The Unz Review • An Alternative Media Selection$
A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media
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 Peter Van Buren Archive
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Poof! It’s Forgotten
Five Ways the Newest Story in Iraq and Syria is... That There Is No New Story
• May 15, 2016
• 3,100 Words • 8 Comments • Reply
One of the most popular apps these days is Snapchat. It allows the sender to set a timer for any photo dispatched via the app, so that a few seconds after the recipient opens the message, the photo is automatically deleted. The evidence of what you did at that party last night is seen and... Read More
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Nickel and Dimed in 2016
You Can't Earn a Living on the Minimum Wage
• February 16, 2016
• 2,600 Words • 106 Comments • Reply
When presidential candidate Bernie Sanders talks about income inequality, and when other candidates speak about the minimum wage and food stamps, what are they really talking about? Whether they know it or not, it’s something like this. My Working Life Then A few years ago, I wrote about my experience enmeshed in the minimum-wage economy,... Read More
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You Won't Like It, But Here's the Answer to ISIS
Giving Advice to a Presidential Candidate Who Wants to “Do Something”
• January 17, 2016
• 2,600 Words • 2 Comments • Reply
How can we stop the Islamic State? Imagine yourself shaken awake, rushed off to a strategy meeting with your presidential candidate of choice, and told: “Come up with a plan for me to do something about ISIS!” What would you say? What Hasn't Worked You'd need to start with a persuasive review of what hasn't... Read More
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The Balance of Power in the Middle East Just Changed
U.S.-Iranian Relations Emerge from a 30-Year Cold War
• July 28, 2015
• 2,500 Words • 42 Comments • Reply
Don't sweat the details of the July nuclear accord between the United States and Iran. What matters is that the calculus of power in the Middle East just changed in significant ways. Washington and Tehran announced their nuclear agreement on July 14th and yes, some of the details are still classified. Of course the Obama... Read More
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Apocalypse Now, Iraq Edition
Fighting in Iraq Until Hell Freezes Over
• September 23, 2014
• 2,400 Words • 11 Comments • Reply
I wanted to offer a wry chuckle before we headed into the heavy stuff about Iraq, so I tried to start this article with a suitably ironic formulation. You know, a déjà-vu-all-over-again kinda thing. I even thought about telling you how, in 2011, I contacted a noted author to blurb my book, We Meant Well:... Read More
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Dead Is Dead
Drone-Killing the Fifth Amendment
• July 24, 2014
• 2,600 Words • 7 Comments • Reply
You can't get more serious about protecting the people from their government than the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, specifically in its most critical clause: "No person shall be... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." In 2011, the White House ordered the drone-killing of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki without trial.... Read More
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Shredding the Fourth Amendment in Post-Constitutional America
Four Ways It No Longer Applies
• June 26, 2014
• 3,200 Words • 1 Comment • Reply
Here’s a bit of history from another America: the Bill of Rights was designed to protect the people from their government. If the First Amendment’s right to speak out publicly was the people's wall of security, then the Fourth Amendment’s right to privacy was its buttress. It was once thought that the government should neither... Read More
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What We've Lost Since 9/11
Taking Down the First Amendment in Post-Constitutional America
• June 15, 2014
• 3,400 Words • 7 Comments • Reply
America has entered its third great era: the post-constitutional one. In the first, in the colonial years, a unitary executive, the King of England, ruled without checks and balances, allowing no freedom of speech, due process, or privacy when it came to protecting his power. In the second, the principles of the Enlightenment and an... Read More
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Why Don’t the Unemployed Get Off Their Couches?
