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, August 22, 2017 The Conflict in Afghanistan Is Trump's War Now With President Trump’s Monday night speech, prospects for ending the Afghanistan war anytime soon have vanished. Whether that bodes well for U.S. national security is another matter. Nearly 16 years after U.S. forces first entered Afghanistan, there they remain. Success, narrowly defined as... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, August 08, 2017 Slouching Toward Mar-a-Lago Like it or not, the president of the United States embodies America itself. The individual inhabiting the White House has become the preeminent symbol of who we are and what we represent as a nation and a people. In a fundamental sense, he is us. It was not always so. Millard Fillmore, the 13th... Read more |
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Views Friday, July 28, 2017 Is a ‘Global War on Terrorism Memorial’ an Appropriate Tribute? The proposal for a Global War on Terrorism Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, to honor the country’s post-9/11 war dead, described in Sunday’s Globe, may seem like a no-brainer. It is, in fact, premature. Before proceeding further, Americans would do well to reflect further on exactly... Read more |
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Views Thursday, June 22, 2017 'There Will Be Hell to Pay': Writing History in the Trump Era Forgive me for complaining, but recent decades have not been easy ones for my peeps. I am from birth a member of the WHAM tribe, that once proud, but now embattled conglomeration of white, heterosexual American males. We have long been -- there’s no denying it -- a privileged group. When the... Read more |
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Views Monday, May 08, 2017 What Obsessing About You-Know-Who Causes Us To Miss Donald Trump's election has elicited impassioned affirmations of a renewed commitment to unvarnished truth-telling from the prestige media. The common theme: you know you can’t trust him , but trust us to keep dogging him on your behalf. The New York Times has even unveiled a portentous new... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, March 21, 2017 Words Not to Die For By way of explaining his eight failed marriages, the American bandleader Artie Shaw once remarked , “I am an incurable optimist.” In reality, Artie was an incurable narcissist. Utterly devoid of self-awareness, he never looked back, only forward. So, too, with the incurable optimists who manage... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, March 07, 2017 The Shameful Selling of Ryan Owens “Sentimentality,” wrote James Baldwin in 1949, “is the mark of dishonesty.” With his pronounced antipathy for fakery and cant, Baldwin denounced the “ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion” as an exercise in manipulation. Sentimentality condescends. It masks indifference. Those... Read more |
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Views Thursday, February 23, 2017 Arrogance and Conceit at the Altar of American Greatness Apart from being a police officer, firefighter, or soldier engaged in one of this nation’s endless wars, writing a column for a major American newspaper has got to be one of the toughest and most unforgiving jobs there is. The pay may be decent (at least if your gig is with one of the major papers... Read more |
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Views Monday, January 09, 2017 How We Got Here: American History After "the End of History" The fall of the Berlin Wall in October 1989 abruptly ended one historical era and inaugurated another. So, too, did the outcome of last year’s U.S. presidential election. What are we to make of the interval between those two watershed moments? Answering that question is essential to understanding... Read more |
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Views Monday, January 02, 2017 On Loving Another Country Say what you will about Israeli political leaders, you can always count on them for one thing: They will do whatever they believe necessary to ensure the security and wellbeing of the Jewish State. Love is a sentiment at odds with cold calculation. The same cannot be said of American political... Read more |