...ed to pursue a militant form of protest? MR: I think there’s a distinction between militancy and violence, but I’ll let that slide for a second. We saw ourselves as soldiers, and all soldiers consider the costs of war to be necessary. The justification for revolutionary wars is to stop a larger violence, the violence of the system. In Vietnam, our government was murdering millions of people (3-5 million, according to the American Frie...
..., a world where freedom itself was under attack.” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, meanwhile, talked of “unknown unknowns” and a “war like none other our nation has faced.” In a 2001 op-ed article entitled “A New Kind of War,” Rumsfeld wrote, “Even the vocabulary of this war will be different. When we ‘invade the enemy’s territory,’ we may well be invading his cyberspace … Forget about ‘exit strategies’; we’re looking at a sustained engageme...
...ist attack on such a scale is awful, but that fear may be disproportionate to the amount of real damage an attack could do to the U.S. If this debate were taking place 30 years ago, it would be about the potential for nuclear war, with 300 million to 400 million dead from the start. If a lens of relativity is applied to the present when terrorism is the greatest threat to national security, then it may appear that America is building up the fear...
...iew – a sign, Ignatius thinks, of “[Putin’s] perception that Americans are out to interfere in Russia’s affairs.” The often turbulent relations between Russia and the West have deep historical roots, predating the Cold War and the Russian Revolution. At several points in its history, Russia has been invaded by outside forces, from the Swedes in the eighteenth century to the French armies of Napoleon in the nineteenth century and finally tw...
The relative peace that has followed the Korean War ended with an explosion in March of last year, when North Korea torpedoed a South Korean naval ship. Eight months later, the North Korean military shelled a South Korean island on the border, claiming four lives. These attacks prompted discussions of war between the two nations for the first time in almost fifty years, a war that would inevitably involve the 28,000 US soldiers stationed in Sou...
As their final action before the November elections, the House of Representatives passed the “Stop the War on Coal Act”, a five-part bundled bill designed to reduce regulations on the coal industry – regulations that bill supporters say have lead to industry job losses and plant closures. The largely party-line vote (233 to 175, with 19 Democrats crossing the aisle to vote “yes”) is typical of the post-2010 (solidly) Republican House, which has...
As the U.S. efforts in Afghanistan continue, one hears pundits muttering about how the Afghan War is arguably the longest war in the history of the United States. Whether it’s actually true or not, one thing is for certain, and that’s that this war has gone on for far too long—nine years after the first invasion, and yet we’re still in combat mode? Something must be wrong. And something absolutely is. Last week it was reported that Afghan Presid...
Okinawa is ambiguous. It is an idyllic, subtropical vacation spot in the eyes of most Japanese as well as the site of the 1945 Battle of Okinawa, the largest land-sea-air battle of World War II. Okinawa is one of 47 prefectures in Japan, but it also doubles as a home to 14 U.S. military bases which in total occupy one-fifth of the island. Its advantageous geographical location allows easy access to East Asia and the Middle East, making the islan...
...in vast numbers of paintings, and pieces of music attempt to capture the sudden violence of an atomic explosion. Like Vietnam for Lyndon Johnson, the mushroom clouds over Japan taint Truman’s presidency. He may have ended the war, but he did it so inhumanely that such an accomplishment will never be truly accepted. Our nation’s moral standards are too great. Apologists for the bombings claim that if Truman had not ordered the extermination of tho...
...g India independent from extraneous influence and preaches the righteous position of refusing to form an alliance against another nation or bloc of nations. Such a theme found particular resonance during the onset of the Cold War with newly liberated colonies and remained a popular idea in the Third World until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even today, the notion of non-alignment is held in high regard by many influential Indian diplomatic of...
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