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Tag: war

Columns

Syriana
April 16, 2018
“‘Explosion without an objective,’ declared Miles Blundell, ‘is politics in its purest form.’”—Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day   U.S. Imperialism should be a thing again, but some theoretical adjustment is suggested. Scholarly analyses have tied it to narrow ...

General McMaster and the Miniskirts
August 24, 2017
It was the miniskirts that did it. For many long months of Donald Trump’s unhinged presidency, his collection of stern-faced generals had been begging to send more troops into Afghanistan to stop hemorrhaging losses to the ascendant Taliban. The president did not want to do ...

Stupid, Brutal World
April 19, 2017
Brian Williams is a moron. Let’s just acknowledge that from the start. But let’s also acknowledge that he’s not, by any means, a historically unique moron.

The Art of War
April 06, 2017
So many American writers and artists are critical of Trump but not of the American state, or even of America itself.

If All You Have Is a Hammer
March 24, 2017
When you sign up, allegedly, to fight for freedom and democracy and you see nothing of that kind being practiced here in the United States, with the mass surveillance and the reach of agencies like the National Security Agency, etc., this is not what you put your life on the ...

New Praetorianism
February 17, 2017
There is a fundamental synergy between Democratic chauvinist exceptionalism, GOP clash-of-civilizations dogma, and Trump’s grotesque strongman antics. The Democrats may prefer a reboot of Cold War apocalypticism; Trump, for his part, looks eager to tear up global treaties, ...

Rhetoric Meets Reality for Married Gay Veterans
September 22, 2014
A couple purely rhetorical statements have recently achieved the status of “bipartisan consensus.” “ISIS is barbaric” is one. “Returning veterans deserve our best treatment” is another. Unfortunately, these truisms are too vague to suggest any particular course of ...

Not All Veterans
July 03, 2014
As a veteran, I hate it when other veterans speak for me. I also hate it when they use their veteran status as a way to promote unexamined bellicosity. This kind of appeal to veteran authority has been happening a lot lately. Most of it has been in response to the violent ...