The wide spread effectiveness of the ‘Taking the Knee’ phenomenon is proof that celebrities have extraordinary power to influence public action in protest of social injustice (This would seem to imply, by the way, that a celebrity’s power to influence brings a higher level of citizen responsibility to speak out – yet so few do.) One sports celebrity’s protest against[Read More...]
Yoda, the Jedi Master in the Star Wars films, once pointed out that the future is all too difficult to see and it’s hard to deny his insight. Yet I’d argue that, when it comes to the U.S. military and its wars, Yoda was just plain wrong. That part of the future is all too easy to imagine. It involves, you won’t[Read More...]
Many commentators from different ideological orientations provide a false equivalence of American withdrawal from Afghanistan with the fall of Saigon. It is false because American imperialism was thoroughly defeated by the revolutionary programmes and fighting spirit of Viet Cong. It led to rise of united, egalitarian, democratic, peaceful, and prosperous Vietnam. On the other hand, the imperialist invasion has ruined[Read More...]
They weren’t kidding when they called Afghanistan the “graveyard of empires.” Indeed, that cemetery has just taken another imperial body. And it wasn’t pretty, was it? Not that anyone should be surprised. Even after 20 years of preparation, a burial never is. In fact, the shock and awe(fulness) in Kabul and Washington over these last weeks shouldn’t have been surprising, given[Read More...]
It ended in chaos and disaster. Kabul has fallen and Joe Biden is being blamed (by congressional Republicans in particular) for America’s now almost-20-year disaster in Afghanistan. But is the war on terror itself over? Apparently not. It seems like centuries ago, but do you remember when, in May 2003, President George W. Bush declared “Mission accomplished” as he spoke proudly of his invasion[Read More...]
The All-American Base World – 750 U.S. Military Bases Still Remain Around the Planet It was the spring of 2003 during the American-led invasion of Iraq. I was in second grade, living on a U.S. military base in Germany, attending one of the Pentagon’s many schools for families of servicemen stationed abroad. One Friday morning, my class was on the verge of[Read More...]
Jonah Goldberg and Michael Ledeen have much in common. They are both writers and also cheerleaders for military interventions and, often, for frivolous wars. Writing in the conservative rag, The National Review, months before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Goldberg paraphrased a statement which he attributed to Ledeen with reference to the interventionist US foreign policy. “Every ten[Read More...]
“The thirty-year interregnum of U.S. global hegemony,” writes David Bromwich in the journal Raritan, “has been exposed as a fraud, a decoy, a cheat, [and] a sell.” Today, he continues, “the armies of the cheated are struggling to find the word for something that happened and happened wrong.” In fact, the armies of the cheated know exactly what happened, even if they[Read More...]
This summer, it seemed as if we Americans couldn’t wait to return to our traditional July 4th festivities. Haven’t we all been looking for something to celebrate? The church chimes in my community rang out battle hymns for about a week. The utility poles in my neighborhood were covered with “Hometown Hero” banners hanging proudly, sporting the smiling faces of uniformed local[Read More...]
It was all so long ago, in a world seemingly without challengers. Do you even remember when we Americans lived on a planet with a recumbent Russia, a barely rising China, and no obvious foes except what later came to be known as an “axis of evil,” three countries then incapable of endangering this one? Oh, and, as it turned[Read More...]
