U.S. Military

The Government Is Still Waging War on America’s Military Veterans

by John W. Whitehead November 10, 2022

“For soldiers … coming home is more lethal than being in combat.” ― Brené Brown, research professor at the University of Houston The U.S. government is still waging war on America’s military veterans. Especially veterans who exercise their First Amendment right to speak out against government wrongdoing. Consider: we raise our young people on a steady diet of militarism ...

When the Pentagon Wanted to Nuke Russia

by Douglas Horne March 8, 2022

The following is an excerpt from FFF's book JFK's War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas P. Horne, who served on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s. On July 20, 1961, at a National Security Council meeting, JFK was compelled to consider the possibility of a pre-emptive nuclear strike ...

End the Government’s War on America’s Military Veterans

by John W. Whitehead November 12, 2020

“For soldiers … coming home is more lethal than being in combat.” ― Brené Brown, research professor at the University of Houston The 2020 presidential election may be over, but nothing has really changed. The U.S. government still poses the greatest threat to our freedoms. More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, even ...

Defund the Pentagon

by Laurence M. Vance August 10, 2020

Many liberals and progressives in the Democratic Party have been loudly calling for the defunding of police departments around the country after the tragic death of a black man, George Floyd, at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer. While defunding the police — not to be confused with disbanding the police — means different things to different ...

Casualties of War

by John W. Whitehead November 14, 2019

Come you masters of war / You that build the big guns You that build the death planes / You that build all the bombs You that hide behind walls / You that hide behind desks I just want you to know / I can see through your masks…. You fasten all the triggers / For the others to fire Then you sit back ...

War Spending Is Bankrupting America

by John W. Whitehead March 13, 2019

“Pity the nation whose people are sheep And whose shepherds mislead them Pity the nation whose leaders are liars Whose sages are silenced And whose bigots haunt the airwaves Pity the nation that raises not its voice Except to praise conquerors And acclaim the bully as hero And aims to rule the world By force and by torture… Pity the nation oh pity the people

A Badge of Shame: The Government’s War on America’s Military Veterans

by John W. Whitehead November 8, 2018

“For soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, coming home is more lethal than being in combat.” ― Brené Brown, research professor at the University of Houston Not all heroes wear the uniform of war. In the United States, however, we take particular pride in recognizing as heroes those who have served in the military. Yet while we honor our veterans with ...

America’s Toxic Cult of Violence Turns Deadly

by John W. Whitehead February 20, 2018

Mass shootings have become routine in the United States and speak to a society that relies on violence to feed the coffers of the merchants of death. Given the profits made by arms manufacturers, the defense industry, gun dealers and the lobbyists who represent them in Congress, it comes as no surprise that the culture of ...

The Military-Entertainment Complex’s Culture of Violence Turns Deadly

by John W. Whitehead October 4, 2017

“Mass shootings have become routine in the United States and speak to a society that relies on violence to feed the coffers of the merchants of death. Given the profits made by arms manufacturers, the defense industry, gun dealers and the lobbyists who represent them in Congress, it comes as no surprise that the culture of ...

Welcome to Base Nation

by Matthew Harwood April 1, 2016

Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2015), 432 pages. There is much in U.S. history that Americans should not be proud of. Chattel slavery. The genocide of indigenous populations. Jim Crow. The U.S. war on terror currently under way and still with no end in sight. But few ...

The Inherent Criminality of Air Power

by Joseph R. Stromberg July 1, 2015

Constant American bombing of much of the world ought to raise questions about the morality (if any) of air power, even if few Americans bother to confront them. (Indeed, many moral theorists would rather apply their theorizing and “intuitions” to runaway trolley cars than to the real-world problem posed here.) Air power first showed its long-imagined potential in World War ...

Militarism: Our Civic Religion

by Michael Swanson June 1, 2015

Militarism, U.S.A by Col. James Donovan; Foreword by Gen. David Shoup (Scribner’s 1970), 265 pages Today the United States is engaged in seemingly winless wars without end in Iraq and Afghanistan and has been engaging in interventions in places such as Libya, which seem to result in nothing but chaos. Libya has descended into civil war and the rise ...