All posts tagged: normal times

The Man Working to Keep the Water On in Gaza

The Man Working to Keep the Water On in Gaza

Published by skeptic

Numbers are one way to make the destruction of war legible: number of hostages, number of children killed, number of buildings destroyed, number of aid trucks that made it across the Egyptian border. For Marwan Bardawil, who lives in Gaza, the unit of peril he tracks is cubic meters per hour. Bardawil is a water engineer with the Palestinian Water Authority overseeing Gaza. And these days he is measuring, in cubic meters per hour, the quantity of water flowing through the pipes that, in prewar time, carried 10 percent of Gazans’ drinking water—pipes that are controlled by Israel. Right now, with other water sources dwindling, those pipes are Gaza’s lifeline. “The people are really in need of each drop of water,” he told me. For the past week, I’ve been checking in with Bardawil every day as he struggles to find clean sources of water. (You can hear our phone conversations on this week’s episode of Radio Atlantic). In the best of times, Bardawil’s job is difficult. Gaza sits between a desert and the Mediterranean …

A President’s Derangement, a General’s Duty

A President’s Derangement, a General’s Duty

Published by skeptic

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. In The Atlantic’s next cover story, editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg profiled General Mark Milley, who served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the last 16 months of Donald Trump’s presidency. What Milley saw as the nation’s highest-ranking officer is a graphic warning of the existential danger America will be in should Trump return to office. First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic: A Patriot and His Duty The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the highest-ranking military position in the United States, designated by law as the principal military adviser to the president, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council. It is a post of vital national importance, but most Americans probably have no idea who serves in it at any given time. And yet, for almost two …

The Patriot: How Mark Milley Held the Line

The Patriot: How Mark Milley Held the Line

Published by skeptic

The missiles that comprise the land component of America’s nuclear triad are scattered across thousands of square miles of prairie and farmland, mainly in North Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. About 150 of the roughly 400 Minuteman III inter­continental ballistic missiles currently on alert are dispersed in a wide circle around Minot Air Force Base, in the upper reaches of North Dakota. From Minot, it would take an ICBM about 25 minutes to reach Moscow. Explore the Special Preview: November 2023 Issue Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. View More These nuclear weapons are under the control of the 91st Missile Wing of the Air Force Global Strike Command, and it was to the 91st—the “Rough Riders”—that General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, paid a visit in March 2021. I accompanied him on the trip. A little more than two months had passed since the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and America’s nuclear arsenal was on Milley’s mind. In normal times, the chairman …

Americans Are Sleepwalking Through a National Emergency

Americans Are Sleepwalking Through a National Emergency

Published by skeptic

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. The United States of America is facing a threat from a sometimes violent cult while a nuclear armed power wages war on the border of our closest allies. And yet, many Americans sleepwalk as if they are living in normal times instead of in an ongoing crisis. First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic: The Fragility of Freedom Americans have become accustomed to so much in public life that they would have once found shocking. But many of these events are not only shameful; they are a warning, a kind of static energy filling the air just before a lightning strike. America is in a state of emergency, yet few of its citizens seem to realize it. For example, a single senator, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, has been holding up hundreds of military promotions for months, endangering …