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By Julian Fellowes
$16.49
By Paul Krugman
$17.13
$24
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{Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester} (CC BY-ND 2.0)
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Did you know? May 19 is “National Hepatitis Testing Day” and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending that all baby boomers, the group believed to account for 75 percent of hepatitis C infections in the United States, get checked.
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Secretary of Defense (CC BY 2.0)
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By Nick Turse, TomDispatch —
The official American reaction to the coordinated attacks in Kabul, the Afghan capital, as well as at Jalalabad airbase, and in Paktika and Logar Provinces, reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of guerrilla warfare.
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United States Marine Corps Official Page (CC-BY)
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By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch —
Take off your hat. Taps is playing. Almost four decades late, the Vietnam War and its postwar spawn, the Vietnam Syndrome, are finally heading for their American grave.
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DoD
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By William Pfaff — No one yet in Washington seems fully to appreciate or acknowledge the failure, but failure it is.
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Think-N-Evolve (CC-BY)
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By Dina Rasor, Truthout —
Many people know Daniel Ellsberg exposed the lies the U.S. government used to justify the Vietnam War. What many don’t know is that he was also a gung-ho, Cold War analyst who participated in them.
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ElDave (CC-BY)
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By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch —
If Apple made weapons, they would undoubtedly be drones, those remotely piloted planes getting such great press in the U.S.
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emilio labrador (CC-BY)
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By Noam Chomsky, TomDispatch —
Significant anniversaries are sometimes ignored. At the moment, we are failing to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the most destructive and murderous act of aggression of the post-World War II period: the invasion of South Vietnam and later all of Indochina.
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Daniel Ellsberg / ellsberg.net
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For our first Truthdigger installment of 2012, we salute Daniel Ellsberg, who has taken a page from his experience with the Pentagon Papers and is still busy serving up a bracing dose of truth to power, most recently with his support of accused WikiLeaker Bradley Manning.
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Wikimedia Commons / U.S. House of Representatives
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As the year draws to a close, the U.S. government risks repeating the costly mistakes of the recent past by ratcheting up tensions with Iran, emphasizing risky sanctions over diplomatic negotiations and making fact-challenged claims about Iran’s nuclear program. Good thing Rep. Dennis Kucinich is on Capitol Hill to call Congress on its deadly war addiction.
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AP / Mark Boster, Pool
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By Bill Boyarsky — In its two months of existence, Occupy L.A. showed a resiliency and purpose that could make some of its participants leaders in a great confrontation over economic injustice in the 2012 election.
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AP / Eric Gay
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By Chris Hedges — The occupation movement’s greatest challenge will be overcoming the deep distrust of white liberals by the poor and the working class, especially people of color.
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Rainer Hachfeld, Cagle Cartoons, Neues Deutschland, Germany —
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By Bob Katz —
Carl Oglesby, one of the most influential figures of the 1960s counterculture, died Tuesday at his home in Montclair, N.J., after a short illness.
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Flickr / DVIDSHUB
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Fred Branfman was in Laos when the U.S. began covertly dropping bombs on the country’s civilian population in 1969 as part of its military operations in neighboring Vietnam. Today, he writes about the Obama administration’s international counterterrorism plan, which involves 60,000 Special Operations forces worldwide. (more)
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By William Pfaff — I heard a brilliant young Harvard scholar, influential in the Obama administration, explain that the future of successful American action in Central Asia lies in a “surge” of civilian political and developmental action to rescue the people of the region from their present backwardness.
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By Nick Turse — The lone living top commander implicated in a slaughter of civilians and cover-up has written a history of the U.S. 9th Infantry Division in Vietnam, and what his book does not say could have grim and far-reaching consequences.
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Flickr / wisaflcio
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Upwards of 100,000 people turned out at a protest in the Wisconsin capital after Republican lawmakers and the Republican governor pushed through a new anti-union law eliminating most collective-bargaining rights for public employees.
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AP
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By Ron Kovic — As this, the 43rd anniversary of my wounding in Vietnam approaches, and I once again try to find meaning in that day and the days which were to follow, my thoughts return to the northern bank of the Cua Viet River on Jan. 20, 1968. It is a day that will change my life forever.
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Official White House portrait of John F. Kennedy
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By Richard Reeves — Fifty years ago, John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th president of the United States. He gave a stirring inaugural address and then took over a job for which he was unprepared. No one is ever prepared.
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Zuade Kaufman / Truthdig
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By Ron Kovic — As a former United States Marine Corps infantry sergeant who was shot and paralyzed from the mid-chest down on Jan. 20, 1968, during my second tour of duty in Vietnam, and as someone who has lived with the wounds of that war for over 40 years, I am writing this letter to ask you to join me as we begin a critical new phase in the growing anti-war movement.
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AP / Fradioon Pooya
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By Robert Scheer — One of “the best and the brightest” died last week, and in Richard Holbrooke we had a perfect example of the dark mischief to which David Halberstam referred when he authored that ironic label.
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On Thursday, author, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges and Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg were among the 131 anti-war activists arrested during a nonviolent demonstration outside the White House ...
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U.S. Embassy, Kabul (CC-BY-ND)
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Richard Holbrooke, a diplomatic fixture since the Vietnam era whose last assignment was special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, died Monday following heart surgery. ... (more)
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Stanley Kutler — Enter President Karzai. Like Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam, he has held power as a result of corrupt elections, featuring the not-so-invisible hands of his American backers. Once again, we have bet the mortgage on one leader, no matter how inept and corrupt he might be.
