Andrew Bacevich
Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University, is the author of America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History, which has just been published by Random House. He is also editor of the book, The Short American Century (Harvard Univ. Press), and author of several others, including: Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country (American Empire Project); Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (American Empire Project), and The Long War: A New History of U.S. National Security Policy Since World War II.
Articles by this author
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Views Tuesday, January 07, 2020 A Report Card on the Failed American Project of the Last Three Decades Thirty years ago this month, President George H.W. Bush appeared before a joint session of Congress to deliver his first State of the Union Address, the first post-Cold War observance of this annual ritual. Just weeks before, the Berlin Wall had fallen. That event, the president declared , “marks... Read more |
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Views Thursday, October 31, 2019 Why Those "Endless Wars" Must Never End Let us stipulate at the outset that Donald Trump is a vulgar and dishonest fraud without a principled bone in his corpulent frame. Yet history is nothing if not a tale overflowing with irony. Despite his massive shortcomings, President Trump appears intent on recalibrating America's role in the... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, October 08, 2019 The Real Cover-Up: Putting Donald Trump’s Impeachment in Context There is blood in the water and frenzied sharks are closing in for the kill. Or so they think. From the time of Donald Trump's election, American elites have hungered for this moment. At long last, they have the 45th president of the United States cornered. In typically ham-handed fashion, Trump... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, September 10, 2019 Trump’s Afghanistan 'Peace' Will Be Vietnam All Over Again: A Mess America Leaves Behind When the conflict that the Vietnamese refer to as the American War ended in April 1975, I was a U.S. Army captain attending a course at Fort Knox, Kentucky. In those days, the student body at any of our Army’s myriad schools typically included officers from the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, July 23, 2019 The Great Reckoning: A Look Back from Mid-Century [Editorial note: This remnant of a manuscript, discovered in a vault near the coastal town of Walpole, Massachusetts, appears to have been part of a larger project, probably envisioned as an interpretive history of the United States since the year 2000. Only a single chapter, probably written near... Read more |
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Views Thursday, June 20, 2019 The Fake News of D-Day and the Art of Shaping Memory How best to describe the recently completed allied commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of France? Two words come immediately to mind: heartfelt and poignant. The aged D-Day veterans gathering for what was probably the last time richly deserved every bit of praise bestowed on... Read more |
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Views Thursday, May 23, 2019 The “Forever Wars” Enshrined Earlier this month, I spent a day visiting Marseilles to videotape a documentary about recent American military history, specifically the ongoing wars that most of us prefer not to think about. Lest there be any confusion, let me be more specific. I am not referring to Marseilles (mar-SAY), France... Read more |
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Views Monday, April 08, 2019 For All His Endless Lies, Trump Has Exposed Some Important Truths Irony, paradox, contradiction, consternation -- these define the times in which we live. On the one hand, the 45th president of the United States is a shameless liar. On the other hand, his presidency offers an open invitation to Americans to confront myths about the way their country actually... Read more |
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Views Monday, March 04, 2019 The US Quietly Negotiates ‘Peace with Honor’ in Afghanistan A friend of mine, a veteran of America’s 21st-century wars in the Greater Middle East, recently sent along his most recent commentary on Afghanistan. It would be his last, he said. “I’m done writing on how we got here — at this point I’ve said my piece, and I’m tired of being angry.” He’s moving on... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, February 05, 2019 Lost in TrumpWorld: What Matters and What Doesn't The news, however defined, always contains a fair amount of pap. Since Donald Trump’s ascent to the presidency, however, the trivia quotient in the average American’s daily newsfeed has grown like so many toadstools in a compost heap, overshadowing or crowding out matters of real substance. We’re... Read more |