Originally posted on The Contrary Perspective:
Richard Sahn. Introduction by William Astore. Being a college professor is supposed to be a grand profession. Assuming we’re not underpaid adjuncts with neither benefits nor job security, our pay is decent, our autonomy is considerable, and we get a fair amount of time off in the summer. How…
W.J. Astore OK. I should know better. When you pay attention to what conservatives are saying at the Iowa Freedom Forum, attended as it is by religious activists, you’re going to hear kookiness and craziness. But what’s sad is how the “red meat” issues raised by the likes of Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, and Rick…
W.J. Astore Former Army Ranger Rory Fanning has a thoughtful article at TomDispatch.com on why young men should not join the Army to fight the war on terror in distant lands. Here’s an excerpt: Believe me, it [the Afghan War] was ugly. We were often enough targeting innocent people based on bad intelligence and…
W.J. Astore Nick Turse has a revealing new piece at TomDispatch.com on the rise of Special Forces and SOCOM (Special Ops Command) within the U.S. military. (For a telling critique of America’s excess of enthusiasm for Special Forces, see last year’s article here by Dan White for The Contrary Perspective.) What are we to make…
W.J. Astore On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. gave a powerful speech (“Beyond Vietnam – A Time to Break Silence”) that condemned America’s war in Vietnam. Exactly one year later, he was assassinated in Memphis. What follows are excerpts from MLK’s speech. I urge you to read it in its entirety, but I’d…
Originally posted on The Contrary Perspective:
It’s unwise to worship without question the god of war (Worcester Art Museum, image of Ares) W.J. Astore Ever since the attacks of 9/11/2001, the United States has actively celebrated martial virtue. We’ve portrayed our troops as heroes. Presidents have celebrated them as the best led and best trained…
W.J. Astore A popular headline in the media is to describe the Afghan War as “America’s longest,” as in this brief summary today from Foreign Policy: The war in Afghanistan, America’s longest, is now formally over. The 13-year war, which claimed more than 2,200 American lives and cost more than one trillion dollars, ended quietly…
W.J. Astore America’s nuclear triad of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), sub-launched ballistic missiles (Ohio-class nuclear submarines), and nuclear-capable bombers is a relic of the Cold War. The triad may have made some sense in a MAD (as in mutually assured destruction) way in the 1960s and 1970s, at the height of the Cold War with…
W.J. Astore The passionate discussion generated by our last article, America’s Military Academies Are Seriously Flawed, was heartening. Our military academies will not be improved if we merely accept the status quo, with allowance for minor, mainly cosmetic, reforms. But truly radical reforms are difficult to achieve since the academies are so deeply rooted in…
W.J. Astore U.S. military academies are neither Spartan in being dedicated to war, nor are they Athenian in recognizing humanism (even the humanism of war). They are Archimedean. They focus on engineering and the machinery of war. But two millennia ago even Archimedes with his clever war machinery could not save Syracuse from defeat at…
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