30. WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, JULY 14, 2021
Compiled by Dick Bennett
Tom Engelhardt. A Nation Unmade by War. Haymarket, May 2018.
Publisher’s Description
From the election from hell to the future according to Donald Trump, A Nation Unmade by War surveys American exceptionalism in the age of absurdity.
As veteran author Tom Engelhardt argues, despite having a more massive, technologically advanced, and better-funded military than any other power on the planet, in the last decade and a half of constant war across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa, the United States has won nothing. Its unending wars, in fact, have only contributed to a world growing more chaotic by the second.
From its founding, the United States has been a nation made by wars. Through incisive analysis and characteristic wit, Engelhardt ponders whether in this century, its citizenry and government will be unmade by them.
Tom Engelhardt created and runs the TomDispatch.com website, a project of the Nation Institute, where he is a fellow. He is the author of The United States of Fear, Shadow Government, and The American Way of War all published by Haymarket Books; a highly praised history of American triumphalism in the cold war, The End of Victory Culture, and a novel, The Last Days of Publishing.
Reviews
“Unlike the myriad of lesser writers distracted by the latest antics of the man with the orange hair, the brilliant Tom Engelhardt keeps our focus where it should be: on the vast militarized empire whose leaders’s belief that they can control the world drains our tax dollars, undermines our children's future, and sends young men and women to die in an unending series of fruitless wars." —Adam Hochschild, author of Spain in Our Hearts
“The mainstream media call it the ‘Age of Trump.’ Tom Engelhardt knows better: It's the ‘Era of
America Unhinged.’ This new collection of essays gives us Engelhardt at his very best: incisive, impassioned, and funny even, in a time great darkness.” —Andrew Bacevich, author of America's War for the Greater Middle East
“Tom Engelhardt is a tireless analyst of the miseries of American Empire. In this indispensable book he shines an unrelenting spotlight on the steep cost to everyday Americans of the sunny fantasies about Middle East dominance retailed by generals, politicians and think tank rats inside the Beltway--fairy tales intended to obscure the dark failures of this enterprise. “ —Juan Cole, author of The New Arabs
“We Americans have learned to sleep through our multiple wars, but Tom Engelhardt relentlessly shakes us awake. For sixteen years now, he has watched in astonishment and written the scene-by-scene review of this imploding empire and he only becomes sharper as old reels rewind and play again. In this volume, the nation wasted at home by its profligate wars abroad picks a big orange emperor, flanked by his very own generals, to lead us on into . . . well, just read the book!” —Ann Jones, author of They Were Soldiers
"Since September 11, no one has had a keener eye for American militarism, hypocrisy, and flat-out folly than Tom Engelhardt"—John Dower, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Embracing Defeat
“The violence, destruction, and suffering resulting from the imperial arrogance of Bush, Cheney, and cohorts have proceeded on their shocking course while most Americans, Tom Engelhardt writes, were “only half paying attention.” Regular readers of his incisive, lucid, and brutally informative columns could not fail to pay attention and to be appalled at what was revealed. Their impact is all the more forceful in this collection, which casts a brilliant and horrifying light on a sordid chapter of history, far from closed.” —Noam Chomsky
“In his searing new book, A Nation Unmade by War, Tom Engelhardt has composed a requiem for a nation turned upside down by the relentless pursuit of global power. A devastating critique of the national security state, A Nation Unmade takes the reader from Nixon and Vietnam to Bush and the Iraq War through post-9/11 America, chronicling the errors, deceptions, and policy decisions which have ushered in a state of permanent war, reducing nations to rubble, wreaking chaos and confusion at home, and threatening the very principles upon which the country was founded. A must read for any student of 21st America.” —Karen J. Greenberg, author of Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State
"Since 2007, I’ve had the distinct honor of writing for Tom Engelhardt and TomDispatch.com. Tom is a patriot in the best sense of that word: he loves his country, and by that I mean the ideals and freedoms we cherish as Americans. But his love is not blind; rather, his eyes are wide open, his mind is sharp, and his will is unflagging. He calls America to account; he warns us, as Dwight D. Eisenhower did, about the many dangers of an all-powerful national security state; and, as Ike did sixty years ago, he reminds us that only Americans can truly hurt America. I think Ike would have commended his latest book, A Nation Unmade by War. Having read it myself, I highly recommend it to thinking patriots everywhere."—W.J. Astore
U.S. again bombs Nations on other side of the World in “self-defense.” Editor. Mronline.org (7-2-21).
The U.S. is again illegally bombing nations on the other side of the planet which it has invaded and occupied and branded this murderous aggression as “defensive”.
OMNI SUPPORTERS AND OUR ANNUAL REMEMBRANCE OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI
OMNI will resume its annual Remembrance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Denunciation of Nuclear Weapons on Sunday, evening of August 8, place to be announced (watch for it). I am writing to a few people early, most of whom I have not seen in some time, to invite you to join with us in public yearning for the abolition of weapons of mass destruction capable of omnicide. I would like to see you again. Please contact OMNI Director Gladys Tiffany or OMNI President Kelly Mulhollan or me either to offer your help or to express your support by attending.
We gather at a time of hope in a dispiriting Covid 19 period: The UN Treaty to Abolish Nuclear Weapons came into force on January 22 when the needed number of nations ratified the Treaty. Thus this year our Hiroshima/Nagasaki action will encompass Remembrance, Protest, and Celebration. Please put it on your calendar now.
Dick Bennett, OMNI Founder
FOR YOUR PEACE CALENDAR
June 12, 1982. On this day one million people demonstrated for a nuclear freeze against nuclear weapons in New York. President Reagan called the Nuclear Freeze movement “unpatriotic.” But anti-nuclear protests led in 1987 to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty reducing nuclear arsenals.
June 13, 1971. On this day in 1971 the NYT published the first Pentagon Papers revealing the true history of the Vietnam War, and other media joined in. The Nixon admin. indicted them, but the Supreme Court ruled for freedom of the press.