By Peter Van Buren. Introduction by b. traven. Peter Van Buren is a former State Department Officer who has an impish sense of humor. He used that to devastating effect in his book, We Meant Well, on our misbegotten venture in Iraq. For telling the unvarnished truth about his service in Iraq, Van Buren was…
The Militarized Realities of Fortress America By William J. Astore (Featured at TomDispatch.com) I spent four college years in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) and then served 20 years in the U.S. Air Force. In the military, especially in basic training, you have no privacy. The government owns you. You’re “government issue,” just another G.I., a…
W.J. Astore Readers of The Contrary Perspective are privileged to read the searing “polemical” poetry of Mike Murry. A Vietnam veteran, Murry writes insightfully and powerfully about U.S. culture and history. His poems are challenging in the best way, because they challenge us to think again about America’s legacy and the harm we often inflict,…
By Michael Murry “Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray …” – Dante Alighieri, The Inferno “Methought I sate beside a public way …” – Percy Shelly, The Triumph of Life A Clockwork Phoenix Epiphany (Lines 1-112 of The Triumph of Strife: an homage to Dante Alighieri and Percy Shelley) A poet woke midway…
by Alex Dunn So, further rumblings from the old countries have reached the shores of the United States. A familiar sound, but this time originating from a different place – Ukraine. The sound itself? Russian tanks, once again bulldozing their way into a peace-loving nation. To European ears, the rumble is louder and more disconcerting…
By the Editors On June 6, 1944, seventy years ago today, allied forces attacked the Germans at Normandy in France in an immense cross-channel invasion. Omaha Beach was an especially nasty kill zone for American troops, as re-created in Steven Spielberg’s film, “Saving Private Ryan.” After that long and deadly first day, an allied beachhead…
P.J. Sullivan Albert Einstein said that the way to prevent wars is to prepare for them. Jeanette Rankin disagreed, saying that preparation for war leads to war. Armies always claim self-defense. They don’t like to admit to being the aggressor. It is always “the other guy” who started it. Of course, this is absurd. Somebody…
b. traven Last Friday, Eric Shinseki took the fall at Veterans Affairs. His resignation was driven mainly by reports of substandard medical facilities. But substandard medical care for veterans is hardly new (or news): the VA has never been funded adequately by a penny-pinching government that prefers to ladle money to defense contractors for more…
We have appointed Michael Murry as the Contrary Perspective’s “poet laureate” and have decided to bring his ” Polemical Poetry” to our readers as a regular feature that will appear every month. From time to time established poets have written verse that is political and verges on the polemical but Michael has brought his poetry…
By Bill Dyer Forty five years ago this month, American troops engaged in an 11 day frontal assault on a hill over looking the A Shau Valley, thought to be a major supply and staging area for the North Vietnamese Army, operating under the cover of triple canopy jungle and thickets of elephant grass. The…
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