Opinion Forum

Writing the Way Home

December 20th, 2011

By Jan Barry Across America, a special gift is arriving at numerous homes this week. This gift is a new book by Warrior Writers titled After Action Review: A Collection of Writing and Artwork by Veterans of the Global War on Terror. What makes this book decidedly different from so many other gifts this holiday [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: After Action Review, photos, poetry, PTSD, veterans, Warrior Writers
Categories: Arts, Life, Military | Comments (1) | Home

Will North Korea Collapse? (Part Two)

December 19th, 2011

By Dan Miller The situation in North Korea remains cloudy but some information has become available. (Also read Dan Miller’s PJ Media article from November titled “Will North Korea Collapse?“) North Korea’s Dear Leader Kim Jong-il is dead at the age of sixty-nine. The spin by the North Korean media is that he died of [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: death, food aid, Kim Jong-il, missiles, North Korea, nuclear, succession
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (2) | Home

Conservation for the Sake of Our Children Is Far More Important than Mere Cost

December 12th, 2011

By Dan Miller Green stuff is scarce and is too important to waste. According to this article, Last week, the Navy signed a contract with two biofuel companies to purchase 450,000 gallons of advanced biofuels at $12 million to assist in President Obama’s goal to establish a domestic biofuels industry and to advance it in [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: biofuels, conservation, cost, energy, environment, oil, satire, U.S. Navy
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

Manuel Noriega Returns to Panama

December 12th, 2011

By Dan Miller On Sunday, he was transferred to a maximum security facility in the jungle. After spending more than two decades imprisoned in the United States and then France, former Panamanian dictator Manuel (Pineapple Face) Noriega was flown back to the Republic of Panamá on the evening of Sunday, December 11. More than one [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: Chiriqui, drugs, France, invasion, Manuel Noriega, Panama, prison, U.S.
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

Will North Korea Collapse?

November 16th, 2011

By Dan Miller Kim Jong-il’s days of living the high life while his people starve are counting down. South Korean newspapers Korea Times, Chosun Ilbo, Dong A-Ilbo and Arirang News reported late last week that the Russian Institute of World Economy and International Relations opined in September that the Kim regime in North Korea will [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: China, collapse, Kim Jong-il, North Korea, reunification, Russia, South Korea
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

Celebrating Drew Cameron’s Healing Art

November 14th, 2011

By Jan Barry Remarks I gave at “Envisioning Tomorrow,” the Printmaking Center of New Jersey’s awards dinner at the Somerville Elks Lodge, Bridgewater, NJ on November 12. The center honored Drew Cameron, the co-founder and co-director of Combat Paper, “a touring project with a compelling mission to use the healing power of art to transform [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Combat Paper, Drew Cameron, poetry, PTSD, uniform, veteran, workshop
Categories: Arts, Military, News | Comments (3) | Home

Panetta Talks the Talk

October 30th, 2011

By Dan Miller At a news conference in Seoul, Korea today, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said that “provocations by North Korea similar to a pair of deadly attacks last year will not be tolerated.” He pledged that the United States will “sustain and enhance its military presence on the peninsula and in the Asian [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: North Korea, nuclear weapons, Panetta, response, sanctions, US troops
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

The War at Home

October 29th, 2011

By Jan Barry In Boston, Massachusetts and Oakland, California, Veterans For Peace members have been assaulted by police while peacefully demonstrating on behalf of Occupy Wall Street protest groups’ constitutional rights. The most seriously injured is Scott Olsen, a Marine vet of two tours in Iraq, who was hospitalized with head injuries after police in [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Iraq, Marine, Occupy, police, San Francisco, Scott Olsen, veteran, VFP
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (7) | Home

From Making War to Book Making

October 28th, 2011

By Jan Barry Tearing a leaf from Edgar Allan Poe’s literary leave from the US Army, a similarly brash band of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans called Warrior Writers is raising money from friends, family and fellow vets to publish a collection of their own poetry, prose and art drawn from military experience. Poe parted [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Afghanistan, anthology, Iraq, poetry, veterans, war, Warrior Writers
Categories: Arts, Life, Military | Comments (0) | Home

Is Another Conflict Coming to Korea?

