CounterPunch Op-Ed
Mel Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.
- The United States and the Middle East: the Politics of Miscalculation
- The Atlantic Joins the Chorus of Fear
- Two Wars, Five Losing Nations
- CIA’s Torture and Abuse: America’s Shame!
- Netanyahu and Israel in Decline and May Take Biden Down With the Them
- Never Forget Who Donald Trump Really Is
- Biden is Dragging the United States Deeper Into the Middle East
- Deal With Iran Politically and Diplomatically, Not Militarily
- Why Are Our Regional Experts Expecting More War in Every Corner?
- Meet the Washington Post’s Leading Apologist for Israeli Genocide
Recent News and Latest Book
Montenegro and the “Manchurian Candidate”
At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, Hollywood released a suspense thriller, “The Manchurian Candidate,” that centered on a Korean War veteran who had been captured and brainwashed by his North Korean captors. Following his release and discharge from the U.S. Army, the veteran becomes an unwitting assassin, a sleeper agent, involved in an international communist conspiracy to subvert and take over the U.S. government.
McCarthyism Revisited
Founding Father James Madison warned 230 years ago that “no nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” In his farewell address nearly 60 years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower echoed this warning regarding the impact of permanent war and a “permanent arms industry” on our rights and liberties. Thus, it is no surprise that the past 17 years of warfare have been accompanied by a series of lost liberties; a revival of McCarthyism; and a belief in conspiracy theory that has afflicted the left wing (“Deep State”) as well as the right (“Drain the Swamp”).