Brian Williams Helped Pave the Way to War
Of course so-called news people shouldn’t make up stuff to look good, but there’s something much worse: uncritically passing along official lies intended to prepare the American people for war. ...
About: Sheldon Richman
Posts by Sheldon Richman
Two Kinds of Income Inequality
Income inequality is back in the news, propelled by an Oxfam International report and President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. The question is whether government needs to do something...
Stop Those Who Would Stop Uber
What is the world coming to when any company can come to a city and arrogantly do business without asking permission, in essence, of those against whom it would compete? Does...
Obama Still Does a Good Imitation of Bush
After almost six years in office, President Obama is far more like George W. Bush in national-security matters than he led the American people to believe. ...
Abolish the Income Tax and IRS
The IRS seizes bank accounts of people whose only offense is routinely to make deposits of less than $10,000. If you do this enough times, the IRS may suspect you are...
The Politicians Are Scaring You Again
They are doing it again. “They” are the war-party politicians, Democrats and Republicans. “It” is scaring you into supporting another war in the Middle East. ...
Will American Ground Troops Be Sent to Fight ISIS?
With the United States dropping bombs on yet another Muslim country, we might benefit from a close look at President Obama’s anti–Islamic State strategy. ...
Obama Follows Bush’s Iraq Playbook
U.S. politicians are exploiting the gruesome beheadings of two American journalists to whip up war fever against ISIS, the “criminal gang” masquerading as an organization of devout Sunni Muslims that controls...
Mission Creep in Iraq
There are several reasons not to intervene militarily in another country’s conflict, even modestly. One is the potential for mission creep. ...
Out of Iraq, Etc.!
The rise of the brutal Islamic State, with its unspeakable violence against innocents, is an appalling but unsurprising outcome of the last 100 years, including seven decades of neocolonialist American intervention....
In Foreign Affairs, Not Doing Anything Is the Thing to Do
The heartbreaking violence in the Middle East, Ukraine, and elsewhere carries many messages, but here’s one Americans shouldn’t miss: The United States — no matter who the president is — cannot...
Borderlands: What’s Happening to America?
The U.S. government regards a large part of the country as close enough to a border or coast to justify treating individuals — citizens or not — as though they have...
The Noninterventionists Told You So
Those who opposed the George W. Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq in March 2003 — not to mention his father’s war on Iraq in 1991 and the sanctions enforced through the...
News Coverage Misinforms Americans on the Bergdahl Swap
In national-security matters, the news media couldn’t do a better job misinforming the public if they tried. The latest example is their portrayal of the five Taliban officials traded for Bowe...
Did Team Obama Blunder or Conspire in Ukraine?
While no one ever lost money overestimating the capacity of the U.S. government to blunder, we cannot rule out that American officials knew exactly what they were doing when they helped...