Ending Militarism in America
I read the news today, oh boy. About a lucky man named Elon Musk. But he lost out on one thing: he didn’t get a top secret briefing on Pentagon war plans…
William J Astore
Greenland! Canada! The Panama Canal! The Gulf of America! Gaza! Manifest Destiny Gets a Reboot Under President Donald Trump
A few years ago, I came across an old book at an estate sale. Its title caught my eye: “Our New Possessions.” Its cover featured the Statue of Liberty against…
Ten Thoughts on Curbing the Worst Excesses of U.S. Militarism
As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take America back (again!) to greatness, there’s been much talk of Elon Musk’s new DOGE, or Department of Government Efficiency, and whether it will dare…
USA: From the Arsenal of Democracy to an Arsenal of Genocide
During World War II, American leaders proudly proclaimed this country the “arsenal of democracy,” supplying weapons and related materiel to allies like Great Britain and the Soviet Union. To cite just…
Nuclear Armageddon Is Us
As a late-stage baby boomer, a child of the 1960s, I grew up dreaming about America’s nuclear triad. You may remember that it consisted of strategic bombers like the B-52…
There Is Only One Spaceship Earth
When I was in the U.S. military, I learned a saying (often wrongly attributed to the Greek philosopher Plato) that only the dead have seen the end of war. Its persistence through…
Cutting the Pentagon Down to Size
In an age when American presidents routinely boast of having the world’s finest military, where nearly trillion-dollar war budgets are now a new version of routine, let me bring up one vitally important but seldom…
Bombing Muslims for Peace
Like many American boys of the baby-boomer generation, I played “war” with those old, olive-drab, plastic toy soldiers meant to evoke our great victory over the Nazis and “the Japs”…
Imagining a Progressive Pentagon
A progressive Pentagon? Talk about an oxymoron! The Pentagon continues to grow and surge with ever larger budgets, ever more expansive missions (for example, a Space Force to dominate the heavens and yet more bases in…
“The Greatest Fighting Force in Human History” – The Perpetual Wars You Aren’t Supposed to Notice
In his message to the troops prior to the July 4th weekend, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin offered high praise indeed. “We have the greatest fighting force in human history,”…
The End Stage of American Empire
All around us things are falling apart. Collectively, Americans are experiencing national and imperial decline. Can America save itself? Is this country, as presently constituted, even worth saving? For me,…
Nuking the Promise of America
I turn 60 this year. My health is generally good, though I have aches and pains from a form of arthritis. I’m not optimistic enough to believe that the best…
A Highway to Peace or a Highway to Hell? The Vast Power of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex
In April 1953, newly elected President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a retired five-star Army general who had led the landings on D-Day in France in June 1944, gave his most powerful…
Can the Military-Industrial Complex Be Tamed?
Cutting the Pentagon Budget in Half Would Finally Force the Generals to Think My name is Bill Astore and I’m a card-carrying member of the military-industrial complex (MIC). Sure, I…
The Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy Drives Record Military Spending
More than two millennia ago, in the History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides recounted a disastrous conflict Athens waged against Sparta. A masterwork on strategy and war, the book is still…
The Madness of Nuclear Warfare, Alive and Well in America
Hey, cheer up because it truly is a beauty! I’m talking about this country’s latest “stealth bomber,” the B-21 Raider, just revealed by Northrop Grumman, the company that makes it, in all its…
The Paranoid Nature of American Foreign and Domestic Policy
I have a brother with chronic schizophrenia. He had his first severe catatonic episode when he was 16 years old and I was 10. Later, he suffered from auditory hallucinations and…
Hardening Schools and Arming Teachers Is the Wrong Approach
American schools are soft, you say? I know what you mean. I taught college for 15 years, so I’ve dealt with my share of still-teenagers fresh out of high school.…
Five Reasons Why Washington Can’t Break Its War Addiction
Why has the United States already become so heavily invested in the Russia-Ukraine war? And why has it so regularly gotten involved, in some fashion, in so many other wars…
Will the Pentagon Budget Ever Shrink?
What Would It Take for Military Spending in America to Go Down? A Thought Experiment on the Military-Industrial Complex I have a question for you: What would it take in…
Making Sense of the New Cold War Dreamscape
In certain quarters in this country, Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine has generated enthusiasm for a new cold war. At the New York Times, Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin have been described as “children…
America’s Disastrous 60-Year War
Three Generations of Conspicuous Destruction by the Military-Industrial Complex In my lifetime of nearly 60 years, America has waged five major wars, winning one decisively, then throwing that victory away,…
Only Fools Replay Doomsday – The Cold War, Reborn and Resurgent
In the early 1960s, at the height of America’s original Cold War with the Soviet Union, my old service branch, the Air Force, sought to build 10,000 land-based nuclear missiles.…
Why It’s Time to Make Deep Cuts at the Pentagon
Where are you going to get the money? That question haunts congressional proposals to help the poor, the unhoused, and those struggling to pay the mortgage or rent or medical…
The Pentagon as Pentagod: America’s Abyss of Weapons and Warmaking
Who is America’s god? The Christian god of the beatitudes, the one who healed the sick, helped the poor, and preached love of neighbor? Not in these (dis)United States. In…
The U.S. Military, Post-Afghanistan – Can We Finally Give Peace A Chance?
