Opinion Forum

Happy Holidays

December 17th, 2011

By Jan Barry

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Afghanistan, Combat Paper Project, Holidays, Iraq, veterans, Vietnam
Categories: Arts | Comments (9) | 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

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

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

Eyes of Babylon in New York

June 17th, 2011

By Jan Barry Jeff Key took the long road—via Iraq, a ditch in Texas and many other way stations across America—to perform on a New York stage. Key is currently presenting a slice of his own life as a gay Marine in his one-man show, “The Eyes of Babylon,” at 59E59 Theaters. Reviewers have stretched [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Afghanistan, don't ask don't tell, gay, Iraq, Jeff Key, Marine, New York, play
Categories: Arts, Life, Military | Comments (0) | Home

After Memorial Day

June 5th, 2011

By Jan Barry What do Americans do the day after Memorial Day? Move on, mostly, into the swing of summer, the resumption of daily routines uninterrupted by badgering advertisements for holiday sales and blaring reminders to commemorate the war dead. So the crowd was sparse the day after Memorial Day at the Veterans’ Voices poetry [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Afghanistan, Iraq, Memorial Day, Murray, poetry, PTSD, veteran, Wright
Categories: Life, Military, News, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

Rethinking National Security at the Pentagon

May 11th, 2011

By Jan Barry “Sustainability” is the latest buzz word in academic and environmental circles. Now it is also buzzing around the halls of the Pentagon. As the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan run out of rationalizations and public patience, two staff officers working for the Joint Chiefs of Staff have developed a new twist [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Afghanistan, defense, foreign policy, Iraq, security, strategy, sustainability
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

“We” Got Osama bin Laden?

May 4th, 2011

By Tom Carter Lots of Americans are happily shouting, “We got Osama bin Laden!” When I first heard it, I couldn’t help but ask myself, “What do you mean, ‘we’?” The fact is, the U.S. military and intelligence officers got him, under the leadership of their chains of command, including the Secretary of Defense, the [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Afghanistan, bin Laden, burden, Iraq, Marines, society, soldiers, veterans
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (11) | Home

Failed Foreign Policy of the Obama Administration

April 28th, 2011

By Tom Carter Mismanaged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, inept responses to Libya, silence on Syria, failure in the Middle East peace process. President Obama continues to demonstrate that he isn’t up to the job. President Bush botched the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in several ways. Most everyone understood the reasons for invading Afghanistan [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Afghanistan, foreign policy, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Middle East, Pakistan, Syria
Categories: History, News, Politics | Comments (8) | Home

What the World Sees in America

April 23rd, 2011

By Tom Carter Peggy Noonan, one of my favorite political columnists, is an insightful observer of the world around us and our place in it as Americans. Her April 21 column, “What the World Sees in America,” is a must-read. Noonan begins with a commentary on the wars America has lately been involved in — [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Afghanistan, culture, nation building, society, war, warriors
Categories: Life, Military, Politics | Comments (2) | Home

Counting Up the Costs of War

March 28th, 2011

By Jan Barry How many ways need it be said? America is going broke—and has become imperious, callous and cruel—waging wars around the world. A group of concerned citizens in New Jersey and New York set out recently to visually convey the costs of war for our nation. The result is a mind-boggling array of [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Afghanistan, costs, dead, financial, Iraq, photos, Vietnam, war, wounded
Categories: Arts, Military, News, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

What’s Foreign Aid? Why Does the U.S. Provide It?

March 14th, 2011

By Dan Miller It’s time to reassess the good, the bad, and the ugly. According to this article, a recent poll revealed that “respondents thought the foreign aid part of the federal budget was an average of 27 percent. The real amount is about one percent.” That suggests either that the amount of foreign aid [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: Afghanistan, amounts, Egypt, federal budget, foreign aid, Jordan, Pakistan
Categories: Economics, News, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

The Latest Farewell to Fighting Wars in Asia

February 28th, 2011

By Jan Barry “Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General [Douglas] MacArthur so delicately put it.” There’s a quote for the history books, broadcast last week at the US Military [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Afghanistan, Asia, defense secretary, Gates, Iraq, Middle East, USMA, war
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

Lynn Woolsey: A National Embarrassment

January 10th, 2011

By Nancy Morgan My nephew, Lance Corporal Lee Morgan, will be deploying to Afghanistan next Friday. This will be his second tour of duty there. Lee will be putting his life on the line, once again, fighting a war which is described by Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) as “an epic failure, a national embarrassment and [...]

Articles written by Nancy Morgan
Tags: Afghanistan, Code Pink, failure, Iraq, Lynn Woolsey, terrorism, war
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (2) | Home

Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns

December 8th, 2010

By Tom Carter I just read Khaled Hosseini’s novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes good fiction. It has everything — strong plot, perfect narrative, great style, and rare insight into the human condition. The subject matter, however, is what makes it an urgently important book. It chronicles the [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Afghanistan, Khaled Hosseini, Soviet, Splendid Suns, Taliban, terrorism, war
Categories: Arts, History, Life | Comments (0) | Home

Another Kind of Hero

September 5th, 2010

By Jan Barry Former Arizona Cardinals football star Pat Tillman was posthumously awarded the Silver Star by the U.S. Army — for being killed by fellow Rangers on a mission in Afghanistan. The wrenching impact on his family of his death and promotion to poster boy for the War on Terrorism is the focus of [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Afghanistan, documentary, friendly fire, Iraq, review, Silver Star, Tillman
Categories: Arts, Military, News, Politics | Comments (9) | Home

Winding Down a Misbegotten War

August 20th, 2010

By Jan Barry As the last U.S. combat units rumbled out of Iraq under President Obama’s August deadline, Time magazine’s chief political columnist, Joe Klein, summed up the costly consequences of what he called “a war that should never have been fought.” Blasting the Bush administration for blundering into “a neo-colonialist delusion” that caused hundreds [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Afghanistan, casualties, cost, end, invasion, Iraq, occupation, threat, war
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

bin Laden Is Laughing

July 19th, 2010

By Nancy Morgan Terrorists the world over are laughing into their turbans and praising Allah five times a day for the naive Americans who were responsible for electing Barack Hussein Obama as president of the U.S. And they’re giving a special thanks to the American media, specifically, the Washington Post, for giving them all the [...]

Articles written by Nancy Morgan
Tags: 9/11, Afghanistan, bin Laden, Iraq, islamic, Muslim, security, terrorism, war
Categories: Media, News, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

Let’s All Make the United States a Better Place

July 3rd, 2010

By Dan Miller As the two hundred and thirty-fourth anniversary of the signing of the faux Declaration of Dependence approaches, it behooves us all to reflect upon the nation’s shameful history and ways to make the United States a better and more progressive place of which we can all finally be proud. On July 1st, [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: Afghanistan, economy, illegal immigration, Mexico, Pelosi, satire
Categories: Economics, Humor, Politics | Comments (12) | Home

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