception: retired general, disgraced former CIA chief, and leaker of classified information, David Petraeus.

For years, I’ve presented the retired general with an opportunity for that rarest of opportunities, a noon nosh out for nothing. More read more

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Yes, I still remember Christmas as a child. The tree, of course. The cotton under it for “snow” with little figures of skiers on it (though no one in my family had ever been near a pair of skis, no less a ski slope). I would be sent upstairs early to sleep and await Santa’s arrival. There, I would still be able to hear my father and the friend he had invited over to help read more

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Yes, it’s far more extreme and happening far faster than anyone imagined possible. From read more

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This was certainly the year of the fires — from the Turkish coast and the Greek Island of Evia to the American West. But it’s also been the year of record-breaking floods — sometimes, as in British Columbia and parts of the state of Washington, in the very same places that had earlier burned so devastatingly (releasing, by the way, yet more carbon into the atmosphere).

Yes, read more

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Yes, four-star General Lloyd Austin commanded American forces in Iraq back in 2010 and 2011. In 2013, he took over from General read more