( Tomdispatch.com ) – Like many American boys of the baby-boomer generation, I played “war” with those old, olive-drab, plastic toy soldiers meant to evoke our great victory over the Nazis and “the Japs” during World War II. At age 10, I also kept a scrapbook of the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and […]
Weapons R US: Confessions of a Recovering Arms Addict
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Perhaps you’ve heard of “Makin’ Thunderbirds,” a hard-bitten rock & roll song by Bob Seger that I listened to 30 years ago while in college. It’s about auto workers back in 1955 who were “young and proud” to be making Ford Thunderbirds. But in the early 1980s, Seger sings, “the plants […]
What would real National Defense Look Like? Maxims for a Very Different Pentagon
( Middle East Monitor ) – A progressive Pentagon? Talk about an oxymoron! The Pentagon continues to grow and surge with ever larger budgets, ever more expansive missions (for example, a Space Force to dominate the heavens and yet more bases in the Pacific to encircle China), and ever greater ambitions to dominate everywhere, including […]
America’s Perpetual Wars you Aren’t Supposed to Notice
( Tomdispatch.com ) – In his message to the troops prior to the July 4th weekend, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin offered high praise indeed. “We have the greatest fighting force in human history,” he tweeted, connecting that claim to the U.S. having patriots of all colors, creeds, and backgrounds “who bravely volunteer to defend […]
An Iron Curtain Has Descended on America
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Decline. It’s a word that hasn’t been much in the American vocabulary, though, as retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, historian, and TomDispatch regular William Astore suggests today, it certainly should have been. In fact, you could argue that we’re talking about 30-plus years of all-American decline, during much of which, after […]
Are the Best Years of My Country Behind Me? Reflections on a Long-Ago Tour of Los Alamos and the Trinity Atomic Test Site
( Tomdispatch.com) – I turn 60 this year. My health is generally good, though I have aches and pains from a form of arthritis. I’m not optimistic enough to believe that the best years of my life are ahead of me, nor so pessimistic as to assume that the best years are behind me. But […]
A Highway to Peace or a Highway to Hell? The Vast Power of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex
( Tomdispatch.com) – In April 1953, newly elected President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a retired five-star Army general who had led the landings on D-Day in France in June 1944, gave his most powerful speech. It would become known as his “Cross of Iron” address. In it, Ike warned of the cost humanity would pay if Cold […]
Can the Military-Industrial Complex Be Tamed? Cutting the Pentagon Budget in Half Would Finally Force the Generals to Think
By William J. Astore | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – My name is Bill Astore and I’m a card-carrying member of the military-industrial complex (MIC). Sure, I hung up my military uniform for the last time in 2005. Since 2007, I’ve been writing articles for TomDispatch focused largely on critiquing that same MIC and America’s […]
Why does the Pentagon Budget Really Keep Growing? When Democracies Pursue Imperial Dominance it doesn’t End Well
( Tomdispatch.com) – Imagine this scenario for a moment: a “great power” watches another major power fight a war in a nearby nation for 10 years before its army limps home defeated and, not so very long after, that country implodes. A little over a decade later, by then unofficially the “last superpower” on planet […]
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