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Nan Levinson, The Enticements of War (and Peace)

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These days, whenever you check out the news, it seems to be war, war, war — a focus today for TomDispatch regular Nan Levinson, author of a notable antiwar book, War Is Not a Game: The New Antiwar Soldiers and the Movement They Built. I mean, I just randomly looked at the Washington Post homepage and the top headline of that second was: “More than 100 killed in Gaza City, officials say; Israel cites stampede at aid drop.” However tomorrow’s news may explain those grim deaths, before they’re swept away by yet more of the same, they only add to the 30,000 or more Palestinians already slaughtered (a figure that itself is undoubtedly a significant underestimate). Similarly, the 700-odd Gazans reportedly wounded in that incident only add to another nightmarish, if largely unknown total. And within just a few days, that death and destruction will undoubtedly have been shoved aside by whatever comes next, instantly becoming yesterday’s news about Israel’s devastation of Gaza.

Oh, and on that same Post page of headlines, if you skip the ones about the Biden/Trump trips — oops, “dueling visits”! — to our increasingly militarized southern border, the next in line might, in a sense, be far more disheartening: “Putin threatens nuclear response to NATO troops if they go to Ukraine.” I mean, 78 years after those two atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, imagine that the possibility of nuclear war has now become an everyday matter for the president of Russia, “threatening retaliatory strikes against the West in the event of attacks on Russian territory” and adding that his country’s “strategic nuclear forces are in a state of full readiness.”

Ho-hum, what’s new? Slaughter, nukes, horrors galore, and it doesn’t seem to stop anymore, does it? Ever. And all of this, mind you, is just sweeping into the distant past, the staggering casualties my own country inflicted on this planet in this century with its never-ending “war on terror.” And yes, all of it keeps us in a distinctly human version of hell, but as Levinson suggests today, a kind of reportorial heaven. Tom

Is There a Journalism That Doesn’t Love a War?

Covering Two Too-Long Wars

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War, what is it good for? Well, the media for starters.

Shortly after the Biden administration responded to the killing of three American soldiers in a drone attack on a base in Jordan by bombing 85 Iran-connected targets in Iraq and Syria, the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) asked in a headline: “Is the press dragging America to war again?”

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Engelhardt, A Big-Time War of Terror

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[Note for TomDispatch Readers: It’s been a while since I’ve urged you to visit our donation page and consider giving something to TD. But now’s the time. As ever, this site needs your support simply to keep chugging along in its 23rd year in our ever stranger world. So, believe me, anything you can do will be beyond appreciated! Just take a moment and see if you can offer us a hand (and a few bucks) to keep us going! Tom]

Living on the Wrong World

A Planetary Cease Fire Is Desperately Needed

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On this planet of ours, it almost doesn't matter who's right and who's wrong when it comes to our wars.

Actually, let me correct that thought slightly: it certainly does matter, but what matters so much more is that we humans simply can't stop fighting them. That is (or at least should be) a stunning and deeply saddening reality. What obvious lessons we seem congenitally incapable of learning! In the previous century, after all, there were two truly global wars, World War I and World War II, that were estimated to have left significantly more than 100 million military personnel and civilians dead, while decimating parts of the planet. The second of those conflicts ended with the obliteration of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and 9th, 1945, with the loss of possibly 200,000 dead, and the arrival in our world of a shattering new weapon, the atomic bomb. After so many centuries of endless warfare, it finally brought humanity to the edge of future annihilation.

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Juan Cole, How Washington’s Anti-Iranian Campaign Failed, Big Time

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You know we’re in an increasingly extreme world when a young American airman burns himself to death outside the Israeli embassy in Washington to protest Israel’s nightmarish war in Gaza. (“Today, I am planning to engage in an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people,” he wrote in an email to the media before setting himself aflame.) And given that President Biden and his administration have backed just about every last murderous action taken by the Israeli government and ensured that the American-supplied weaponry Israel is using keeps on flowing, it’s small wonder that he’s finding himself in political trouble.

Honestly, when you consider how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and crew have dealt with their utter devastation of Gaza without, like so many countries that have committed striking crimes, in any way denying what they’re doing or trying to cover it up, it’s as if Hamas were running their propaganda campaign. And sadly enough, nothing seems to be improving in that largely destroyed 25-mile strip of land, whose population has been almost totally displaced. The casualties in Gaza only continue to grow as ever more of its inhabitants find themselves lacking the basics of life and in danger of dying, while the 1.4 million or so refugees now sheltering in the southern city of Rafah are to be “allowed” to flee yet again (but not return to their homes) before Israel launches full-scale operations there.

And Washington, with barely a whimper of protest, has backed this nightmare to the hilt. No wonder, then, that, as TomDispatch regular Juan Cole, who also runs the must-read Informed Comment website, explains today, longtime American foe Iran has been making hay while the sun shines (but only on Iran) in the Middle East. Tom

Is Tehran Winning the Middle East?

How the Gaza Conflict Made Democracy’s Name Mud for Millions

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In the midst of Israel's ongoing devastation of Gaza, one major piece of Middle Eastern news has yet to hit the headlines. In a face-off that, in a sense, has lasted since the pro-American Shah of Iran was overthrown by theocratic clerics in 1979, Iran finally seems to be besting the United States in a significant fashion across the region. It's a story that needs to be told.

“Hit Iran now. Hit them hard” was typical advice offered by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham after a drone flown by an Iran-aligned Iraqi Shiite militia killed three American servicemen in northern Jordan on January 28th. The well-heeled Iran War Lobby in Washington has, in fact, been stridently calling for nothing short of a U.S. invasion of that country, accusing Tehran of complicity in Hamas's October 7th terrorist attack on Israel.

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