The US Has Spent Tens of Millions of Dollars Fighting Pirates, and It Still Failed The US Has Spent Tens of Millions of Dollars Fighting Pirates, and It Still Failed
Despite US military efforts, maritime insecurity has been markedly on the rise in the waters off West Africa.
Sep 25, 2014 / Nick Turse
The Loneliest Pundits The Loneliest Pundits
The war whoops of the pundit class helped propel the nation into yet another doomed military adventure in the Middle East. Ghastly beheadings by a newly discovered enemy were the frightening flashpoint. The president ordered bombers aloft, and US munitions were once again pounding battlefields in Iraq—and, at the time of this writing, in Syria. The president promised to “degrade and destroy” ISIS. Here we go again, I thought. This is how modern America goes to war. When the superpower Goliath is challenged by sudden savagery, it has no choice but to respond with brute force. Or so we are told. Otherwise, America would no longer be a convincing Goliath. Citizens and members of the uniformed military are tired of war, but both in a sense are prisoners of the media-hyped hysteria that is the usual political reflex. Shoot first, ask questions later. While some commentators, like David Ignatius, have raised good questions about how this war will be fought, such questions do not address the larger question facing American warmaking. Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50! Among leading columnists, I have seen only two who are framing the American dilemma in a more straightforward way. Columnist Eugene Robinson is a lonely voice at The Washington Post arguing for a fundamental shift. He has no touchy-feely illusions about holding hands with jihadists. But he knows repression by military force ensures the cultural collision will get worse. “Political Islam cannot be bombed away,” Robinson wrote. “If it is not somehow allowed constructive expression, it will make itself heard, and felt, in more tragic ways.” Robinson is a liberal. The other columnist exploring similar terrain is Ross Douthat of The New York Times, a conservative. Douthat suggested a hybrid strategy of containment and attrition that avoids a larger war in Syria and backs away from the illusion that ground war leads to nation-building. “It does not traffic, in other words, in the fond illusions that we took with us into Iraq in 2003, and that hard experience should have disabused us of by now,” he wrote. “But some illusions are apparently just too powerful for America to shake.” Read Next: Peter Van Buren on the impossibility of victory in Iraq
Sep 24, 2014 / William Greider
Barbara Lee Was Right in 2001. She’s Still Right Now. Barbara Lee Was Right in 2001. She’s Still Right Now.
Tuesday the Congresswoman called for “a full congressional debate and vote on any military action, as required by the Constitution.”
Sep 24, 2014 / John Nichols
When Will American Foreign Policymakers Learn From Their Mistakes in the Middle East? When Will American Foreign Policymakers Learn From Their Mistakes in the Middle East?
Former top UN diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi lays out how decades of naïveté about Arab societies, poor planning and post-conflict miscalculations have fostered a deep mistru...
Sep 24, 2014 / Barbara Crossette
Looking Backward: James Campbell Reviews His Own 1982 ‘Nation’ Essay on Leaving Scotland Looking Backward: James Campbell Reviews His Own 1982 ‘Nation’ Essay on Leaving Scotland
“How can I have seemed so settled in my opinions? So smug in my attitudes?”
Sep 24, 2014 / Books & the Arts / James Campbell and Back Issues
Life in the Ruins Life in the Ruins
How the destruction of architectural treasures became a weapon in Syria’s ongoing civil war.
Sep 23, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Frederick Deknatel
The Fight to Keep Toxic Mining Out of El Salvador The Fight to Keep Toxic Mining Out of El Salvador
Hundreds of protesters recently gathered at the World Bank to shame a gold-mining firm’s shakedown of one of Central America’s poorest countries.
Sep 23, 2014 / Diana Anahi Torres-Valverde and Foreign Policy In Focus
As US Bombs ISIS in Syria, Even Some Pro-War Pundits Express Skepticism As US Bombs ISIS in Syria, Even Some Pro-War Pundits Express Skepticism
The new war is only a few weeks old, but prominent cheerleaders are already expressing sober second thoughts.
Sep 23, 2014 / William Greider
We Cannot Win in Iraq We Cannot Win in Iraq
After more than two decades of empty declarations of victory in Iraq, “success,” however defined, is impossible.
Sep 23, 2014 / Peter Van Buren
The Building Blocks of War The Building Blocks of War
Media fearmongering, political grandstanding and everything else you need to launch a new military mission.
Sep 22, 2014 / Tom Tomorrow