Do you doubt for a moment that he’d do it? Do you doubt for a moment that he’d go to that level? Would you trust him not to do it? We bore witness to “Operation Urgent Fury” in 1983, “Operation Just Cause” in 1989, “Operation Desert Storm” in 1991 and “Operation Iraqi Freedom” in 2003. […]
Vietnam War
Posted inPolitical Animal
Cool Down, Everybody: GOP Climate Heroes Are Still Hard to Find
Sorry, but there’s no reason to pick up the pom-poms for Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Susan Collins (R-ME), whose votes were admittedly crucial to stopping the latest right-wing scheme to destroy President Obama’s climate-protection efforts. Let’s not label them climate hawks just yet, OK? McCain lost his credibility on this issue […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
The Fourth Estate Has an Obligation to Question Trump’s Motives in Syria
Last week, after the Washington Post published a bizarre story suggesting that the Trump administration had come around to supporting both a federal value-added tax and a carbon tax, Kevin Drum labeled the story bullpucky: Sure they are. This sounds more like a strategic leak to demonstrate “seriousness” on Trump’s part than anything that’s really […]
Posted inFeatured, Politics
When Resisting Means Risking
I resisted the Vietnam War as a college student. Here’s what it taught me about stopping Trump.
Posted inPolitical Animal
The Right is a Hoax
[If Republican presidential candidate Donald] Trump doesn’t win, some are even openly talking about violent rebellion and assassination, as fantastical and unhinged as that may seem. “If she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it,” Dan Bowman, a 50-year-old contractor, […]
Posted inMagazine
Was It Worth It?
A new book shatters many myths about Vietnam, but misses the larger point.
Posted inDecember 1983
South Vietnam: The Puppet as Puppeteer
It’s now exactly 20 years since Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Nhu were found murdered in the back of an armored car. Of the dozens of decisive moments in the history of the Vietnam war, the Diem coup and the chaos in Saigon that immediately followed are beginning to look especially significant. Suddenly in […]
Posted inMay 1982
Misfire: How Pentagon Critics Shot Down Their Own Ace
Last month this magazine set out to explain in some detail how the defense budget could be cut without hurting national security. There were two reasons we devoted so much space to the defense issue: first, the enormous importance of the subject for the future of the American economy and military; and second, our sense […]
Posted inMagazine
The New Patriotism
I was born in 1954 which makes me, I suppose, a member of the post-Vietnam generation. Here is how the war directly touched my life: I registered for the draft when I turned 18, and the following year I was given the lottery number of six. I remember summoning forth in myself at the time […]
