The late, great Murray Polner penned this op-ed for Antiwar.com on February 9, 2015. That’s roughly one year after the US-backed coup in Kiev, about two years before President Donald Trump began providing “lethal” aid to the Ukrainian regime, and seven years before...
Kent State 1970: We Need a Serious Look at What Happened and Why
This originally appeared at Antiwar.com on May 4, 2015It’s been 45 years since draft-deferred Ohio National Guardsmen aimed their M-1 rifles and .45 pistols at unarmed Ken State College students, killing four and wounding nine on May 4, 1970. You have to be well...
Sorry, But It’s No Longer Boxer Rebellion Time
It was all reminiscent of that historic American milestone in 2004 when President George W. Bush, wearing an Air Force suit that made him resemble a genuine combat veteran, stood proudly on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln under a banner triumphantly heralding...
The Blind Leading the Blind: Everyone’s Middle Eastern Madness.
“There is a holy mistaken zeal in politics as well as in religion. By persuading others, we convince ourselves,” or so said the forgotten English writer Junius in the mid-18th Century. When I read his words the other day I was reminded of other situations where...
Iran, Israel, and American Jews
The struggle over the Iran Agreement reminds me of the seventeen years I spent as editor of Present Tense, a liberal Jewish-oriented magazine, published by the American Jewish Committee. In 1990, we featured a detailed investigative piece, "Speaking for the...
Review of Tim Weiner’s “One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon”
Years ago, after Richard Nixon had resigned and gone into temporary exile, my boss introduced me to Sam Dash, the former Senate Watergate Committee’s chief counsel. I remember asking Dash if he thought we had heard the last of Nixon. “Never!” he answered. “He’ll...
“Stop Watching Us”: Who Get Pardoned?
The maligned Warren Harding commuted Eugene V. Debs’ prison sentence and then invited the socialist anti-war felon to join him for breakfast in the White House. Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, who otherwise might have landed in Leavenworth. George H.W. Bush pardoned...
William Pfaff, The Pundit Who Hated Militarism and War
William Pfaff died on April 30, 2015. His death is nothing less than a serious loss to the shrinking number of American daily newspaper columnists who question and contest American Exceptionalism and its “unnecessary and unwinnable” wars. Pfaff was the singular heir...
The Neocons: First in War, Last in Peace
I was hired in 1972 by the American Jewish Committee to serve as editor of a new magazine I named Present Tense. My vague assignment was to be more “Jewish” than the well-established and influential Commentary magazine, which, while also parented by the AJC, had...
Life in Our Scared National Security State
I am thinking about Sister Megan Rice, an 84-year-old nun and two army veterans, Michael Walli, 65, and Greg Boertje-Obed, 58, all of them sitting behind prison bars for doing far less than the fraudsters and political thugs who took us into Iraq and killed and...
