Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, How We Learned Not To Care About America's Wars

October 8, 2017

Even though the article was buried at the bottom of page eight of the September 28th New York Times, it caught my attention. Its headline: “Russia Destroys Chemical Weapons and Faults U.S. for Not Doing So.” In a televised ceremony, wrote reporter Andrew Higgins, Russian President Vladimir Putin “presided over the destruction of his country’s last declared chemical weapons on Wednesday.” The U.S. and Russia had, it seems, long ago agreed to do so by 2007, before pushing the date back to 2012, and then 2020. The Russians have now beaten that deadline by three years while, according to an unnamed State Department official quoted by Higgins, the U.S. “remains committed” to doing the same by... “the end of 2023.”