Tom Engelhardt

America’s heroes? Not so much. Not anymore. Not when they’re dead, anyway.

By the time you read this, I’ll already have voted

When you look at me, you can’t mistake the fact that I’m of a certain age. But just for a moment, think of me as nine years old.

Sometimes it’s the little things in the big stories that catch your eye.

Yes, it would be funny if it weren’t so grim. After all, when it comes to squandering money and resources in strange and distant places (or even here at home), you can count on the practitioners of American-style war to be wildly over the top.

Consider the following statement offered by Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a news conference last week. He was discussing Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks as well as the person who has taken responsibility for the vast, still ongoing Afghan War document dump at that site.

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.

Mark it on your calendar. It seems we’ve finally entered the Soviet era in America.

Graduates of the class of 2010, I’m honored to have been asked to address you today, but I would not want to be you.

It’s true that I’ve never strolled down a street in Baghdad or Ramadi or Basra, armed or not, and that’s a deficit, if you want to write about the American experience in Iraq.

We’ve now been at war with, or in, Iraq for almost 20 years, and intermittently at war in Afghanistan for 30 years.

Predators, reapers, and imperial graveyards: Washington’s language betrays its stubborn imperial ambitions.

There’s a risk that the United States will never withdraw from Iraq.