Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. As a teenager in the late 1970s, I read about Israel’s “Six-Day War” in 1967. The account I read was sympathetic toward Israel, respecting the audacity of its sneak attack on the Egyptian and Syrian air forces...
Originally published at TomDispatch. Washington’s latest war (now on pause) — the one in Yemen against the Houthis — was hardly noticeable here. Or rather it would have been barely noticeable if Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth hadn’t shared plans for the first air...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. Language and repetition of the same is so important. We hear about the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Pentagon budget and we think little of it. The DoD, of course, used to be called the Department of War...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. We just marked the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. Did American officials learn anything from the disastrous Vietnam War? Of course they did. Just not the lessons you’d have wished...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. “Fighting a war to fix something works about as good as going to a whorehouse to get rid of a clap.” ~ Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead I read Norman Mailer’s fine book about World War II, “The Naked and...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. The annihilation of Gaza is staggering. Israel has dropped more than 100,000 tons of bombs on Gaza. That’s 100+ kilotons. The Hiroshima bomb was roughly 15 kilotons. That means the small area of Gaza has been...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. I caught a couple of news items yesterday. The first was a secret Pentagon memo that indicates China is now America’s foremost threat, especially because of fears of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The second...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. Officially, the U.S. has the DOD, the department of defense. But when was the last time the U.S. military was primarily oriented toward defense of the CONUS? (CONUS is a military acronym for continental United...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. President Donald Trump has promised to bomb Yemen for a “long time.” Trump is a real president now. Presidents become “real” when they bomb something. Remember how Trump was praised by the U.S. mainstream...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. The so-called SignalGate scandal centered on the bombing of Yemen is highly revelatory. First, some resources. CNN has a useful annotated account of the chats exchanged at the highest levels of the Trump...
