An extraordinarily brave American, Spc. Salvatore Giunta of Hiawatha, Iowa, the first live American to win the Medal of Honor since the war in Vietnam, said this after his heroism was recognized in a battle far from Kandahar, in the Korengal Valley three years ago: “These people won’t leave this valley,” he said of the […]
Posts Tagged ‘soldier’
Medal of Honor to band of brothers fighting America’s senseless wars
November 22, 2010Surge in contractor deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan
September 26, 2010The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the most privatized in American military history. Today, there are 150,000 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. As of March 2010, there were more than 200,000 private contractors, though that number is believed to have declined since. In any case, more private contractors than soldiers were killed in Iraq […]
The ironies of Christian conscience
August 28, 2010The Rev. William P. Mahedy, a chaplain in Vietnam, tells of a soldier he encountered on the field of battle. The soldier approaches the chaplain and asks: ‘Hey, Chaplain … how come it’s a sin to hop into bed with a mama-san but it’s okay to blow away gooks out in the bush?’ Mahedy later wrote […]
The Moral Burden of War
July 3, 2010Who carries War’s moral burden? At the end of the Vietnam War, as troops were pulled out, the use of mechanized killing methods were expanded. Today, the Obama administration relies even more than its predecessor on a burgeoning drone war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A drone “pilot” sits in an air conditioned cubicle somewhere in […]
Army Specialist Bradley Manning
June 29, 2010The US Army is still holding Specialist Bradley Manning incommunicado in Kuwait, under charges of leaking to WikiLeaks a video of Apache helicopter pilots gunning down two Reuters cameramen and a number of Iraqis in a Baghdad neighborhood. WikiLeaks has arranged for three pro-bono lawyers to assist Manning in his case. However, Manning must request […]
