b. traven and W.J. Astore Are America’s foreign policy leaders mad? It’s a serious question. Consider last week’s dispatch of 300 military trainers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade to Western Ukraine, a country involved in a contentious jousting match with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Or consider this week’s deployment of an aircraft carrier battle group off…
Daniel N. White Two recent events in Austin, Texas are worth noting. The first was Senator Bernie Sanders’ recent appearance at a Democratic Socialists of America sponsored event held at the local IBEW hall. There was extensive promotion of the event by the local AFL-CIO and the turnout was good—close to 600 showed up. Audience…
W.J. Astore Would a war against Iran take “only a few days“? According to Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a few days of precision bombing would be enough to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability. Oh, there might be a few (thousand) innocent Iranians killed. And perhaps some radiation spread about. But wouldn’t some dead and irradiated…
W.J. Astore On 30 April 1970, 45 years ago this month, President Richard M. Nixon ordered an invasion into Cambodia. Explaining his reasoning for widening the war in Southeast Asia, Nixon declared: If, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy…
Daniel N. White The criminal foolishness of advocating war against Iran is rather obvious. Senator John McCain, US Naval Academy ‘58, is a criminal fool by anyone’s definition to advocate launching a war we would certainly lose, as he so recently did from the floor of the Senate. This is obvious and the failure of…
W.J. Astore American reporting on Iraq focuses on the eternal now, such as the rise of ISIS or recent battles in Tikrit. Rarely is any context given to these events, and rarer still is any accounting of the costs of war (still rising) to the Iraqi people. Let’s return to 2003 and the U.S. invasion…
b. traven There’s an old comedy routine by Abbott and Costello. Abbott tells Costello, “Who’s on first.” (It’s a baseball routine.) Costello, not getting that the player’s surname is “Who,” keeps demanding: “No, I want to know who’s on first?” It goes downhill from there as the two comedians talk past one another, each exasperating…
Nicolas J S Davies As I wrote this essay on the 12th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq (March 19-20), the news was filled with its violent repercussions across the Middle East and the world. The latest atrocity was a multiple suicide bombing at two mosques in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, that have killed…
Walter Stewart (Major General, U.S. Army, retired) Sniper Chris Kyle did not live long enough. I don’t say this in the context of his and Chad Littlefield’s senseless murder at the hands of a supposed brother-in-arms, but in the context of the American Sniper movie trailer that has Kyle saying, “I’m willing to meet my…
Daniel N. White James Fallows, a noted journalist and author of National Defense (1981), is tits on a boar useless these days. That’s my conclusion after reading his Atlantic Monthly cover story, The Tragedy of the American Military, in which he asks, Why do the best soldiers in the world keep losing? It is a truly terrible…
The Contrary Perspective 