All posts tagged: American soldiers

Iran’s Proxies Are Out of Control

Iran’s Proxies Are Out of Control

Iran and the United States have been in a shadow war with each other for years. That the conflict has never spilled into all-out war is only because both countries have kept to certain unwritten red lines and rules of engagement. One such rule, rarely broken in recent years, is: Thou Shall Not Kill an American Soldier. Even in January 2020, when a U.S. strike killed Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most important military figure, the Iranian response didn’t lead to a single U.S. fatality. The tit for tat that had led to the assassination had included the killing of a U.S. contractor, but no U.S. soldiers. On Sunday, this line was crossed. Three American soldiers were killed when a drone hit their living quarters in Tower 22, a small outpost in Jordan, near the country’s borders with Iraq and Syria. The attack was claimed by Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella term used by pro-Iran Iraqi Shiite militias that are backed and trained by the Islamic Republic and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). These militias …

The Stay Puft Marshmallow Doctrine

The Stay Puft Marshmallow Doctrine

Something is broken in the current policy of brinksmanship with Iran, and something unusual might be needed to restore a status quo. Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: AP Photo / Jacquelyn Martin; Planet Labs PBC via AP January 29, 2024, 12:05 PM ET Yesterday, a drone thought to be launched by Iranian proxies killed three American soldiers in Jordan, on the Syrian border. All talk now is of escalation. President Joe Biden said the United States “shall respond,” adding that the response would occur “at a time and in a manner [of] our choosing.” For once I would like to hear a world leader vow to devastate the enemy in a manner and time of the enemy’s choosing. “Choose the date,” they could say, “and tell us which five of your most vital navy vessels we will turn into an artificial reef.” The model for this retribution would be the first Ghostbusters film, where a vengeful god invites the heroes to “choose the form of the destructor,” then reads Dan Aykroyd’s mind and shows up …

The Origins of the AR-15

The Origins of the AR-15

Eugene Stoner was an unassuming family man in postwar America. He wore glasses and had a fondness for bow ties. His figure was slightly round; his colleagues called him a teddy bear. He refused to swear or spank his children. “Boy, that frosts me,” he’d say when he was upset. He liked to tweak self-important people with a dry sense of humor. He hated attention. A lifelong tinkerer and a Marine veteran, he was also fascinated by the question of how to make guns shoot better. When an idea came to him, he scribbled it down on anything he could find—a pad of paper, a napkin, the tablecloth at a restaurant. He had no formal training in engineering or in firearms design. Yet it was inside Stoner’s detached garage in Los Angeles, during the 1950s, that the amateur gunsmith, surrounded by piles of sketches and prototypes, came up with the idea for a rifle that would change American history. Today, this weapon is the most popular rifle in America—and the most hated. The AR-15 is …

Tucker Carlson, the American Face of Authoritarian Propaganda

Tucker Carlson, the American Face of Authoritarian Propaganda

“Axis Sally” was the generic name for women with husky voices and good English who read German and Italian propaganda on the radio during World War II. Like the Japanese women who became collectively known as “Tokyo Rose,” they were trying to reach American soldiers, hoping to demoralize them by telling them their casualties were high, their commanders were bad, and their cause was lost. “A lousy night it sure is,” Axis Sally said on one 1944 broadcast: “You poor, silly, dumb lambs, well on your way to be slaughtered.” Tucker Carlson, who also repeats the propaganda of foreign dictators while speaking English, doesn’t have anything like the historical significance of Axis Sally or Tokyo Rose, though his level of credibility is similar. This is a man who famously wrote texts about his loathing of Donald Trump, even while praising the then-president in public; recently, the former Fox News host kept a straight face while interviewing a convicted fraudster who claimed to have smoked crack and had sex with Barack Obama. But when Carlson speaks …