W.J. Astore A visitor to my home today saw my retirement plaque, which marks my twenty years of service in the US Air Force. He immediately thanked me for my service to my country. I appreciated his thanks because I took (and take) some pride in having served honorably in the military. But people who…
Daniel N. White Why do we need to read history? Why does history matter? Because history helps us to hear the little voices, to discriminate among them, and to silence, perhaps, some of the more troublesome ones. And to act on those little voices, the right ones, when they tell us something important. For an…
W.J. Astore The Pentagon brass and bureaucrats can’t win foreign wars, but they sure as hell kick ass in domestic budgetary wars. That point is clear from Mattea Kramer’s new article at TomDispatch.com. Allowing the Pentagon a largely untouchable second budget to fund the ongoing military occupation of Afghanistan is an invitation both to prolong…
b. traven Anyone who pays the least bit of attention to what is going on would know that Russia had to act on our provocation. This thing will decide the next election in this country. Obama and the neo liberals have gotten themselves in a situation that will make them look like fools and the…
Brandon Lingle [Reprinted from the New York Times by permission of the author] At an outpost surrounded by blast walls and scrub brush, I huddled in an auditorium with two dozen other airmen to watch the Super Bowl streamed via a jerry-built cellphone Wi-Fi connection. “We probably have a worse broadcast than Kandahar,” said a…
W.J. Astore You’ve probably seen the headline: Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is gutting the Army to numbers not seen since the sleepy days before Pearl Harbor! Senior Republicans like Lindsey Graham and John McCain have already declared that these cuts are DOA (dead on arrival) in the Senate. Why? Allegedly because they endanger…
W.J. Astore This past weekend, CBS 60 Minutes did a segment on the F-35 fighter program. The basic facts are these: the program is seven years behind schedule and $163 billion over budget. Yes, you read that right: Not $163 million, but $163 billion. The lead contractor, Lockheed Martin, is essentially unapologetic about the delays…
W.J. Astore The United States spends nearly a trillion dollars a year on national defense, to include wars, homeland security, a bewildering array of intelligence agencies, and the maintenance of nuclear weapons. Are we buying greater security with all this money? Consider the following fact. A private contractor hired to vet security clearances for US…
Daniel N. White. Introduction by William Astore. Unbeknownst to most Americans, the U.S. military has embraced special forces (SEALs, Green Berets, and the like) and has been deploying them globally to at least eighty different countries. There’s an allure to special forces and the special ops community captured in the country’s admiration of SEAL Team…
Stuart Lyle Freed former Pussy Riot members, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, have unveiled a plan to start a new organization, Zone of Law. The name, according to a Rolling Stone report, is a play on the Russian word “zone,” which can refer to prison camps. It seems that outrage in the West over their…
The Contrary Perspective 