Norman Solomon

Top U.S. officials want us to believe that the Pentagon carefully spares civilian lives while making war overseas. The notion is pleasant. And with high-tech killing far from home, the physical and psychological distances have made it even easier to believe recent claims that American warfare has become "humane." Such pretenses should be grimly laughable … Continue reading “The Pentagon’s 20-Year Killing Spree Has Always Treated Civilians as Expendable”

Nuclear weapons are at the pinnacle of what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of militarism." If you’d rather not think about them, that’s understandable. But such a coping strategy has limited value. And those who are making vast profits from preparations for global annihilation are further empowered by our avoidance. At the level … Continue reading “Current Dispute Over ICBMs Is a Quarrel Over How To Fine-Tune the Doomsday Machinery”

Reprinted from The Nation with permission from the authors. The single best option for reducing the risk of nuclear war is hidden in plain sight. News outlets don’t mention it. Pundits ignore it. Even progressive and peace-oriented members of Congress tiptoe around it. And yet, for many years, experts have been calling for this act … Continue reading “To Avoid Armageddon, Don’t Modernize Missiles – Eliminate Them”

It’s bad enough that mainstream news outlets routinely call the Pentagon budget a "defense" budget. But the fact that progressives in Congress and even many antiwar activists also do the same is an indication of how deeply the mindsets of the nation’s warfare state are embedded in the political culture of the United States. The … Continue reading “Stop Calling the Military Budget a ‘Defense’ Budget”

Joe Biden provided a stirring soundbite days ago when he spoke from the White House just after suicide bombers killed 13 U.S. troops and 170 Afghans at a Kabul airport: "To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will … Continue reading “Biden’s Revenge: Fueling ‘Madness of Militarism’ in Afghanistan”

Israel’s missile attack on media offices in Gaza City last weekend was successful. A gratifying response came quickly from the head of The Associated Press, which had a bureau in the building for 15 years: "The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today." For people who care … Continue reading “Why Israel Blows Up Media Offices and Targets Journalists”

When Reese Erlich died in early April, we lost a global reporter who led by example. During five decades as a progressive journalist, Reese created and traveled an independent path while avoiding the comfortable ruts dug by corporate media. When people in the United States read or heard his reporting from more than 50 countries, … Continue reading “Reporting from Around the World, Reese Erlich Was a Beacon of Independent Journalism”

When I met a seven-year-old girl named Guljumma at a refugee camp in Kabul a dozen years ago, she told me that bombs fell early one morning while she slept at home in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Valley. With a soft, matter-of-fact voice, Guljumma described what happened. Some people in her family died. She lost an … Continue reading “Contrary to What Biden Said, US Warfare in Afghanistan Is Set To Continue”

The anniversary of his assassination always brings a flood of tributes to Martin Luther King Jr., and this Sunday will surely be no exception. But those tributes – including from countless organizations calling themselves progressive – are routinely evasive about the anti-militarist ideals that King passionately expressed during the final year of his life. You … Continue reading “The Liberal Contempt for Martin Luther King’s Final Year”

Last week’s outbreak of rhetorical hostilities between the White House and the Kremlin has heightened the urgent need for a summit between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin. The spate of mutual denunciations is catnip for mass media and fuel for hardliners in both countries. But for the world at large, under the doomsday shadow of … Continue reading “The Urgent Need for a Biden-Putin Summit”