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AP / Dmitry Lovetsky
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Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev knows a thing or two about warfare in Afghanistan, having ordered Soviet troops out of the country two decades ago, and Wednesday he passed on a little advice to the NATO troops and allied forces fighting there now ... (continued)
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AP / Rodrigo Abd
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By Robert Scheer — It’s over for the U.S. in Afghanistan, but that doesn’t mean the death and destruction are about to stop. Quagmires don’t just go away. However, the signs are everywhere that the American course in that nation is doomed.
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By Fred Branfman, AlterNet —
Future historians will marvel at how U.S. leaders failed to learn from their horrific crimes in Indochina, and are instead repeating many of them today.
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This week’s edition of “Left, Right & Center” offers some new twists, including producer Sarah Spitz moderating for returning regulars Robert Scheer and Tony Blankley. This week’s menu of topics ripped from the headlines includes ... (continued)
Posted on Aug 20, 2010
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The U.S. has now been fighting in Afghanistan longer than in any war in American history, including that other quagmire, Vietnam. Our friends at Brave New Films send this mini-documentary, featuring Daniel Ellsberg, Tom Hayden and others.
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By Ruth Marcus — In understanding the foibles of politicians, I’ve always found it is a benefit to have spent large amounts of time with toddlers.
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Here’s some good news: The White House is currently in a “vigorous debate” over whether or not to sign the Ottawa Treaty, an international agreement to ban land mines, as pressure from Capitol Hill and NGOs pushes the administration to reconsider the country’s decade-old refusal to sign.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By William Pfaff — Washington once again finds itself dangerously entangled with the hostile policies, nationalistic interests and supporters, and personal ambitions of a foreign figure whom it counted on to serve American interests.
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youtube.com via AP
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Call it vigilante relief work or kidnapping, 10 American Baptists are in jail in Port-au-Prince after attempting to take 33 children out of Haiti in what they claim was an effort to “do the right thing.”
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By Fred Branfman — One of our beacons of integrity has flickered out. Our world has suddenly become a little darker, a little colder, a little more bitter and a little more insane.
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Flickr / Eustaquio Santimano
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Vietnam is spending billions on Russian submarines and fighter jets. Calm down, Dick Cheney. Vietnam cares more about the prawn market than World War III. The real superpower fretting over this is China. ... (continued)
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Staff Sgt. Cohen A. Young, U.S. Air Force
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By William Pfaff — The people who are running the war in Afghanistan are contemplating an air attack on one of Pakistan’s principal cities, the capital of its largest province, for reasons that defy logic.
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White House / Lawrence Jackson
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By William Pfaff — There was much disappointment on Tuesday night about Barack Obama’s decision to widen the war in Afghanistan, but there can have been no real surprise.
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U.S. Army / Spc. David J. Marshall
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By T.L. Caswell — By escalating an unnecessary conflict, President Barack Obama runs the risk of damaging many more Americans through PTSD and other human consequences of warfare. We are heaping upon members of the military more responsibility, more work, more war, more physical and psychological trauma.
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By William Pfaff — With Vietnam, John F. Kennedy counted on the fact that one of the most effective ways to take a decision is to postpone it until it no longer is relevant. This is what Barack Obama has been able to do until now.
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AP / Ahmad Masood, pool
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By Robert Fisk — Could there be a more accurate description of the Barack Obama-Gordon Brown message of congratulations to the fraudulently elected Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan? Now we have the venal, corrupt, sectarian Karzai in power after a poll far more ambitiously rigged than the Iranian version, and – yup, we love him dearly.
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Collage of photos taken by Alexander Gardner / Truthdig / Pete Souza
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George McGovern has been a witness to history, as both a scholar and one of the first senators to oppose the Vietnam War. At a recent Truthdig event, he shared his insight into past and current events, from Lincoln’s greatest accomplishment to the war in Afghanistan.
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Truthdig
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By Narda Zacchino —
George McGovern has some advice for President Barack Obama: Get U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. “I’m convinced that war is going to turn sour. I’m convinced we’re not going to prevail there,” he said.
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A new book on Ramparts Magazine, “A Bomb in Every Issue,” marks the significant contribution of the alternative San Francisco-based publication that gave a viable and legitimate voice to 1960s radicalism. Check out the NYT’s review of it here.
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AP / Emilio Morenatti
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By Fred Branfman — The Obama administration has already begun to escalate the fighting in Pakistan, a policy that could make even the Nixon-Kissinger destruction of Cambodia seem like a pleasant memory.
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AP / Caleb Jones
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By Chris Hedges — War memorials and museums are temples to the god of war. They sanitize the savage instruments of death that turn young soldiers and Marines into killers, and small villages in Vietnam or Afghanistan or Iraq into hellish bonfires.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The hawks urging President Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan have no interest in his domestic policy. The 20th century is a graveyard of good ideas that lost out to war.
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AP / Charles Dharapak
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By Robert Scheer — Communism once was, as the Islamic terrorist threat is today, presented as an undifferentiated revolutionary impulse that could never be diplomatically accommodated without sacrificing our own security or, indeed, our freedom. The various communist nations and movements, like those currently led by a polyglot collection of Islamist radicals, were stripped of any complexity, be it in their national identity or ideology.
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www.flickr.com/laugurinn
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Former CBS anchor Dan Rather has come up short—$70 million short, in fact—in his bid to sue his ex-employers at the network for relieving him of his desk duty following a 2004 report he delivered about then-President George W. Bush’s National Guard service during the Vietnam War era.
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