War & Militarism

• Ashley Smith and the Power of Pacifism
  When an escaped killer entered Ashley Smith's home in Atlanta, she did what the skeptics say can't be done — she reached him without violence.
  624 words · 2 min read
• Battlebabble -- Selling War in America
  The language of war as spoken by Rumsfeld, Bush, and the Pentagon — where insurgents won't fight fair and cakewalk is a military term.
  718 words · 2 min read
• Bob Kerrey and the Memory of War
  Senator Bob Kerrey, thirty-two years after leading a squad that killed unarmed civilians in Vietnam, calls it a tragedy — and the haunting won't stop.
  602 words · 2 min read
• Can Soldiers Become Peacemakers?
  A simple question: if you need a bridge rebuilt in Senegal, would you rather have an Army engineer or an English major from Yale?
  606 words · 2 min read
• Day 9,125 -- The Longest Anti-War Vigil
  Twenty-five years across from the White House, William Thomas has kept watch — through blizzards, arrests, and a succession of war presidents.
  258 words · 1 min read
• Does War Work? A Pacifist’s Answer
  The beast of Baghdad is captured and war works, they say — but no pacifist doubted the military outcome, only whether anything was solved.
  821 words · 3 min read
• Egypt and the Power of Nonviolent Revolution
  To the skeptics who call nonviolence useless in the real world, McCarthy offers a refutation: the eighteen days in Tahrir Square.
  671 words · 2 min read
• Embedded Generals and One-Version News
  A roll call of the retired generals who dominate television war coverage — and the question of why no peace scholars are invited to balance them.
  810 words · 3 min read
• General Boykin’s God of War
  A Pentagon general takes his evangelical crusade on tour, telling church audiences that America’s enemies are Satan’s army.
  648 words · 2 min read
• God and War After September 11
  The morning of September 11, McCarthy's class on nonviolence met at 8:30 as usual — the topic, by coincidence, was the connection between faith and warmaking.
  1,214 words · 4 min read
• Hot and Cold Violence -- The Double Standard of War
  Two kinds of violence: the hot kind that makes the news, and the cold kind — poverty, hunger, preventable disease — that kills far more and stirs no outrage.
  661 words · 2 min read
• Michael Kelly and the Smearing of Pacifists
  The first U.S. journalist killed in Iraq was also among its most feverish promoters — McCarthy examines the cost of cheerleading for war.
  697 words · 2 min read
• No Remorse -- The War Cheerleaders Reconsider Iraq
  Four years on, the neocons who called Iraq a cakewalk now blame Bush for the execution while absolving themselves of the idea.
  574 words · 2 min read
• Obama’s Escalation in Afghanistan
  A congressman who likes Obama says great presidents sometimes make mistakes — the mistake being a hundred billion dollars more for Afghanistan.
  634 words · 2 min read
• Obama’s Nobel War Speech
  The signs were there from the start: a peace president who raised the military budget, kept Gates at the Pentagon, and chose Hillary for State.
  799 words · 3 min read
• Obama’s War Presidency
  The omens of an Obama war presidency arrived before the inauguration — and the doubts, all large, that he would rise above the ordinary.
  653 words · 2 min read
• Old Generals Never Fade Away — They Go on Television
  MacArthur said old soldiers fade away; now they hustle from battlegrounds to TV studios, seventy-plus retired generals reincarnated as analysts.
  684 words · 2 min read
• September 11 (Hot and Cold Violence Column)
  On September 11, the hot violence was visible; the cold violence — thirty-five thousand children dying daily from preventable causes — remained invisible.
  874 words · 3 min read
• Should ROTC Return to Campus?
  With don't-ask-don't-tell repealed, campuses are welcoming ROTC back — but McCarthy asks whether anyone has considered what military training actually teaches.
  735 words · 2 min read
• Should Soldiers Serve in the Peace Corps?
  A Pentagon program lets soldiers meet their obligations through the Peace Corps — and the orthopedists are busy fitting braces to all the jerking knees.
  559 words · 2 min read
• The Dalai Lama and the Limits of Pacifism
  The Dalai Lama tells a reporter that terrorism may need a violent reply — and McCarthy suspects the lightweight label fits after all.
  685 words · 2 min read
• The Execution of Osama bin Laden
  A moment of artificial national pride, a meaningless bump in the polls, and nothing of substance changed — the trillion-dollar spigot stays open.
  715 words · 2 min read
• The Four Stages of War Propaganda
  Theorize, demonize, victimize, rationalize: the four stages of American war propaganda, on display again as the machine revs for Iraq.
  884 words · 3 min read
• The Media and the Iraq War Delusion
  The corporate media that endorsed the Iraq war now confesses it failed the public — but the confession comes without consequences.
  647 words · 2 min read
• The Military’s War on Women
  A platoon of bemedaled generals confesses to Congress that rape in the military is rampant — Groucho Marx had it right about military justice.
  655 words · 2 min read
• The Moral Cost of ROTC on Campus
  Father Hesburgh took pride in Notre Dame's ROTC program; McCarthy, interviewing him over lunch, wonders what it costs a university's soul.
  771 words · 3 min read
• The Real Cost of War Taxes
  April is when citizens supply the cash for war, but the Pentagon counts in billions — McCarthy breaks it down to what each person actually pays.
  972 words · 3 min read
• The Wall -- Who Is Remembered?
  Twenty-five years after its dedication, the Vietnam Memorial carries 58,256 names — but the millions of Vietnamese dead have no wall.
  697 words · 2 min read
• There’s Nothing Noble About War
  A Marine colonel tells a father his son is a true American hero; the father, burying his boy, isn’t buying it.
  652 words · 2 min read
• Two Cheers for Cindy Sheehan
  Two cheers for Cindy Sheehan, but only two — a third isn't deserved until harder questions about her own peace policies are answered.
  580 words · 2 min read
• Vietnam and Iraq -- Nine Parallels Between Two Wars
  Nine ways the Iraq war is repeating Vietnam — from fabricated provocations to body counts to the assurance that the enemy is nearly defeated.
  945 words · 3 min read
• Vietnam and Iraq- The Recurring Logic of War
  Side-by-side quotations from Vietnam and Iraq, forty years apart, proving that the logic of war never updates its script.
  435 words · 1 min read
• War Taxes and the Cost of Militarism
  What each taxpayer actually spends on war, broken down from the trillions that numb the mind to the dollars that should trouble the conscience.
  668 words · 2 min read
• What Is the Pacifist Response to 9:11?
  Since September 11, pacifists have been scorned for not waving flags — McCarthy lays out what the pacifist response actually is, and why it matters.
  741 words · 2 min read
• When Generals Go on Book Tour
  One after another the retired generals surface, shifting from the martial arts to the literary arts — which is to say, cashing in.
  747 words · 2 min read