Nile Stanton Back in the age when slavery was deemed acceptable by many people, it was no doubt more widely and readily accepted by slave owners and those in the numerous businesses that financially profited from it. I imagine that shipping businesses that profited from transporting slaves were deemed vital and in the national interest,…
W.J. Astore Since the end of the Vietnam War, when it eliminated the draft, the United States has relied on an “all-volunteer military,” or AVM. But that military, as one would expect, has not drawn equally from all segments of American society. Its recruits have been more rural than urban, more Southern and Midwestern than…
W.J. Astore Rachel Maddow at MSNBC aired a new documentary last night on why we went to war against Iraq in 2003. In a word: oil. Bush and Cheney were looking to overthrow Saddam Hussein as a prerequisite to controlling and privatizing Iraqi oil production. Pre-war planning in the U.S. as well as Great Britain…
I started writing for TomDispatch, a remarkable contrarian site founded and edited by Tom Engelhardt, a fine editor/writer and even finer gentleman, in October 2007. My first article was on the Petraeus surge and how President Bush and his administration were hiding behind the absurdly bemedaled and beribboned uniform of that general. Tom Engelhardt’s generous…
The business of wars and weapons sales is booming, with the United States leading the pack as the world’s foremost “merchant of death,” as Michael Klare notes in this article on the global arms trade for TomDispatch.com. But why should we be surprised? War has always been a racket. And if you don’t believe me…
The Contrary Perspective 