Turkey Could Turn the Battle for Mosul into a Sectarian Bloodbath
We are now ten days into the Iraqi–led, U.S.–backed fight to retake Mosul, ISIS’s remaining stronghold in Iraq. Assuming a victory, will it look much different than a defeat? The most consequential aftermath is the political, diplomatic, and battlefield mess Turkish…
Obama Is Making Two Huge Mistakes in the War on ISIS in Mosul
The long-anticipated battle to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, is the biggest test to date for President Obama’s strategy against ISIS and other terrorist groups active in the Middle East. The chances of success are decidedly mixed. Paradoxically, the forces…
“This will stop only when the American people get fed up”: American exceptionalism, the New York Times, and our foreign policy after Barack Obama
Our smartest modern military historian explains to Salon what’s wrong about our adventures in the Middle East Part one of my interview with Andrew Bacevich, the soldier-turned-scholar who has just published “America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military…
“The scope of our failure”: The real story of our decades-long foreign policy disaster that set the Middle East on fire
The brilliant Andrew Bacevich tells Salon why our massive march to folly in Middle East has to be seen as one war I first interviewed Andrew Bacevich, the soldier turned scholar, after he spoke at the Hope Club, an old-line…
“Does anyone have a plan?” Here’s how we fix decades of overseas neo-conservative adventurism
We have accepted the horrors of American exceptionalism for too long. Here’s a progressive foreign policy blueprint “Tell me, what exactly is ‘an authentically progressive foreign policy.’” That is the request of a reader responding to last week’s column in the comment…
This is not a democracy: Behind the Deep State that Obama, Hillary or Trump couldn’t control
Foreign policy never really changes regardless of who holds the White House. This is why exceptionalism always wins There are two ways to consider the White House’s announcement last week that, no, American troops will no longer withdraw from Afghanistan…
Donald Trump’s biggest crime is his honesty: How he exposes the sickening rot at the core of the GOP
Republicans have spent decades dressing up fear as courage, pretending at seriousness while advancing hysteria. Many of us cast last week’s Republican debate in Cleveland as entertainment—I have heard the thought repeated many times—but this seems to me a cheap…
America’s immoral exceptionalism: The lie we keep telling ourselves about foreign policy and democracy
Americans are disgusted with all of these wars, but feel powerless to do anything about it The task of historians in our time is to unbury the buried. For journalists, it is to see that the truth of events is…
Lies the media repeats about Iraq: Phony patriotism, fake Syrian “moderates” and the very real end of empire
We have made a shocking mess in the Middle East. This new adventure sets America up for incredible decline In history there are the Punic Wars and the Opium Wars, each a turning point, and now we must talk of…
Obama’s ISIS Strategy Will Be His Jimmy Carter Moment
The Obama administration is now so tongue-tied it can’t tell us what it is about to do in the Middle East. So let’s pitch in: The Obama administration is going to war in Iraq and Syria. Having settled that, the…
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