John Graham

The U.S. Army thought it could squeeze one more combat tour out of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales. It was wrong. Bales is now accused of shooting and stabbing to death 17 Afghan civilians, most of them women and children. The Army said that he'd "snapped." Something...

For ten days last month I saw first-hand what the Chinese are doing in Tibet. The reports you've heard of cultural genocide are true. China is obliterating the ideas, traditions and habits of the Tibetan people.

Do we care? We'd better. China's confidence increases with each step onto the...

Watching the sandbox antics in Washington over yet another polarizing issue -- the debt ceiling -- I feel sad and angry at my country's incompetence. Yet there may be a model for America's future in Sierra Leone, a country the size of Iowa on the bulge of West Africa. It's...

For a short time in 1969 I probably knew more about Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi than any other American. I was then a young diplomat attached to the American Embassy in Tripoli. Since I was the most junior member of the embassy's political staff, I was given the worst job...

I went to a quiet meeting yesterday at the local Veterans Resource Center in the small rural county where I live. At the meeting were 25 vets, family members of vets and a few others. From that small group flowed gut-wrenching stories of suicides, addictions and shattered minds and bodies.

By now certainly you've heard of Steven Slater, the flight attendant who, suffering one too many abusive passengers, cursed the last offender over the intercom, activated the plane's emergency escape slide, grabbed a beer and slid to the tarmac. Slater became an instant folk hero. "Free Steven Slater" T-shirts are...

There are many differences between our wars in Vietnam and in Afghanistan. There are also similarities we can't ignore, including the vital need for an indigenous government that commands broad-based popular support.

I know the Vietnam part of it pretty well. In Vietnam, I was a civilian officer in...

I saw the possibility of a just and peaceful world last week--at a conference on a mountain in Switzerland. The (second annual) Caux Forum on Human Security was no Davos nor G-8 Summit. No media were invited. While the 300 invitees included some global VIPs, the key criterion for being...

The givens: our country over decades has jerry-built a health care "system" that is unfair and inefficient. We pay far more for far less care than any other industrialized nation. And we have forty million people uninsured for whom a major illness can mean mortgaging a home, not sending a...

I just had cataract surgery. The doctor replaced the clouded lenses in my eyes with high-tech plastic. The results were amazing. In the supermarket I stood in shock, trying to absorb the real colors of vegetables and fruits. Outside, the Olympic mountains, 30 miles west, jumped into my front yard....

It all worked out in Pirate Alley.

A brave American captain saves his ship and crew by putting his own life on the line. An untried American President deals with the crisis with wisdom and restraint, negotiating for days even as the standoff risks becoming an international embarrassment for...

Where are you on the stimulus plan? Inevitably a move this complex has so many parts there's something for everyone to dispute. Both Democrats and Republicans agree that the massive package now before Congress should contain short-term measures, such as tax cuts and unemployment benefits, meant to immediately pump cash...