b. traven I’m ninety three now and Kurt Weill’s “September Song” can bring me to tears. Not just because it hearkens back to my lost youth, but also its poignancy of “loss” reverberates to my sadness over the loss of our country to greed and vicious mediocrity. My youth was spent in a war that…
Michael Murry. Introduction by William Astore. Iraq is in the news again. As ISIS continues to expand its power, U.S. politicians engage in rehashing dishonest debates about “bad” intelligence in regards to Iraq (vintage 2002-03) or in recriminations about who did or is “losing” Iraq, e.g. this article from today’s New York Times about how…
Michael Murry. Introduction by William Astore. It’s fascinating to witness Republican candidates for president continuing to swing and miss as they’re tossed softball questions about George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. Jeb Bush was first at bat. He initially said he’d invade Iraq all over again; then he got testy about answering “hypothetical”…
Walter Stewart (Major General, U.S. Army, retired) Sniper Chris Kyle did not live long enough. I don’t say this in the context of his and Chad Littlefield’s senseless murder at the hands of a supposed brother-in-arms, but in the context of the American Sniper movie trailer that has Kyle saying, “I’m willing to meet my…
Michael Murry I wrote this poem in 2005, two years after U.S. President George (Deputy Dubya) Bush’s notorious “Mission Accomplished” proclamation. With the U.S. Military hopelessly mired in the twin quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan and desperately searching for any face-saving way out, I understood the predictable predicament, since I served eighteen months as a…
Daniel N. White I always liked the original name for this holiday, Armistice Day, and the idea behind it—celebrating the last war this country would ever fight, a lot better than its current iteration as Veterans Day, honoring all the veterans who “served” this country in peace or war. The Great War (1914-18) certainly wasn’t…
Michael Murry As I believe either Barbara Tuchman or Frances FitzGerald wrote about Vietnam: once a war has gone on for more than a couple of years it can only repeat itself indefinitely. This poem focuses on America’s War on Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos), but it has much to say about America’s current…
Mimi Madduck. Introduction by b. traven. Allow me to introduce Mimi Madduck to our TCP audience. Mimi is a dear friend who has chosen a line of professional work that those of you who are veterans of one of our incessant “wars” will appreciate. It is work that is both emotionally challenging and personally rewarding. Mimi…
Michael Murry President Barack Obama’s most recent speech launching yet another self-declared Personal Presidential Crusade against yet another Evil Muslim Acronym (ISIS/ISIL/IS, whatever) reminds me of something that General David Petraeus, Commander of the International Security Assistance Forces in Afghanistan once said regarding his mission objectives and his prospects for achieving them: “I think no…
Michael Murry In 2008 Barack Obama was elected president in a wave of euphoria for “hope” and “change,” but he threw away his mandate during his first year in office when he did not liquidate Deputy Dubya’s dimwit debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan. He became a predictable mediocrity after that, his two terms of office…
The Contrary Perspective 