Opinion Forum

Vet Arts Profiled on PBS

May 2nd, 2012

By Jan Barry PBS Newshour ran an unusual program the other night, providing an insightful look at the Combat Paper Project that I’ve been working with for some time. “Finally tonight, transforming the wardrobe of war into art,” PBS Newshour anchor Gwen Ifill said in introducing this report aired on April 30. “In 2007, a [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Afghanistan, combat art, Combat Paper, Iraq, PBS, veterans, vets
Categories: Arts, Military, News | Comments (2) | Home

Iraq: Hot News and History

December 29th, 2011

By Jan Barry “Crisis plagues Iraq as U.S. troops depart — As the last U.S. soldiers exited Iraq Sunday and debate was raging about the nation’s future, political crisis erupted in Baghdad that raised fears of more sectarian strife to come. Iraqiya, a powerful political bloc that draws support largely from Sunni and more secular [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Britain, casualties, costs, democracy, hubris, Iraq, U.S., violence
Categories: History, Military, News, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

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

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

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

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

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

Blood for Oil!

July 2nd, 2011

By Dan Miller When we went to war in Iraq, those on the left yelled that we were shedding blood for oil. It seems that they may have been right — oil for our great friend and ally China. According to this article, China starts oil pumping in Iraq China has begun pumping oil [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: China, domestic, drilling, Iraq, oil, satire, U.S.
Categories: Economics, News, Politics | Comments (2) | 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

“Poster Girl” Draws Crowd

June 10th, 2011

By Jan Barry “Poster Girl,” the 2011 Oscar-nominated documentary, drew a standing-room-only crowd of more than 100 people in a recent showing at the Puffin Cultural Forum in Teaneck, NJ. The June 1 event also included a discussion with director Sara Nesson and Robynn Murray, the Iraq war veteran whose story is the focus of [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: documentary, Iraq, Oscar, PTSD, Robynn Murray, Sara Nesson, VA, veteran
Categories: Life, Military, News | Comments (2) | 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

Who Deserves Credit for the Arab Spring? Not Obama

May 19th, 2011

By Kevin Frei I will agree with Amir Taheri’s assertion in a column in the New York Post that the Obama Administration should receive no credit for the Arab Spring, but he overlooks giving credit to the Administration deserving of much of the credit for creating the conditions which allowed the “Arab Spring movements” to [...]

Articles written by Guest Author
Tags: Arab Spring, Bush, democracy, foreign policy, Iraq, Middle East, monarchy
Categories: 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

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

At the Movies: A Veteran’s War

March 3rd, 2011

By Jan Barry It was a long way from a machinegun mount in a military convoy in Baghdad. Robynn Murray’s getup was very elegant on Sunday at the Academy Awards in Beverly Hills, California. What made her stand out from the famous movie stars at Hollywood’s gala event was the brace of tattooed pistols perched [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: documentary, Iraq, Oscar, Poster Girl, PTSD, Robynn Murray, VA
Categories: Life, Military, News | Comments (2) | 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

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