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Tom Engelhardt, creator of Tomdispatch.com and author of The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s, discusses why the Cold War only ended for the Soviets in 1991, as the lone remaining superpower traded the “peace dividend” for 20 years of economic and military unilateralism; Chase Madar’s impassioned mock opening statement for the defense of Bradley Manning, featured at Tomdispatch; the death knell sounding for Pax Americana and US exceptionalism, as client states come under siege and US influence wanes; and the self righteous media commentary on Afghan financial corruption, with few willing to concede similarities to the US system of unprecedented fraud and nonexistent prosecutions.

MP3 here. (18:09)

Tom Engelhardt created and runs the Tomdispatch.com website, a project of The Nation Institute where he is a Fellow. He is the author of a highly praised history of American triumphalism in the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture, and of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing, as well as a collection of his Tomdispatch interviews, Mission Unaccomplished. Each spring he is a Teaching Fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. His newest book is The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s.