October 22nd, 2011

By Dan Miller Until recently, there had been little new in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula. North Koreans continue to starve, the country begs for food, and the barely fed prisoner-slaves (there are up to 200,000 political prisoners there) grow poppies to make heroin to provide state export revenues of $500 million to one [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: foreign policy, Iran, Japan, Kim Jong-il, North Korea, nuclear, sanctions
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

Republican Peace Piper

September 18th, 2011

By Jan Barry Ron Paul is the kind of presidential candidate the American people haven’t seen in a long time—one who’s dead serious about ending overseas military adventures. That’s a stance that is increasingly popular with disgruntled voters across the political spectrum, which could well spell trouble for President Obama. Activists on the left and [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Afghanistan, foreign policy, Iraq, libertarian, Ron Paul, war, withdrawal
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (4) | Home

Peace Beat

September 11th, 2011

By Jan Barry War drums began beating across America before the dust settled at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It’s an all-American tradition to march to the beat for military action, the fountain of flag waving excitement that produces legions of war correspondents, bugle-blaring headlines and armchair commandos in newsrooms. It is rare [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: 9/11, Afghanistan, budget, Iraq, Keller, peace, Pentagon, war
Categories: Media, Military, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

Never Forget, Never Forgive

September 11th, 2011

Articles written by Editor
Tags: 9/11, attack, memorial, terrorism, terrorist, war
Categories: Life, Military, News | Comments (2) | Home

Understanding the Real Meaning of 9/11

August 30th, 2011

By Seth Forman Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic has a wonderful piece on “The Real Meaning of 9/11.” As he should, Goldberg places the “meaning” at the feet of Islamist hatred. He skewers the intellectuals who defend them and build a scaffold of ideology to excuse this murderous horde. But, as any well-intentioned centrist, he [...]

Articles written by Seth Forman
Tags: 9/11, Guantanamo, Iraq, Muslims, Pakistan, Syria, terrorism, UN, war
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

Vietnam: Another Kind of Adventure

August 23rd, 2011

By Jan Barry W.D. Ehrhart has been turning the tragedy of the Vietnam war inside-out, upside-down and sideways in a whirlwind of memoirs, articles, poems, poetry anthologies and travel pieces since surviving the battle of Hue in 1968—and living to ponder what the hell all the death, destruction and desperate encounters in Indochina added up [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: DMZ, Ehrhart, Hanoi, Hue, Japan, Marines, Takenaga, Vietnam, war
Categories: History, Life, Military | Comments (2) | Home

Welcome Home

August 10th, 2011

By Jan Barry Bob and Moe Eaton’s marriage, shadowed for more than 30 years by nightmares from the war in Vietnam, was about to implode. Ken Kraft, an Army officer who proudly served in Iraq, felt betrayed by his son’s refusal to carry on the family tradition of military service. Eli Painted Crow, a former [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Afghanistan, film, Iraq, Oregon, PTSD, The Welcome, veterans, Vietnam
Categories: Arts, Military, News | Comments (0) | Home

Shall We Have Another Civil War?

August 10th, 2011

By Dan Miller That would be a very bad idea. Unhappiness approaching panic is in the air. This article by Roger Kimball suggests some of the reasons: The American poet Frank O’Hara wrote a poem whose title I’ve always admired: “Meditations in an Emergency.” That’s where we are now: you can tell it’s an emergency [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: Civil War, Constitution, North, slavery, South, sovereignty, states rights
Categories: History, Military, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

Mexican Military Pilot Lands in U.S. due to a “Mistake”

August 8th, 2011

By Dan Miller According to this article, A Mexican military helicopter landed Saturday afternoon at Laredo International Airport by mistake, said a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Mucia Dovalina, the uniform public affairs officer for the Laredo Port of Entry, said the helicopter landed about 3 p.m., but she couldn’t share details such as [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: airport, landing, Laredo, Mexican, mistake, pilot, U.S.
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (4) | Home

Why Is the Libya War a Wrong War?

August 8th, 2011

by John H.M. Smith I have been arguing with those who support NATO action in Libya for quite a long time. Now let’s try a different approach, applying a little logic, asking three questions about the origin of this war: 1. Did the rebels have a choice? The answer is “no.” From the beginning of [...]

Articles written by Guest Author
Tags: democracy, Libya, Muslim, NATO, rebels, Syria, war
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

Poetry and Cannons

August 7th, 2011

By Jan Barry The last time cannons were fired in battle at Governors Island in New York harbor was in 1776. After a long run as an Army and then Coast Guard headquarters, the ancient forts and cannon, 19th century officers quarters and rows of barracks were given over a few years ago to New [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Bowery Poetry, festival, Governors Island, poetry, veterans, Warrior Writers
Categories: Arts, Military, News | Comments (0) | Home