Author: Tom Engelhardt

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

I was uptown in New York City on September 11, 2001, but I still remember the distant smoke that you could see over the Hudson River. If you had told me then that, thanks to those four hijacked planes and a tiny group of al-Qaeda operatives, my country would launch a 20-plus-year “Global War on Terror” — with two full-scale disastrous invasions of distant lands — and read more

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It’s bad enough here in the U.S. Yes, unlike Donald Trump (“Drill, drill, drill!“), Joe Biden has attempted to do something read more

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Not surprisingly, Bernie Sanders was distinctly ahead of his time when it came to Donald Trump. Back in 2016, as Guardian reporter Ed Pilkington reminded read more

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Here’s a truth (or do I mean a truism?): you’re only young once. I say that, of course, as I head for my 80th year on this planet. But as TomDispatch regular and co-chair of the read more

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Hey, here’s the good news! Last week, despite a looming congressional budget shutdown, Senate and House leaders actually agreed on the outline of a budget deal that would keep the money flowing. Above read more

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Here’s one obvious point that isn’t made often enough: American taxpayers are now spending close to a trillion dollars a year on what’s still called “national security,” but should really be called “national insecurity.” Think about it for a moment. read more

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At some level, it wasn’t very complicated for me. Simply put, I was horrified by the Hamas assault on Israel: the slaughter of kids attending a music festival, the killing of old folks and children in kibbutzes, and the kidnapping of about 240 people (again including the elderly and children). That was in no uncertain terms a first-class horror.

But when, only a couple of read more

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How strange to be living through it a second time, however different the form.

I’m thinking, of course, about a devastating set of totally unexpected attacks on one’s homeland. On September 11, 2001, it was the World Trade Center in downtown New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., with read more

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Think of Donald Trump as, in his own fashion, a creature of climate change. After all, in 2015, he descended that escalator into the election race denouncing immigrants read more

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Honestly, as 2021 ended, if I had predicted a Russian invasion of and unrelenting globalized war in Ukraine in 2022 and, in 2023, an explosion in the Middle East, beginning with a horrific Hamas incursion into Israel followed by the utter devastation of Gaza (while the Greater Middle East read more