“Hem and Haw”: A Failed Syria Strategy
Where Bush offered shock and awe, Obama offers the hem and haw. War, but not a serious one; aid, but of the “non-lethal kind”; a desire to draw red lines, but a tendency to hope nobody notices them.
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Pornographic War Gazing: Why We Don’t Look Away
It is easy to blame the war machine or the pornography industry, but the more mundane problem is with our addiction to visual thrills. What some people see as a lack of moral vision (watching a porn video, for example) is perhaps better approached as an amoral astigmatism, a lazy eye, a privileging of the visual over our other evolved senses. The thrill of watching may mingle with compassion for those being harmed, but unless you as a viewer do something to actually alleviate that suffering, you are only a voyeuristic addict, entranced by the power of the gaze.
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Why 9/11 Changed Everything Nothing
The cliché that 9/11 “changed everything” is nowhere less true than in the post-9/11 impulse to declare war immediately. War was a choice as well as an echo: a choice Americans made, and an echo of how Americans have made decisions in times of previous conflict.
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Amid Horrors, Muslim ‘John Hancocks’ Forge Secular Sudan
While president Bashir has remained clear about his vision of Islamic nationalism, the conflict can’t be reduced to Muslim persecution of Christians. The broad struggle is of state-sponsored Arabist Islamic nationalism against racial and religious pluralism.
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In The Daily Beast, Niall Ferguson Says: Bomb Iran
Ferguson always manages to discover himself at the head of the next great cause; how convenient for him, and for whole countries.
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Goldstone 2.0: God Plays No Favorites
Could there be any more polarizing figure in the Jewish community than Richard Goldstone? When the esteemed South African judge issued his 2009 report alleging that Israel had committed human rights abuses during the 2008-2009 Gaza War (known as Operation Cast Lead), many in the Jewish community…
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2010: What Did We Believe In?
It shouldn’t be surprising that the most sacred concerns of Americans are also some of the most contentious political issues of our day.
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Pox Americana: Franzen’s Tragic Vision
There is nothing small-bore or contemptible about a novel that explores the wonder and heartbreak of romantic love against the distant thunder of imperial warfare.
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Remembering What Blood Has Bought
Suresnes American Cemetery was unsealed in the early 1950s to welcome twenty-four unknown dead of World War II. But these dead did not join the row-on-row ranks of the knowns of World War I. Instead, they were buried between two sections of the graves area and arranged in the shape of a Latin cross.
Read MoreConservative Christian Leader Attacks Commission on Conscience in War
Does the Institute for Religion and Democracy oppose freedom of conscience for service members?
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