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By Susan Jacoby
$16.32
E.J. Dionne
$12.21
$21
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AP/Brendon Smialowski
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By Robert Scheer — The horror of Boston should be a reminder that the choice of weaponry can be in itself an act of evil.
Posted on Apr 23, 2013
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visualpanic (CC BY 2.0)
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By Barbara Garson, TomDispatch —
If you had to date the Great Recession, you might say it started in September 2008 when Lehman Brothers vaporized over a weekend and a massive mortgage-based Ponzi scheme began to tumble. By 2008, however, the majority of American workers had already endured a 40-year decline in wages, security and hope—a Long Recession of their own.
Posted on Apr 10, 2013
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Glyn Lowe Photoworks (CC BY 2.0)
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By Nick Turse, TomDispatch —
On August 31, 1969, a rape was committed in Vietnam. Maybe numerous rapes were committed there that day, but this was a rare one involving American GIs that actually made its way into the military justice system.
Posted on Mar 19, 2013
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Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com (CC BY 2.0)
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By Nick Turse, TomDispatch —
Try to remain calm—even as you begin to feel your chest tighten and your heart race. Try not to panic as water starts flowing into your nose and mouth, while you attempt to constrict your throat and slow your breathing and keep some air in your lungs and fight that growing feeling of suffocation.
Posted on Feb 26, 2013
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Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearings to become secretary of defense have raised questions about the Republican Party’s ability to conduct U.S. foreign policy worthy of a major international player; Hillary Clinton may be responsible for the decline in the use of “Hillary” as a baby name; meanwhile, although President Obama is quite adept at Internet use, his tendency toward waging a “cyber war” is a deficient approach to online security. These discoveries and more after the jump.
Posted on Feb 6, 2013
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Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey (CC-BY)
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Last week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: Robert Scheer and Nick Turse on the American doctrine of eradication; women in combat; and the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
Posted on Jan 28, 2013
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Last week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: Robert Scheer and Nick Turse on the American doctrine of eradication; women in combat; and the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
Posted on Jan 28, 2013
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Kelly Branan
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More than 40 years after his death, Martin Luther King Jr., one of the great prophets of American democracy, has been reduced to little more than a lifeless statue. Yet his courageous call for peace and criticism of his government at a time of war must not be lost to history.
Posted on Jan 20, 2013
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AP/Jason Redmond
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By Ron Kovic — There is nothing in the lives of human beings more brutal and terrifying than war, and nothing more important than for those of us who have experienced it to share its awful truth.
Posted on Jan 19, 2013
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Metropolitan Books
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Even as the My Lai massacre has become the subject of numerous books and articles, all the other atrocities perpetrated by U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War have essentially vanished from popular memory, TomDispatch associate editor Nick Turse writes in “Kill Anything That Moves.”
Posted on Jan 18, 2013
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Ron Cogswell (CC BY 2.0)
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By Jonathan Schell, TomDispatch —
In Kill Anything that Moves, Nick Turse has for the first time put together a comprehensive picture, written with mastery and dignity, of what American forces actually were doing in Vietnam.
Posted on Jan 17, 2013
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David Fitzsimmons, Cagle Cartoons, The Arizona Star —
Posted on Jan 9, 2013
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Dave_B_ (CC BY 2.0)
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By Nick Turse, TomDispatch —
For all the dissimilarities, botched analogies, and tortured comparisons, there has been one connecting thread in Washington’s foreign wars of the last half century that, in recent years at least, Americans have seldom found of the slightest interest: misery for local nationals.
Posted on Jan 8, 2013
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With George McGovern, the former U.S. senator and Democratic challenger to Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election, in hospice care, “Democracy Now!” airs footage from the 2005 documentary “One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern.”
Posted on Oct 19, 2012
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AP/Jason Redmond
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By Alexander Reed Kelly — “Why it is so hard to tell the truth today?” I asked Vietnam veteran and anti-war hero Ron Kovic one summer night over drinks in midtown Manhattan.
Posted on Aug 19, 2012
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A. Strakey (CC BY-ND 2.0)
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Almost 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War, the United States has established a cleanup program to address the effects of toxic chemicals used during the conflict that continue to afflict the Vietnamese people with cancers, birth defects and other diseases.
Posted on Aug 10, 2012
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Karl Marlantes, a highly decorated veteran of the Vietnam War and author of two grim and heart-wrenching books based on his experiences, talks with Bill Moyers about returning home to the United States after being sent across the world to kill.
Posted on Aug 3, 2012
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ana_omelete (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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Medical professionals are puzzling over why a hand, foot and mouth disease has killed so many children in a relatively small outbreak in Cambodia.
Posted on Jul 12, 2012
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By David Sirota — Desperate to cobble a pro-war cautionary tale out of a blood-soaked tragedy, we keep reimagining the loss in Vietnam not as a policy failure but as the product of an America that dishonored returning troops.
Posted on May 31, 2012
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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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The Lotto Symbolizes the False Promises of Barracuda Capitalism
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