Have you ever thought about just how strange this country’s version of normal truly is? Let me make my point with a single, hardly noticed Washington Post news story that’s been on my mind for a while. It represents the sort of reporting that, in our world, zips by with next to no reaction, despite the true weirdness buried in it.
Marylanders in Odenton, Annapolis, Frederick and our hometown of Columbia had their suspicions answered last week when The Washington Post published a three-part series about our unchecked, out-of-control expansion of the defense and intelligence operations that have grown since 2001. The expansion of this influential sector has been evident to us, as it has to Americans all around the country living near other defense and intelligence contractors and federal intelligence agencies.
Even though we’re flooded with new information about Afghanistan — leaks, Rolling Stone features, et al — without the military draft, we have no hard incentive to enhance our knowledge.
It’s up to us to ensure that, in the wake of WikiLeaks, the war doesn’t last four more years like Vietnam did after the release of the Pentagon.
Signing a letter to House Republican leader John Boehner is a small step to help block an Israeli attack on Iran.
The oft-cited reference to Afghanistan as the “graveyard of empires” haunts the increasingly desperate military measures of the United States in that beleaguered country. However, beyond Afghanistan and the hydrocarbon-rich Caspian basin region, the imperial projects of the United States are, more and more, a commitment to Pentagon aggression and profligacy. Imperial overstretch has transmogrified into imperial overkill.
Is Wikileaker SPC. Bradley Manning the next Daniel Ellsberg?
Thanks to U.S. diplomatic blundering, China ekes out a victory over Cheonan.
There are moments that define a war. Just such a one occurred on June 21, when Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry helicoptered into Marjah for a photo op with the locals. It was to be a capstone event, the fruit of a four-month counterinsurgency offensive by Marines, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies, and the newly minted Afghan National Army (ANA) to drive the Taliban out of the area and bring in good government.
The “Hidden World” series in The Washington Post by Dana Priest and William Arkin reveals the true extent to which the U.S. government has become a secretive national security state.