W.J. Astore Continuing our election coverage, I thought I’d try to sum up each major candidate with a single word (excluding profanities). I encourage readers to submit your own words for each candidate in the comments section below. The Democrats Clinton: Compromised. No candidate is more beholden to special interests and the establishment than…
W.J. Astore I watched last night’s Republican debate so you wouldn’t have to. Leaving aside the usual mugging by Donald Trump, the usual jousting over side issues like whether Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen, I thought I’d take an impressionistic approach to the debate. You can read the debate transcript here (if you…
W.J. Astore I recently read Blood Red Snow: The Memoirs of a German Soldier, by Günter Koschorrek, which focuses mainly on combat on the Eastern Front between the Germans and Soviets during World War II. As Dan White has noted, military history sometimes degenerates into war porn – exciting tales of derring-do that save the…
Originally posted on Pox Amerikana:
‘Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.’ ‘Guantanamo will be closed no later than one year from now.’ ‘Washington is broken. My whole campaign has been premised…
W.J. Astore Bad ideas never die at the Pentagon — nor do they fade away. No — like no-win wars (Vietnam followed by Afghanistan, and so on), they keep coming back to haunt us. According to today’s New York Times, the Pentagon is reviving the idea of special medals and awards for drone pilots and…
W.J. Astore When I was a kid, I was a stamp collector. My dad, in contrast, saved old coins. He was not a collector; he didn’t file them away in special folders. He just tossed old silver coins into a cigar box. My favorite coin of his was also the oldest one he had: a…
For interested readers, here’s a summary of our blog, The Contrary Perspective, for 2015. We’d especially like to thank our frequent contributors, people like Greg Laxer and Michael Murry, for all of your comments. We’re really pleased to have reached roughly 200,000 “hits” in 2015. Together we’ve built a community of contrarians who are always…
W.J. Astore A common belief shared by U.S. political pundits and a compliant and complicit U.S. media is that America never chooses its wars: it’s dragged into them. Last October, I read an article in the “liberal” New York Times that caught the mood perfectly. It worried the U.S. was being “sucked into” wars in…
W.J. Astore One of the first acronyms I learned in the military was KISS. No, not the heavy metal band. No, nothing romantic either. It stands for “keep it simple, stupid.” The lesson: don’t think too much. That leads to “analysis paralysis.” Be decisive! Act, if need be, with extreme prejudice, a preference expressed vulgarly…
U.S. troops in Mosul, Iraq in 2007. A foreign presence to Iraqis W.J. Astore I’m a retired U.S. military officer. When I think of U.S. troops, naturally I see them as my gals and guys. I identify with them. And I know enough of them to know that their intent is usually good — at…
The Contrary Perspective 