Author: Tom Engelhardt

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Tomgram: Engelhardt, Welcome to the Post-American World

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

Pardon Me!
High Crimes and Demeanors in the Age of Trump
By Tom Engelhardt

Let me try to get this straight: from the moment the Soviet Union imploded in 1991 until recently just about every politician and mainstream pundit in America assured us that we were the planet’s indispensable nation, the only truly exceptional one on this small orb of ours.

We were the sole superpower, read more

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Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, Is Anything the Moral Equivalent of War?

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

Ever since 2001, when President George W. Bush launched an endless “global war” not on al-Qaeda but on a phenomenon, or perhaps simply a feeling (“terror”) and those who could potentially induce it, America’s all-too-real conflicts have become, as TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon writes today, ever more read more

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Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, The Great Hysteria

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

Slouching Toward Mar-a-Lago
The Post-Cold-War Consensus Collapses
By Andrew J. Bacevich

Like it or not, the president of the United States embodies America itself. The individual inhabiting the White House has become the preeminent symbol of who we are and what we represent as a nation and a people. In a fundamental sense, he is us.

It was not always so. Millard Fillmore, the read more

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Tomgram: Robert Lipsyte, Hail to the Duffer in Chief

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

The Sport of Plutocrats
Golf Is Trump
By Robert Lipsyte

While waiting for Trump to jump the tracks, let’s savor the day when his inevitable train wreck first passed through a critical safety switch. On June 9th, President Trump alienated his true base -- the reactionary rich -- by driving his golf cart onto read more

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Tomgram: Michael Klare, Spreading the Cult of Carbon

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




America’s Carbon-Pusher in Chief
Trump’s Fossil-Fueled Foreign Policy
By Michael T. Klare

Who says President Trump doesn’t have a coherent foreign policy? Pundits and critics across the political spectrum have chided him for failing to articulate and implement a clear international agenda. Look closely at his overseas endeavors, though, and one all-too-consistent read more

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Tomgram: Laura Gottesdiener, The Wrath of the U.S. Along the Euphrates River

Burning Raqqa 
The U.S. War Against Civilians in Syria
By Laura Gottesdiener

It was midday on Sunday, May 7th, when the U.S.-led coalition warplanes again began bombing the neighborhood of Wassim Abdo’s family.

They lived in Tabqa, a small city on the banks of the Euphrates River in northern Syria. Then occupied by the Islamic State (ISIS, also known as Daesh), Tabqa was also under siege by U.S.-backed troops and being hit by daily artillery fire from U.S. Marines, as well as U.S.-led coalition read more

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Tomgram: William Hartung, The Trillion-Dollar National Security Budget

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

In May 2012, TomDispatch featured a piece by Chris Hellman and Mattea Kramer, both then analysts at the National Priorities Project, headlined “War Pay: The Nearly $1 Trillion National Security Budget.” The two of them ran through the figures for the cumulative annual budget for what we still mysteriously read more

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Tomgram: Engelhardt, Bombing the Rubble

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

Empire of Destruction 
Precision Warfare? Don’t Make Me Laugh 
By Tom Engelhardt

You remember. It was supposed to be twenty-first-century war, American-style: precise beyond imagining; smart bombs; drones capable of taking out a carefully identified and tracked human being just about anywhere on Earth; special operations raids so pinpoint-accurate that they would represent read more