Reflection on why people in the United States have consented to such a radically expansive military response has been as absent from the process as funding for wars has been limitless. Which is why Tom Engelhardt’s observations on these monumental changes in The American Way of War arrive none too soon.

In this edited collection of articles originally published online, Englehardt depicts the fundamental reshaping of U.S. perceptions of the world and presents his own thesis of the causes of current U.S. thought on terror. A combination of fear and divorce from the realities of war, he argues, allows people in the United States to live in peace at home while at war abroad.

Source from Foreign Policy in Focus: http://www.fpif.org/articles/review_the_american_way_of_war_how_bushs_wars_became_obamas

Boasting the biggest war budget since World War II (the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have now passed the $1 trillion mark, with Congress recently approving an additional $37 billion in war funding), Obama’s war machine is wreaking havoc far and wide on communities and families devastated by mounting military and civilian casualties, on the already faltering economy, and on America’s once-noble standing in the world. Even the recent disclosure of more than 90,000 secret military files documenting a failing Afghanistan war riddled by undocumented civilian casualties has not managed to slow Obama’s steadfast march to war.

To Read More go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-w-whitehead/obama-and-war-what-would_b_667815.html

On the outskirts of a desert town in the Moroccan-occupied territory of Western Sahara, about a dozen young activists are gathered. They are involved in their country?s long struggle for freedom. A group of foreigners?veterans of protracted resistance movements?is conducting a training session in the optimal use of a ?weapons system? that is increasingly deployed in struggles for freedom around the world. The workshop leaders pass out Arabic translations of writings on the theory and dynamics of revolutionary struggle and lead the participants in a series of exercises designed to enhance their strategic and tactical thinking. These trainers are not veterans of guerrilla warfare, however, but of unarmed insurrections against repressive regimes. The materials they hand out are not the words of Che Guevara, but of Gene Sharp, the former Harvard scholar who has pioneered the study of strategic nonviolent action. And the weapons they advocate employing are not guns and bombs, but strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations, tax refusal, alternative media, and refusal to obey official orders.

Read More: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/learn-as-you-go/weapons-of-mass-democracy

Constructing Alternatives to Empire is Part Four of a four part series of interviews conducted by Larry Marshall with Professor Joseph Camilleri and Reverend David Pargeter, two of the founders of The Alternatives to Empire Project.