NIAMI, NIGER (Africa is a Country) — One striking feature of US military involvement in West Africa is the absence of an observable strategic vision for a desired end state. Nominally, US presence in the region’s multilayered conflicts revolves around building “security cooperation” with state partners to improve counterterrorism capabilities, ostensibly providing protection to communities…

On June 1, President Trump threatened to deploy active-duty U.S. military forces against peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters in cities across America. Trump and state governors eventually deployed at least 17,000 National Guard troops across the country. In the nation’s capital, Trump deployed nine Blackhawk assault helicopters, thousands of National Guard troops from six states, and at least…

Media outlets gave minimal attention to recent news that the U.S. Naval station in Virginia Beach spilled an estimated 94,000 gallons of jet fuel into a nearby waterway, less than a mile from the Atlantic Ocean. While the incident was by no means as catastrophic as some other pipeline spills, it underscores an important yet…

Grayzone — The superhero blockbuster Captain Marvel is a perfect case study for how the United States military uses Hollywood to spread propaganda. The US military is at the center of the plot of Captain Marvel. The film’s protagonist, Carol Danvers, is a former US Air Force pilot who becomes a superhero after absorbing the…

Even the neo-con warmongers’ house journal The Guardian, furious at Trump’s attempts to pull US troops out of Syria, in producing a map to illustrate its point, could only produce one single, uncertain, very short pen stroke to describe the minute strip of territory it claims ISIS still controls on the Iraqi border. Of course, The Guardian…

In an sharp deterioration of diplomatic ties, China has blocked a request for a U.S. warship to visit the post of Hong Kong, the U.S. consulate in the Chinese city said on Tuesday, amid rising tensions between Beijing and Washington over escalating tariffs and a U.S. decision to impose sanctions on China’s military for engaging…

Facebook has lately announced a series of major steps it would take to combat fake news and the global spread of misinformation that it says could influence elections, but the more we learn about just who it is Facebook is partnering with in this endeavor, the clearer it becomes that these initiatives are not at…

Around 200,000 US troops are stationed in 177 countries throughout the world. Those forces utilize several hundred military installations. Africa is no exemption. On August 2, Maj. Gen. Roger L. Cloutier took command of US Army Africa, promising to “hit the ground running.” The US is not waging any wars in Africa but it has a significant presence on…

President Donald Trump signed a $717 billion military spending bill on August 14. What made headlines was not the size of the bill or what is in the bill. Rather, most were upset that Trump did not thank Senator John McCain, whose name was put on the bill by his colleagues in Congress to honor…

Opinion polls in the United States and the United Kingdom have found that a majority of the public in both countries has a remarkably consistent belief that only about 10,000 Iraqis were killed as a result of the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq in 2003. Estimates of deaths in Iraq actually range from 150,000 to 1.2 million. Part of the reason for the seriously…

There are a lot of safe and responsible places people have found over the years to ingest hallucinogens in order to experience their pleasures and explore the challenges their potent properties can present, but it’s a judgement statement to declare that a U.S. military base which houses some of the world’s most powerful atomic weapons…

The purpose of all wars, is peace. So observed St. Augustine early in the first millennium A.D. Far be it from me to disagree with the esteemed Bishop of Hippo, but his crisply formulated aphorism just might require a bit of updating. I’m not a saint or even a bishop, merely an interested observer of this nation’s…