News & Commentary from Veteran Writers/Activists
By Billy Kelly I am probably the only American alive who knows this hamlet's name. On March 15, 1969, I was involved in an all-day battle in this very area—mercifully, the only one of my brief military career. The combat took place within a two-kilometer by four-kilometer area. I remember the name because I received a few citations with this hamlet's name printed on them, and the date of the action was noted. I was … [Read more...]
The Pentagon -- and the United States government in thrall to it -- is congratulating itself on overcoming a hurdle that other nations have long gotten beyond or never faced in the first place. Feminists and progressives sympathetic to women’s rights are expected to be delighted that women can now officially be assigned to combat roles in the US military. The overcoming of this great hurdle follows a long tradition, in … [Read more...]
Jonathan Schell‘s probing review of Nick Turse’s Kill Anything That Moves originated on Tom Dispatch and migrated to Salon, where it appeared under the head, “Vietnam was even more horrific than we thought.” Really? While Jonathan Schell is not accountable for the Homer-moment in Salon’s headline, he nonetheless seems convinced that Nick Turse’s recently published book justifies such hyperbole. Schell, … [Read more...]
I was chatting with the host at a house party recently who was telling me of his family link to the Acadian town of Van Buren on Maine’s border with Canada. I was immediately reminded of an article I’d been assigned to write years ago by Down East Magazine, a slick vehicle for boosting Maine’s touristic image. Down East had excerpted a chapter from my back roads guide to Maine, and the enthusiastic editor whose … [Read more...]
Over the past decade or so, it’s become quite the fashion, when people learn that I once served in the Marines, to say to me, “Thank you for your service.” I’m sure they mean well, but I wish they would take just a moment to reflect on what they are saying. I went halfway around the world to a place called Vietnam, where I killed, maimed, brutalized and made miserable a people who had never done me or my … [Read more...]
Using one of those overarching dramatic titles we have come to expect in mainstream media news coverage, John Stewart summed up the Petraeus story as “Band of Boners.” It's the sort of thing that may be inevitable when so much power is given so much free rein by so much secrecy. The nature of military and spy craft -- Sun Tzu and Clausewitz would agree -- is that it’s never what it seems. As this unfolding … [Read more...]
"...the most unjust war ever waged by a stronger … [Read More...]
I have listed below more … [Read More...]
"The experience we have of our lives from within, … [Read More...]
Backyard Productions presents COMMEMORATE … [Read More...]
