The Intercept
June 5, 2020
An array of what might be described as the accessories and devices of dictatorship have expanded with infectious ruthlessness in American cities. The police swinging batons wildly, the paramilitary forces refusing to identify themselves, the hysterical president ...
Category: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan
Max Boot Is Very Sorry for Backing the GOP and the Iraq Invasion. Why Is He Being Praised for This?
The Intercept
October 13, 2018
THERE IS AN unforgettable passage in Graham Greene’s classic “The Quiet American” in which the title character, a CIA agent named Alden Pyle, admits that Vietnam is much more complicated than he’d imagined. “I had not realized how tribal politics ...
America’s War Narrative Focuses on Its Soldiers. Afghans and Iraqis Are Brushed Aside
The Intercept
September 2, 2018
The young newspaper reporter wanted to write a book about the war he was covering. But the editors who read his proposal turned it down, all of them. They said the book wouldn’t sell because Americans were tired of reading about these violent foreigners ...
Donald Trump Has Liberated Koreans From the Illusion That America Is Helping Them
The Intercept
May 25, 2018
It’s strange to say, but there is an upside to the goat rodeo way in which President Donald Trump has cancelled, for the moment, his North Korea summit. No president has done a better job of making clear that the United States is an impediment to peace ...
A Radical Lesson from the Invasion of Iraq: War Moments Should Honor the Sacrifice of Civilians
The Intercept
April 9, 2018
War monuments are vexing. The forever war that began on 9/11 has caused enough bloodshed to inspire an entirely new generation of memorials. Some have already been built or authorized, even though the fighting is not close to ending. We don’t need more war ...
It’s Time to Wage War Against War Movies That Glorify Outdated Models of Masculinity
The Intercept
January 27, 2018
The Hollywood Reporter published a surprising story earlier this month about film studios turning away from movies about sex. A biopic about Hugh Hefner is stalled, gone for the moment is a James Franco film about a 15-year-old Russian prostitute, and a ...
Brad Pitt’s “War Machine” Offers an Absurd and Scathing Critique of America’s Generals
The Intercept
June 17, 2017
How do military leaders persuade their soldiers to fight an insane war?
Here’s one way. The setting is a bitter outpost of the American war in Afghanistan. The years-long nightmare has no prospect of ending so long as American troops stay in a country that has a nearly unblemished ...
’13 Hours’ Splashes Blood Across the Screen and Misses the Real Story of Benghazi
The Intercept
January 14, 2016
Would you give the story of Benghazi to the producer of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Someone did. The result is the new film directed by Michael Bay, 13 Hours, which makes Rambo look like War and Peace.
In 13 Hours, Bay displays a fetish for fake blood and heads ...
Firing Blind: Flawed Intelligence and the Limits of Drone Technology
The Intercept
Oct. 15, 2015
This article was co-authored with Cora Currier and is part of a series of stories, The Drone Papers, that The Intercept published based on secret military documents. For a version of this story with links to the source documents, please click here.
The Obama administration ...
How the Makers of ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Seduced the CIA with Fake Earrings
The Intercept
September 9, 2015
The plot behind the plot of Zero Dark Thirty just gets better and better.
From the moment it premiered in 2012, the film by Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal about the hunt for Osama bin Laden has been criticized as pro-torture propaganda. According to its many detractors, ...