And Eight Other Critical Questions for Americans
• June 3, 2014
• 3,400 Words • 18 Comments • Reply
Last year eight Americans -- the four Waltons of Walmart fame, the two Koch brothers, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett -- made more money than 3.6 million American minimum-wage workers combined. The median pay for CEOs at America's large corporations rose to $10 million per year, while a typical chief executive now makes about 257... Read More
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This Land Isn’t Your Land, This Land Is Their Land
An Empire in Decline (City by City, Town by Town)
• May 1, 2014
• 4,400 Words • 13 Comments • Reply
As America's new economy starts to look more like the old economy of the Great Depression, the divide between rich and poor, those who have made it and those who never will, seems to grow ever starker. I know. I’ve seen it firsthand. Once upon a time, I worked as a State Department officer, helping... Read More
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An Apartheid of Dollars
Life in the New American Minimum-Wage Economy
• April 24, 2014
• 3,400 Words • 7 Comments • Reply
There are many sides to whistleblowing. The one that most people don't know about is the very personal cost, prison aside, including the high cost of lawyers and the strain on family relations, that follows the decision to risk it all in an act of conscience. Here's a part of my own story I've not... Read More
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How Many Watch Lists Fit on the Head of a Pin?
• April 6, 2014
• 3,000 Words • 2 Comments • Reply
Rahinah Ibrahim is a slight Malaysian woman who attended Stanford University on a U.S. student visa, majoring in architecture. She was not a political person. Despite this, as part of a post-9/11 sweep directed against Muslims, she was investigated by the FBI. In 2004, while she was still in the U.S. but unbeknownst to her,... Read More
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Silencing Whistleblowers Obama-Style
Supreme Court Edition?
• March 4, 2014
• 2,400 Words • Leave a Comment
The Obama administration has just opened a new front in its ongoing war on whistleblowers. It’s taking its case against one man, former Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Air Marshal Robert MacLean, all the way to the Supreme Court. So hold on, because we’re going back down the rabbit hole with the Most Transparent Administration ever.... Read More
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Drone Killing the Fifth Amendment
How to Build a Post-Constitutional America One Death at a Time
• February 16, 2014
• 2,500 Words • 2 Comments • Reply
Terrorism (ter-ror-ism; see also terror) n. 1. When a foreign organization kills an American for political reasons. Justice (jus-tice) n. 1. When the United States Government uses a drone to kill an American for political reasons. How's that morning coffee treating you? Nice and warming? Mmmm. While you're savoring your cup o' joe, imagine the... Read More
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You Can't Opt Out
10 NSA Myths Debunked
• January 12, 2014
• 3,300 Words • 3 Comments • Reply
The debate Edward Snowden envisioned when he revealed the extent of National Security Agency (NSA) spying on Americans has taken a bad turn. Instead of a careful examination of what the NSA does, the legality of its actions, what risks it takes for what gains, and how effective the agency has been in its stated... Read More
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Welcome to the Memory Hole
Disappearing Edward Snowden
• December 3, 2013
• 2,300 Words • Leave a Comment
What if Edward Snowden was made to disappear? No, I’m not suggesting some future CIA rendition effort or a who-killed-Snowden conspiracy theory of a disappearance, but a more ominous kind. What if everything a whistleblower had ever exposed could simply be made to go away? What if every National Security Agency (NSA) document Snowden released,... Read More
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Ramblin' Man
John Kerry is a Figure of His Times (and That's Not a Good Thing)
• November 3, 2013
• 2,600 Words • Leave a Comment
In the 1960s, John Kerry was distinctly a man of his times. Kennedy-esque, he went from Yale to Vietnam to fight in a lost war. When popular sentiments on that war shifted, he became one of the more poignant voices raised in protest by antiwar veterans. Now, skip past his time as a congressman, lieutenant... Read More
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Giving New Meaning to the Day After 9/11
Why Saying No to Syria Matters (and it's not about Syria)
• September 12, 2013
• 3,300 Words • Leave a Comment
Once again, we find ourselves at the day after 9/11, and this time America stands alone. Alone not only in our abandonment even by our closest ally, Great Britain, but in facing a crossroads no less significant than the one we woke up to on September 12, 2001. The past 12 years have not been... Read More
About Peter Van Buren

Peter Van Buren spent a year in Iraq serving as Team Leader for two Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) as a State Department Foreign Service Officer. Now in Washington, he writes about Iraq and the Middle East at his blog We Meant Well. His book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the War for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People (The American Empire Project, Metropolitan Books) will be published this September.