W.J. Astore Mark Danner has a probing article at TomDispatch.com on the career arc of Dick Cheney, the self-selected Vice President under George W. Bush. Cheney’s approach to history, an attitude he shared with Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld, was the idea he could make his own reality, independent of history. Previous precedents on waterboarding…
W.J. Astore Did you know an Iranian “fleet” is approaching American shores? I’m talking about a destroyer and a supply ship. Sound the alarm! General quarters! Juan Cole at Informed Comment has an amusing story on our media’s latest manifestation of what he terms Iranian “Derangement Syndrome.” Two years ago, I wrote about our amazing capacity…
JEREMIAH GOULKA Originally posted at the American Prospect. Used by permission of the author. Chances are that you missed the State Department releasing the final environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline last week. You were meant to: it came out on 4pm on the Friday before Super Bowl Sunday. The mainstream media only had…
W.J. Astore As a historian, I like to think we learn valuable lessons from history. Those who don’t learn from the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them, or so my students tell me, paraphrasing (often unknowingly) the words of George Santayana. We applaud that saying as a truism, yet why do we…
W.J. Astore On this Super Bowl Sunday of 2014, doubtless we’ll be hearing about the “heroes” of the gridiron. Whichever team wins will have its “heroes” (Peyton Manning, perhaps?). Meanwhile, remote feeds will show various military units watching the Big Game, and doubtless these troops will be touted as American heroes. (They’re indisputably a tad…
The Contrary Perspective 