Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, Creating a Perpetual War Machine

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

Here’s how Colonel Robert Heinl, Jr., began a June 1971 article in Armed Forces Journal bluntly headlined “The Collapse of the Armed Forces”:

“The morale, discipline, and battleworthiness of the U.S. Armed Forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at anytime in this century and possibly in the history of the United States. By every conceivable read more

Tomgram: Alfred McCoy, A New Age of Sea Power?

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

The rise and fall of empires has long been a story at the heart of history. Since the Europeans first burst out of their then-marginal region on wooden sailing ships mounted with cannons in the fifteenth century, the planet seldom has had a moment in which several imperial powers weren’t competing for supremacy. In 1945, that number was reduced to two and then, for what the read more

“Why, This Isn’t Cuba”

Back in the 1890s those who believed conquering a continent was killing enough (without taking over Hawaii, the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, etc.) included Speaker of the House Thomas Reed. He clipped an article out of a newspaper about a lynching in South Carolina. He clipped a headline about “Another Outrage in Cuba.” He pasted the two together (fake news!) and gave them to a Congressman from South Carolina who was pushing for a war on Cuba. The Congressman eagerly read the article, then read more

Why the Google Protest of War Work Is Wonderful

The fact that 3,100 Google employees signed a letter opposing Google doing work for the U.S. military is wonderful for what it reveals.

It does not reveal that a major company exists that has not long been a contractor for the U.S. military. Google, whether its employees know it or not, has — like every other major U.S. company, as far as I know — long been a contractor for the U.S. military.

It does not reveal that any significant number of people exist who can name every current U.S. war or read more

Tomgram: Danny Sjursen, Cleaning House, Enabling War

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

His appointment was a genuine Bolton from the blue (so to speak). After all, everyone knew that former U.N. Ambassador (and Fox News commentator) John Bolton couldn’t be chosen for a major post in the Trump administration. No, not because of his outlandish views on war-making, or his responsibility read more

Martin and me: Spending a Night in the Concord Jail When Martin Luther King, Jr. was Assassinated

By Dave Lindorff

I never met Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., or attended a march or rally where I could hear him speak, but on the evening night of April 4, 1968, an hour or so after he was assassinated, I was in a jail cell in Concord, Mass. writing a freshman paper about King, Gandhi and Thoreau, and their shared ideas about the power of non-violent political protest.

It had all started out when I found myself blocked, unable to get started on an end-of-the-term paper for my philosophy class read more

An activist who cared: Winnie Mandela: Never Half-Stepping on the Road to Freedom

By Linn Washington, Jr.

In many ways Winnie Mandela – the iconic South African anti-apartheid activist – was the appropriate choice for keynote speaker at the historic October 1997 ‘Million Woman March’ in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Winnie Mandela, the second and best-known wife of the legendary leader Nelson Mandela, courageously confronted issues from racism to sexism, classism to capitalism. Those issues were embedded in the impetus for staging read more

Tomgram: Michael Klare, The New “Long War”

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

Someday, it may seem like history’s classic example of imperial overstretch. There was, after all, only one superpower left on this planet after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. It was challenged by… well, next to no one. Or rather by a single jihadist, his modest set of followers, and an investment of perhaps $400,000-$500,000. read more

Talk Nation Radio: Keeping the F-35 Out of Burlington

Our guest, James Marc Leas, is a Vermont attorney and a past co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild Free Palestine Subcommittee. He has been a leader of a campaign to block the stationing of F-35 jets in Burlington, Vermont, and of the formation of a Vermont chapter of World Beyond War. Jimmy Leas, welcome back to Talk Nation Radio.

Petition to cancel the F-35:
https://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=12514

How to contact the Mayor of Burlington and politely ask him not read more