ICYMI: How American Soldiers Became Lawyers With Guns
Angry Planet1 Sep 2017

ICYMI: How American Soldiers Became Lawyers With Guns

More than 11,000 U.S. soldiers are fighting in Afghanistan right now. U.S. President Donald Trump plans to send 4,000 more. Military advisers are overseeing the war against the Islamic State and American military equipment and expertise helped retake Mosul. Drones launch from bases in Africa and the Middle East to conduct targeted killings against high value targets from Djibouti to Pakistan. U.S. Special Operations Forces operate across the globe in various capacities. Most of these missions are classified.


So America’s at war, right? Legally, no.


War, as we normally define it, no longer makes sense. There’s no draft — and only one percent of the U.S. population is in the military. The government isn’t levying special taxes or issuing bonds to pay for the fighting. And all this “war” — drone strikes, Special Forces deployments, air strikes and aircraft carrier deployments — is happening with little public scrutiny.


This week on War College, we sit down with Rosa Brooks to figure out how America barreled headlong into a permanent war without defining the terms or thinking about the consequences. Brooks is a former U.S. State Department official and the author of the book How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales From the Pentagon.


Brooks argues that U.S. citizens and lawmakers should shake off fears of appearing unpatriotic to challenge the government’s unchecked, unilateral and covert military activities abroad. If that doesn’t happen soon, she says, the United States may have to pay for the dangerous example it’s setting for Russia and China.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episoder(493)

Puffins, Zyn, and ‘Polar War’

Puffins, Zyn, and ‘Polar War’

Greenland fever has faded for now but it will return. The world’s polar region, you see, is pretty damn important. As the planet heats and the ice melts, what was once an impassible warren of ice and ...

6 Feb 55min

Online Culture Is the Whole Culture

Online Culture Is the Whole Culture

There was a time, just before the pandemic, when folks would say “Twitter isn’t real life” as a means of dismissing the horrors of social media. This was a cope, a way to ignore the worst political an...

30 Jan 1h 24min

How We Thought the First Year Would Go

How We Thought the First Year Would Go

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.comOn January 28, 2025, I sat down with Aram Shabanian to talk about how we thought the first year of the Trump administration would go...

16 Jan 1h 2min

On Spectacles of Cruelty

On Spectacles of Cruelty

On the last Angry Planet of 2025, novelist and Marine Corps veteran Phil Klay returns to reflect on a year of spectacle and cruelty.Between the Pentagon’s boat strikes and the administration’s constan...

9 Jan 52min

Google’s Former CEO Is Dancing in Ukraine

Google’s Former CEO Is Dancing in Ukraine

Earlier this year journalist Ben Makuch caught a glimpse of Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, dancing at a club in Kyiv. It was a surreal moment, a snapshot of a tragic war that the West thinks ...

19 Des 20251h 9min

‘Capitalism Is a Series of Regime Changes’

‘Capitalism Is a Series of Regime Changes’

Another week and another Angry Planet about the horrifying systems that rule our lives.Is there a depressive theme running through the work right now? Possibly. I promise we’ll soon replace it with ra...

12 Des 202548min

The US Government’s AI Grand Bargain

The US Government’s AI Grand Bargain

The White House is portraying the race to adopt AI as an existential crisis. It’s the next Manhattan Project, they say, a technology so important it will require an unprecedented build out of energy i...

6 Des 202554min

Deadwood: The Town that Made the Wild West

Deadwood: The Town that Made the Wild West

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.comThis week on Angry Planet we’re taking a break from the horrors of the present to explore horrors of a past distant enough now that ...

21 Nov 202551min

Populært innen Politikk og nyheter

giver-og-gjengen-vg
aftenpodden
i-retten
stopp-verden
forklart
aftenpodden-usa
popradet
det-store-bildet
nokon-ma-ga
dine-penger-pengeradet
aftenbla-bla
hanna-de-heldige
fotballpodden-2
rss-gukild-johaug
rss-ness
rss-dannet-uten-piano
frokostshowet-pa-p5
bt-dokumentar-2
grasoner-den-nye-kalde-krigen
e24-podden