Author: Tom Engelhardt

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

It started with three air strikes on September 11, 2001. The fourth plane, heading perhaps for the Capitol (a building that wouldn’t be targeted again until last January 6th), ended up in read more

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World War I was, however faintly, still part of my life when I grew up in the Cold War years. I can remember being hoisted on my father’s shoulders to see the aging American veterans of that global conflict during what must have been a Veterans Day parade down New York City’s Fifth Avenue. My parents talked about their memories of both world wars, as well as the Roaring read more

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Here’s the strange thing: these days, you would think that China was “rising” to potentially top great-power status out of nowhere, out of nothing (unlike the United States). Historically speaking, however, America is the great-power newcomer on this planet. China has had a long history as an empire, the greatest one of its time during certain dynastic reigns, though read more

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Some things just never seem to end. What came to mind was the way in which, during administration after administration, the Saudis and other foreign powers have poured money into Washington to ensure that their governments and their desires will be supported, that they read more

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In this century, the U.S. military has fought a seemingly endless series of disastrous wars in distant lands, so endless that they’ve commonly come to be known as “forever wars.” Given our all-volunteer armed forces, the only military responsibility of so many American civilians read more

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Slaughter Central The United States as a Mass-Killing Machine By Tom Engelhardt

By the time you read this piece, it will already be out of date. The reason’s simple enough. No matter what mayhem I describe, with so much all-American weaponry in this world of ours, there’s no way to keep up. Often, despite the headlines that go with mass killings here, there’s almost no way even to know.

On this planet of ours, America is the emperor of weaponry, even read more

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When it comes to future conflicts or present-day war games, they have all the advantages and we have none! Or as Eric Edelman, a former undersecretary of defense for policy, told CNN recently, “Russia read more

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January 6th will long be remembered for bringing a version of age-of-Trump extremism into the open in a startling fashion. Since the Civil War, the overthrow of the government hasn’t been on the agenda — not at least until that recent January day. Among the insurrectionists read more

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First, he said that it would a “tough” deadline to keep; then, that it would be “ read more

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

Think of it as Cold War II or, as President Biden put it in his first news conference, “a battle between the utility of democracies in the twenty-first century and read more