Author: Tom Engelhardt

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In June, Austin “Scott” Miller, the special-ops general chosen to be the 17th U.S. commander in Afghanistan, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Like so many of the generals who had preceded him, he suggested that he saw evidence of “progress” in the Afghan war, even if he refused to “guarantee you a timeline or an end date.” Smart move, general!

As read more

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I felt discouraged recently when it hit home: I’ll never be a Supreme Court justice. Reviewing my life, I came to the realization that I was in no way qualified — and no, I’m not talking about my utter lack of legal experience (except as a juror). I was thinking instead of the qualifications that — as TomDispatch read more

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(Un)Happy Anniversary!
17 Years of War (and More to Come)
By Tom Engelhardt

We’re already two years past the crystal anniversary and eight years short of the silver one, or at least we would be, had it been a wedding — and, after a fashion, perhaps it was. On October 7, 2001, George read more

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I missed the Salem witch trials, but I well remember Anita Hill at the Clarence Thomas hearings. How could I forget the fire read more

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Here’s a strange reality of the last 17 years of the American way of war: in the spring of 2003, before the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, millions of people took to the streets, hundreds read more

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You want the nitty-gritty on the Bermuda Triangle of injustice that the U.S. created at the CIA’s global black sites and its detention center in Guantánamo, Cuba? Well, here’s a true story about an American National Guardsman at Gitmo who was read more

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The other day as I was passing through a waiting room in my gym, I suddenly saw — well, who else in 2018? — Donald Trump on a giant TV screen. He was trying on a specially made hardhat and preparing to address read more

Here’s a story that’s never left my mind. Back in 2011, Secretary of Defense James “Mad Dog” Mattis was the head of U.S. Central Command, which oversaw the war on terror across the Greater Middle East, and he was obsessed with Iran. He cooked up read more

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If you were sleeping in 2010 when the Supreme Court — you know, the perfectly reasonable one that didn’t yet have Brett Kavanaugh on it — made political spending a form of free speech with its Citizens United case, you may not yet know that American politics is increasingly a possession read more

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One genuine joy in my life is spending time with my grandson. He’s six, like TomDispatch regular Frida Berrigan’s son Seamus, and he reminds me constantly of just how remarkable — how clever, quick, quirky, inquisitive, and ready read more