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U.S. Department of Defense (DOD)

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Soldiers and a tank, a Defense department seal, and Pete Hegseth.

Bring Back the War Department

If you want a clear strategy for winning wars, don’t play a semantic game with the name of the department that’s charged with the strategy’s execution.
by Elliot Ackerman via The Atlantic on December 5, 2024

Call of Duty: Pentagon Ops

Inside the weird synergies that launched the videogaming industry—and made the Pentagon fantasies in Call of Duty its stock in trade.
by Jesse Robertson via The Nation on October 24, 2024
Korean War U.S Army helicopter and soldiers about to board.

The Korean War and Mismanaging Protracted Conflict

History can make the U.S. better prepared for the specter of protracted large-scale ground combat, which has grown more real in the wake of the ongoing war in Ukraine.
by Andrew J. Forney via Texas National Security Review on October 14, 2024
Book cover of "Cold War Country" by Joseph M. Thompson.

Big Government Country

Connie B. Gay and the roots of country music militarization.
by Brock Schnoke via UNC Press Blog on April 11, 2024
Operatives using air defense systems.

The Two Chomskys

The US military’s greatest enemy worked in an institution saturated with military funding. How did it shape his thought?
by Chris Knight via Aeon on December 8, 2023
George w. Bush delivers a speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln under a banner reading "Mission Accomplished."

The Worst Crime of the 21st Century

The United States’ destruction of Iraq remains the worst international crime of our time. Its perpetrators remain free and its horrors are buried.
by Noam Chomsky, Nathan J. Robinson via Current Affairs on May 12, 2023
Collage of Paul Bremer, a line of prisoners, and an excerpt of a document.

Orders of Disorder

Who disbanded Iraq’s army and de-Baathified its bureaucracy?
by Garrett M. Graff via Foreign Affairs on May 5, 2023
Lee Harvey Oswald in Police Custody

Decades Later, The JFK Assassination Still Keeps Some Secrets

A helpful way to think about the JFK assassination, and political assassinations more generally, is to be more Dragnet about it than discursive.
by Noah Kulwin via Defector on January 25, 2023
Robert S. McNamara at a news conference in April 1966

Robert McNamara’s Son Reckons With a Legacy of Destruction

Craig McNamara’s family did not talk about the Vietnam War. He spent his life asking questions about it.
by Noah Kulwin via The New Republic on July 6, 2022
In plane sight: Loadmasters look over Tumon Bay, Guam, during Exercise Cope North.

Guam: Resisting Empire at the “Tip of the Spear”

The Pentagon is increasing its forces on the US territory, but Indigenous residents are fighting back.
by Chris Gelardi via The Nation on November 2, 2021
Picture of David Rumsfield

How Rumsfeld Deserves to Be Remembered

America’s worst secretary of defense never expressed a quiver of regret.
by George Packer via The Atlantic on July 1, 2021
Crowd pointing to UFO over Chrysler Building

How Washington Got Hooked on Flying Saucers

A collection of well-funded UFO obsessives are using their Capitol Hill connections to launder some outré, and potentially dangerous, ideas.
by Jason Colavito via The New Republic on May 21, 2021
Four mysterious objects spotted in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1952.

How the Pentagon Started Taking U.F.O.s Seriously

For decades, flying saucers were a punch line. Then the U.S. government got over the taboo.
by Gideon Lewis-Kraus via The New Yorker on April 30, 2021
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Can Historical Analysis Help Reduce Military Deaths by Suicide?

A longer look reveals interesting patterns and may clarify what is driving a rise in suicides.
by Jeffrey Allen Smith, Michael Doidge, Ryan Hanoa, B. Christopher Frueh via Made By History on January 17, 2020

Ike's Military-Industrial Complex, Six Decades Later

As Eisenhower predicted, there is no balance left, as U.S. policy is reduced to who we threaten, bomb, or occupy next.
by James P. Pinkerton via The American Conservative on January 15, 2020
Soldiers carrying a wounded soldier to a helicopter for evacuation.

Confidential Documents Reveal U.S. Officials Failed to Tell the Truth About the War in Afghanistan

For nearly two decades, US leaders have sounded a constant refrain: We're making progress in Afghanistan. They weren't, documents show, and they knew it.
by Craig Whitlock via Washington Post on December 9, 2019

1984: The Year America Didn’t Go To War

Cabinet members slugged it out, but the one with the real war experience convinced Reagan not to avenge the Marine barracks bombing.
by Mark Perry via The American Conservative on July 16, 2019
Neil Armstrong and the American flag on the moon.

Apollo 11 Capsule Foil and Memories of Plucking NASA’s Moonmen From the Sea

A recollection of a NASA employee's experiences with Apollo 11 and 12.
by David Porter II, Lisa Hix via Collectors Weekly on July 12, 2019

Full Metal Racket

A history sheds light on venture capital’s ties to the military-industrial complex.
by Jamie Martin via Bookforum on June 1, 2019

The Making of the Military-Intellectual Complex

Why is U.S. foreign policy dominated by an unelected, often reckless cohort of “the best and the brightest”?
by Daniel Bessner via The New Republic on May 29, 2019

Redactions: The Declassified File

Mueller report censorship raises the question: what’s the government hiding?
by Tom Blanton, Malcolm Byrne, Lauren Harper via National Security Archive on April 18, 2019

Banking on the Cold War

The Cold War says more about how U.S. elites imagined their “freedom” than it does about enabling other people to be free.
by Nikhil Pal Singh via Boston Review on March 14, 2019
Desk calendar illustrated by its owner.

A Disgruntled Federal Employee's 1980s Desk Calendar

A nameless Cold Warrior grew frustrated in his Defense Department job, and poured out his feelings in an unusual way.
by Ted Widmer via The Paris Review on June 13, 2018

Fat Leonard's Crimes on the High Seas

The rise and fall of the defense contractor who bought off Navy brass with meals, liquor, women and bribes.
by Jesse Hyde via Rolling Stone on March 11, 2018
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President Trump's Military Parade Isn't as Unusual as You Might Think

It's part of the glorification of the military that's been happening since the first Gulf War.
by David Fitzgerald via Made By History on February 9, 2018

The History of Military Parades in the U.S.

The Trump Administration has clamored for a military parade. What are the origins of tank-led celebrations?
by Marissa Fessenden via Smithsonian on February 7, 2018

What the Press and 'The Post' Missed

Leslie Gelb supervised the team that compiled the Pentagon Papers. He explains what Steven Spielberg's new film gets wrong.
by Brooke Gladstone, Leslie Gelb via WNYC on January 12, 2018
A group of two women and one child watches a military procession pass.

How the US Military Became a Welfare State

Long in retreat in the US, the welfare state found a haven in an unlikely place – the military, where it thrived for decades.
by Jennifer Mittelstadt via Aeon on September 21, 2015
Antiwar protest against the Vietnam War outside the White House.

Vietnam in the Battlefield of Memory

On the war's 50th anniversary, peace activists will be challenging the Pentagon's whitewashed history.
by Jon Wiener via The Nation on April 15, 2015
Ships on fire and being evacuated at Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor as Metaphor

At the frontier of American empire.
by John Gregory Dunne via The New Yorker on April 29, 2001
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