Yoda, the Jedi Master in the Star Wars films, once pointed out that the future is all too difficult to see and it’s hard to deny his insight. Yet I’d argue that,…
Pivoting to America
As a ROTC cadet and an Air Force officer, I was a tiny part of America’s vast Department of Defense (DoD) for 24 years until I retired and returned to…
America Is Stabbing Itself in the Back
Tough Truths Are Desperately Needed About America’s Lost Wars Americans may already be lying themselves out of what little remains of their democracy. The big lie uniting and motivating today’s…
War Is Strictly Business in Twenty-First Century America
Why don’t America’s wars ever end? I know, I know: President Joe Biden has announced that our combat troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan by 9/11 of this year, marking the 20th anniversary…
The Cold War, Rebooted and Rebranded
The future isn’t what it used to be. As a teenager in the 1970s, I watched a lot of TV science fiction shows, notably Space: 1999 and UFO, that imagined a near future…
Why Pentagon Weapons Programs Rarely Get Canceled Despite Major Problems
Cancel culture is a common, almost viral, term in political and social discourse these days. Basically, somebody expresses views considered to be outrageous or vile or racist or otherwise insensitive and…
Joe Biden’s Peace Force? A Multipoint Plan to End War as We Know It
When it comes to war, if personnel is policy, America is yet again in deep trouble. As retired Army Major Danny Sjursen recently pointed out at TomDispatch, when it comes to foreign policy,…
POW Nation – When Will America Free Itself From War?
“POWs Never Have A Nice Day.” That sentiment was captured on a button a friend of mine wore for our fourth grade class photo in 1972. That prisoners of war could never…
Spilling Ink and Spilling Blood: Fighting and Writing Against America’s Forever Wars
Co-Written by William J. Astore and Danny Sjursen If you have a moment, how about joining two retired officers, Bill Astore and me, Danny Sjursen, as we think about this country’s catastrophic…
On Being Black and Blue in America
Reclaiming American Idealism: We Could Use A Leader Like George McGovern Again As I lived through the nightmare of the election campaign just past, I often found myself dreaming of…
America’s Dark Side in the Age of Trump
What pops into your head when you hear the number 1,000 in a political-military context? Having studied German military history, I immediately think of Adolf Hitler’s confident boast that his…
Killing Democracy in America: The Military-Industrial Complex as a Cytokine Storm
The phrase “thinking about the unthinkable” has always been associated with the unthinkable cataclysm of a nuclear war, and rightly so. Lately, though, I’ve been pondering another kind of unthinkable scenario, nearly…
Warrior-Cops Are the Law — and Above the Law — as Violence Grips America
From their front porches, regular citizens watched a cordon of cops sweep down their peaceful street in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Rankled at being filmed, the cops exceeded their authority and demanded…
How My Dad Predicted the Decline of America
My dad was born in 1917. Somehow, he survived the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1919, but an outbreak of whooping cough in 1923 claimed his baby sister, Clementina. One of my dad’s first memories…
The Paradox of America’s Endless Wars – They Persist Because They Don’t Exist (For Americans)
There is no significant anti-war movement in America because there’s no war to protest. Let me explain. In February 2003, millions of people took to the streets around the world to protest America’s march…
The Art of the Deal, Pentagon-Style: Wars Without Victories, Weapons Without End
The expression “self-licking ice cream cone” was first used in 1992 to describe a hidebound bureaucracy at NASA. Yet, as an image, it’s even more apt for America’s military-industrial complex, an…
American Exceptionalism Is Killing the Planet – The Many Abuses of Endless War
Ever since 2007, when I first started writing for TomDispatch, I’ve been arguing against America’s forever wars, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, or elsewhere. Unfortunately, it’s no surprise that, despite my more than 60 articles,…
The Militarization of Everything in USA
When Americans think of militarism, they may imagine jackbooted soldiers goose-stepping through the streets as flag-waving crowds exult; or, like our president, they may think of enormous parades featuring troops and missiles…
The Ultra-Costly, Underwhelming F-35 Fighter
How are you with numbers? I can deal with $1.5 million. I think I can even imagine $1.5 billion, a sum a thousand times greater. But how about a million…
Military Strength Is Our National Religion
When I was a teenager in the 1970s, I looked to the heavens: to God and Christianity (as arbitrated by the Catholic Church) and to the soaring warbirds of…
The Riptide of American Militarism
Put up with me for just a moment while I wax literary. It turns out that, if French novelist Marcel Proust lived today, he might have had to retitle his Remembrance…
Six Ways to Curb America’s Military Machine | William J. Astore
Donald Trump is a con man. Think of Trump University or a juicy Trump steak or can’t-lose casinos (that never won). But as president, one crew he hasn't conned is the Pentagon. Quite the opposite,…
The U.S. Military’s Lost Wars
One of the finest military memoirs of any generation is Defeat Into Victory, British Field Marshal Sir William Slim’s perceptive account of World War II’s torturous Burma campaign, which ended in a resounding…
The American Military Uncontained , Out Everywhere And Winning Nowhere
When it comes to the “world’s greatest military,” the news has been shocking. Two fast U.S. Navy ships colliding with slow-moving commercial vessels with tragic loss of life. An Air Force that…
What Does An “America-First” Foreign Policy Actually Mean?
What does an “America-first” foreign policy look like under President Donald Trump? As a start, forget the ancient label of “isolationism.” With the end of Trump’s first 100 days…
Too Many Generals Spoil The Democracy
America has always had a love affair with its generals. It started at the founding of the republic with George Washington and continued with (among others) Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor,…
We Are The Empire Of U.S. Military Interventions, Alien Disaster Movies, and Star Wars
Perhaps you’ve heard the expression: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Cartoonist Walt Kelly’s famed possum, Pogo, first uttered that cry. In light of alien disaster movies…
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