Tom Engelhardt, editor of TomDispatch and of The World According to TomDispatch, chronicles the failures of the Bush Administration and their misguided faith in the dark side of force, the state of complete catastrophe inside Afghanistan and on its border with Pakistan, the precarious situation in Iraq, Bush’s failure to get Iran to stop enriching Uranium (his standard), how U.S. policy has benefited Hamas and Hezbollah, the worst crisis on earth: the U.S.-caused war in Somalia and the rise of much more radical forces there than those whose power the invasion was meant to thwart.

MP3 here. (23:32)

An editor in publishing for the last 25 years, Tom Engelhardt is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War era, now out in a revised edition with a new preface and afterword, and Mission Unaccomplished, Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters. He is at present consulting editor for Metropolitan Books, a fellow of the Nation Institute, and a teaching fellow at the journalism school of the University of California, Berkeley. Visit his Web site.

Shashank Bengali, reporter for McClatchy Newspapers, discusses the new U.S. African command center AFRICOM, the difficulty in finding a host country, the major crises in Somalia and Congo, China’s role in the African oil grab, the capability of U.S. Army humanitarian aide, the fight against AIDS, the Nigerian delta oil conflict and the spread of the “war on terror” to Africa as bin Laden predicted.

MP3 here. (35:47)

Shashank Bengali is based in Nairobi, Kenya, and writes about sub-Saharan Africa. He has reported for McClatchy from more than 25 countries and covered conflicts in Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, Iraq and Georgia. Before moving to Africa in 2005, he was a roving correspondent for The Kansas City Star. Originally from the Los Angeles area, Shashank studied at the University of Southern California and at Harvard University, where he earned a Master’s degree in public policy. He speaks French and broken Kiswahili.