Video: Tom Lehrer | The Vatican Rag & Send the Marines
What do we do? We send the Marines!
For might makes right,
And till they’ve seen the light,
They’ve got to be protected,
All their rights respected,
‘Till somebody we like can be elected.
W.J. Astore: Anti-war Pragmatists and Pro-war Fantasists
What if peace is really based on pragmatism, and war on fantasy?
Nick Turse: The Moral Injury of War
Some men are very nearly monsters, capable of killing without compunction or remorse. In the everyday civilian world, we generally seek to lock them up. In war, they have a chance to fully flower.
Denise Levertov: At the Justice Department November 15, 1969
Brown gas-fog, white
beneath the street lamps.
Cut off on three sides, all space filled
with our bodies.
Andrew J. Bacevich: Reflections on “Peace” in Afghanistan
However great my distaste for President Trump, I support his administration’s efforts to extricate the United States from Afghanistan….Prolonging this folly any longer does not serve U.S. interests. Rule number one of statecraft ought to be: when you’re doing something really stupid, stop.
Nick Turse: What Does War Have to Do With Me
TRIPOLI, Libya — Sometimes war sounds like the harsh crack of gunfire and sometimes like the whisper of the wind. This early morning — in al-Yarmouk on the southern edge of Libya’s capital, Tripoli — it was a mix of both.
Audio: Martin Luther King — Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. – April 4, 1967 – Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence [Full and unabridged] “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence“, also referred as Riverside … Continue reading
H. Patricia Hynes: Hands off Venezuela
The arc of U.S. militarism across the 20th century and into the 21st is neither moral nor does it bend toward justice. Hope and US Aid at the Border: the … Continue reading
Patricia A. Nugent: Carpool Duet
“I have a good life. I’m financially secure. My kids have stayed married, and my grandkids are doing well. John and I are free to travel, to do whatever we … Continue reading
Joan E. Bauer: A Thousand Pigeons
Robbie, Paul & I met Carlin at the Hamburger Hamlet in Westwood in 1970. Carlin had a big laugh & shiny hair, but behind the jokes, a serious guy. He … Continue reading
Dawn Potter: Lost Time
In “my dream about time,” the poet Lucille Clifton writes of “a woman unlike myself” who “is running down the long hall of a lifeless house.” I am fifty-two years … Continue reading
Joan E. Bauer: Eight Notes on the Rain
Kien waited for death, calmly recognizing that it would be ugly and inelegant. -Bao Ninh, The Sorrow of War 1 spring rain, like ether, daubs down memory, mutes … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: Operation Badger Tooth
Once a year, on December 25, a darkness comes up from the earth into my life. On December 24th, nineteen sixty-seven, a battalion landing team comprised of three infantry companies … Continue reading
Sam Hamill: True Peace
Half broken on that smoky night, hunched over sake in a serviceman’s dive somewhere in Naha, Okinawa, nearly fifty years ago, I read of the Saigon Buddhist monks who stopped … Continue reading
