American Empire 
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6/12/2022
Top-Gunning for Empire
by Scott Laderman
"Top Gun: Maverick" is ressurecting the theatergoing experience. Will it do the same for American enthusiasm for the imperial ambitions it represents?
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SOURCE: New York Review of Books
2/3/2022
Who's Afraid of Isolationism?
by Stephen Wertheim
It's past time for "isolationism" to stop being a dirty word in discussing America's relationship to the world. The use of the term as a pejorative has justified too many ill-considered military interventions.
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
12/21/2021
How Awesome Is “Awesome”? Rating the US Military on Cost-Benefit Terms
by Andrew Bacevich
Is it impolite, then, to ask if the nation is getting an adequate return on its investment in military power?
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
10/7/2021
Never Having to Say You're Sorry
by Karen J. Greenberg
Numerous players with large and small roles in creating the expansive War on Terror have issued mea culpas; the major architects and the interests who profit from war have not.
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SOURCE: Boston Review
10/4/2021
Abandoning Afghans From the Start
by Christian G. Appy
The Washington Post's Afganistan Papers present an opportunity to avoid the mistake of blaming military defeat on bad judgment and focus on the inherent problem of America's imperial ambitions, says historian Christian Appy.
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
9/28/2021
Droning On: America's Assassins-in-Chief
by Tom Engelhardt
Since the Bush administration, every President has used drone technology to be the nation's assassin-in-chief. In a nation increasingly tolerant of mass COVID death at home, does this even have the power to shock?
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
9/30/2021
"A Horrible Mistake": Time to Ditch CENTCOM
by Andrew Bacevich
Created by military reorganization undertaken by the Reagan administration, CENTCOM assumes control of potential military operations in 20 nations, where a half-billion people live. In the decades of its existence, it has overseen the decline and imminent collapse of American empire.
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
8/19/2021
The All-American Base World
by Patterson Deppen
Despite the withdrawal from Afghanistan, there are still 750 US military bases around the world, showing that America's "forever wars" may only be briefly paused.
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SOURCE: Foreign Exchanges
4/26/2021
Necessary but Not Sufficient
by Daniel Bessner
The 2001 AUMF in effect has become yet another tool to enable the United States to prosecute a series of endless wars in the Global South.
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
3/28/2021
America’s Longest War Winds Down
by Andrew Bacevich
Public fatigue over the ongoing War on Terror must not allow political leaders to do what they seem to want most to do: avoid taking responsibility or learning lessons.
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
10/18/2020
Reframing America’s Role in the World: The Specter of Isolationism
by Andrew Bacevich
The release of Stephen Wertheim's book shoud prompt a reconsideration of American intervention abroad.
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SOURCE: Tom Dispatch
2/25/20
The Paradox of America’s Endless Wars
by William Astore
They Persist Because They Don’t Exist (For Americans)
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6/30/19
The Overlooked Story of “the Greater United States”: Historian Daniel Immerwahr Shares His Unique Perspective on American Empire
by Robin Lindley
From the Guano Islands to America’s widespread empire now, Professor Immerwahr shares neglected stories from the past showing how inhabitants of America’s possessions have been relegated "to the shadows," and, at various times, have been "shot, shelled, starved, interned, dispossessed, tortured, and experimented on."
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SOURCE: NYT
3-5-13
Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman: Come Home, America
Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, a professor of American foreign relations at San Diego State University, is the author, most recently, of “American Umpire.”EVERYONE talks about getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan. But what about Germany and Japan?The sequester — $85 billion this year in across-the-board budget cuts, about half of which will come from the Pentagon — gives Americans an opportunity to discuss a question we’ve put off too long: Why we are still fighting World War II?Since 1947, when President Harry S. Truman set forth a policy to stop further Soviet expansion and “support free peoples” who were “resisting subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures,” America has acted as the world’s policeman....
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