Appearances
Nation Magazine DC Discussion Group Speaker Saturday, June 18, 2016
On Saturday, June 18, 2016 from 3-5:30 PM at the Cleveland Park Public Library, the Nation Magazine Discussion Group in DC held a discussion of “US militarism”, where I was one of two very knowledgeable “resource persons” invited to the discussion.
April 14, 2016 @ 7:30 PM
KPFA Radio 94.1FM presents:
Melvin Goodman “Whistleblower At The C.I.A.”
Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar Street, Berkeley
Recent News and Latest Book
The Mad Man Theory: Nixon, Trump and Bolton
My latest piece published on conterpunch.org.
Early in Richard Nixon’s presidency, he told his chief of staff Bob Haldeman that his secret strategy for ending the Vietnam War was to threaten the use of nuclear weapons. Nixon opined that President Eisenhower’s nuclear threats in 1953 brought a quick end to the Korean War, and that he planned to use the same principle of threatening maximum force. Nixon called it the “madman theory,” getting the North Vietnamese to “believe…I might do anything to stop the war.”
The Great Myth of the So-Called “Adults in the Room”
The leading myth of the mainstream media over the past year has been the idea that there were “adults in the room” in the Oval Office of the White House. These so-called adults were for the most part general officers, both active duty and retired, who were going to restrain the excesses of Donald Trump by providing moderate and authoritative advice that he couldn’t get anywhere else.
Thus far, we have witnessed two Army generals who have served as the national security adviser, and two Marine generals who have served as Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary of Defense, and even chief of staff to the president. The past two weeks have been two of the most immoderate weeks in the brief history of the Trump administration, demonstrating that the adults are either AWOL (Absent without Leave) or unable to broadcast on Trump’s frequency.
