Tag Archives: war

August Is Here!

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

What issue will dominate August of 2013?

1. Will it be war?

In 1914, as Barbara Tuchman wrote in the Guns of August, war dominated the discussion, more specifically, the First World War. The Great War, as it was called until the Second World War, forever ushered in modernity, with all of its terrifying warts.

We were allies of the British in those wars, but in the War of 1812, they burned the Capitol building in August.

When I first started on Capitol Hill, war invaded August when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The Viet Nam War officially started in August when the Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Continue reading →

Patriotism Done on the Cheap

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I thought Sebastian Junger put it pretty well in yesterday’s Washington Post.

“The growing cultural gap between American society and our military is dangerous and unhealthy. The sense that war belongs exclusively to the soldiers and generals may be one of the most destructive expressions of this gap. Both sides are to blame. I know many soldiers who don’t want to be called heroes — a grotesquely misused word — or told that they did their duty; some don’t want to be thanked. Soldiers know all too well how much killing — mostly of civilians — goes on in war. Congratulations make them feel that people back home have no idea what happens when a human body encounters the machinery of war.”

I have been thinking a lot about war, patriotism, and how we express support for our troops. I suppose that is only fitting, being this was Memorial Day weekend, which is not only the traditional start of summer, but also the holiday set aside to remember the sacrifices of those who paid the ultimate price in fighting foreign wars. Continue reading →

The War Bike

BY LEE WOODRUFF

There’s a butterfly scar on my left knee that I refer to as my war injury. It’s the legacy of a spectacular crash into a metal telephone pole support, while riding what my sisters and I fondly called “The War Bike.”

The War Bike had been my mother’s childhood transportation in the years following World War II. The wobbly, ox-blood frame had big, fat tires (not the chic beach bike tires of today) and an ungainly basket on the handlebars. Think of bobby-socked British school children riding along a country road in the 40’s. My legs were just a touch too short to sit down comfortably, so I spent a lot of time standing up and pumping the pedals. Riding it felt a little like piloting an ocean liner. Continue reading →

Out of Touch

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

People who travel overseas with any regularity know how difficult it is to keep up with news from the states. CNN International runs Anderson Cooper and other domestic programs, but the news inserts are for, as the name suggests, an international audience – not for traveling Americans.

One of the issues about getting domestic news outside the U.S. is the issue of internet connectivity. I am on the shores of Lake Malawi in Monkey Bay about which Wikipedia says glowingly, “there is a supermarket and a market in Monkey Bay.” There is a new ATM nearby but the internet connection is approximately dial-up speed.

Some stories came through anyway.

The increasingly dangerous civil war in Syria moved into a new phase over the weekend when two car bombs killed 46 people in Turkey in a town along the Syrian border. Continue reading →

164 – Ten Years On

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from Mullings.com

Note: On September 14, 2001 President Bush went to Ground Zero. Standing atop a buried fire truck the President draped an arm over a firefighter wearing a helmet bearing the number “164.” Talking through a bullhorn, President Bush began addressing the rescue workers. When someone shouted that they couldn’t hear him, the President responded:

“I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”

I went through a good deal of what I wrote during the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. I’ve chosen to reprise this column because it was, unfortunately, prescient in the way it portrays the ways wars start and the ways war ends. I know you may be suffering from 9/11 fatigue, but I hope you’ll spend a few minutes and re-read this column from nearly 10 years ago:

Wars start with old men telling young men there is a great cause. Young men run tell their young women they are answering the call. Continue reading →

Bring Back the Draft

BY JOHN FEEHERY

His bed-making skills are much more impressive than mine will ever be. He creases his sheets just so. He could easily get a quarter to bounce high off the finished product. He tried to instill his bed-making skills onto his sons, but somehow, we never were able to follow in his footsteps.

Part of that was because we didn’t really care about making our bed. Part of that was because as teenagers, you are lucky to get to school, let alone worry about making your bed with military precision.

My dad learned a bunch of other things in the Army. He learned how to polish his boots. He learned all about physical fitness. He learned about different cultures in America (and in Korea).

He learned some things that he will probably never tell his grandkids, and some things he never told his mother. Continue reading →