I have not been in Hanoi long enough to know my way around, but already I feel as though I have found a place where both history and the future are so alive.
Norman Solomon | Posted 09.26.2009 | World
Increasingly, public opinion is not cooperating. While the media establishment and the political establishment appear to belong to the same pro-war affinity group, the public is shifting to the other side of a widening credibility gap.
Ethel Grodzins Romm | Posted 09.15.2009 | New York
He introduced his girlfriend as "my old lady." She was maybe 17. They were both stripped to the waist, lying in a zipped-open sleeping bag, like hundreds, thousands, of couples around them.
Brent Green | Posted 09.15.2009 | Entertainment
Woodstock means little until you place it in larger context of a society unraveling around the newest generation of young adults, a dominant and dominating cohort of malcontents.
Mike Ragogna | Posted 09.12.2009 | Entertainment
This being Woodstock Week, it seemed a perfect time to catch-up with this artist whose music influenced many of those who appeared at the culture-changing event.
Sen. Fritz Hollings | Posted 09.11.2009 | Politics
Apparently, we Democrats, like the Republicans, believe that in order to get reelected we must keep the war going. More troops? Afghanistan is not worth the life of one more soldier.
Daniel Bruno Sanz | Posted 09.10.2009 | Politics
Inheritance is White, poor credit scores, Black. A missing woman is White and a fugitive on the loose is Black.
Derrick Crowe | Posted 09.08.2009 | World
Here's a tip for policymakers: if you're in a situation that's requiring you to look to the American experience in VIetnam for guidance, you should start looking for the door.
Kenneth C. Davis | Posted 09.07.2009 | Politics
The 45th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution should serve as a sobering reminder of the costly war that America was dragged into based on lies and shadowy misinformation.
Stanton Peele | Posted 09.01.2009 | Politics
We are unlikely to ever again see the likes of LBJ -- or of the huge changes he crafted in our society -- and we are just now starting to understand what we have lost.
Al Eisele | Posted 08.25.2009 | Politics
When I was editor of The Hill, one young reporter told me about the emotional reaction of her father, a former Naval officer in Vietnam, to McNamara's memoir. I have reprinted it here.
David Bromwich | Posted 08.21.2009 | Politics
For two centuries, Americans were taught to think war itself an aberration. Younger generations of Americans, however, are now being taught to expect no end of war -- and no end of wars.
Norman Solomon | Posted 08.20.2009 | Media
Despite the posthumous praise for Cronkite's February 1968 telecast that dubbed the war "a stalemate," the facts show that the broadcast came only after Cronkite's protracted support for the war.
Joe Peyronnin | Posted 08.17.2009 | Media
Cronkite not only covered historical events, he made history. He was the reason I became a journalist. He was the reason I went to work for CBS.
Stanley Kutler | Posted 08.12.2009 | Politics
Colin Powell and Robert McNamara exemplify the ever-loyal, unquestioning subordinate. McNamara self-righteously invoked Dean Acheson's quiet departure from the New Deal as his model, but Acheson's silence did not assure him a place at the World Bank. If McNamara had denounced the war, would it have made a difference? What if the very popular Colin Powell had expended some of his political capital and denounced the dubious rationalization for war against Iraq? Perhaps their dramatic gestures would have been wasted. But Archibald Cox's forceful stand against Nixon in October 1973 is instructive, showing that public resistance to a superior can make a difference.
Norman Solomon | Posted 08.09.2009 | Politics
The president has set a limit on the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. For now. That's how escalation works. Ceilings become floors. Gradually.
Mike Malloy | Posted 08.08.2009 | Politics
McNamara's killing spree was without limits, without restriction, completely outside the rules of war so carefully crafted by the world's "civilized" societies.
Jonathan Kim | Posted 08.08.2009 | Entertainment
Most of The Fog of War "lessons" reflect the powerful and painful humility of a man who knows he has made grave mistakes with graver consequences.
Byron Williams | Posted 08.08.2009 | Politics
While it's an oversimplification to suggest McNamara was the primary artisan of Vietnam, we cannot diminish his tragic contribution to the war.
Robert Scheer | Posted 08.07.2009 | Politics
Whatever his better nature, it was the stark evil he perpetrated as secretary of defense that must indelibly frame our memory of him.
Gordon Goldstein | Posted 08.07.2009 | Politics
Never before has an American political figure so passionately evaluated his own failings or so determinedly sought to understand the lessons of a tragic war.
Kenneth C. Davis | Posted 08.07.2009 | Living
For anyone who needs a refresher course on America in Vietnam, here is a short reading list from among the thousands of books written about the war.
McClatchy | David Lightman | Posted 08.07.2009 | World
WASHINGTON -- Robert S. McNamara, the Kennedy-Johnson-era defense secretary, will be most remembered as a man instrumental in sending hundreds of thou...
Greg Mitchell | Posted 08.07.2009 | Politics
One of the most dramatic, and in some ways revealing, incidents in the long life of McNamara occurred in 1972 -- when a young man, attempted to heave him off the Martha's Vineyard ferry.
Joseph Nye | Posted 08.06.2009 | Politics
Part of me will never forgive him for the consequences of his mistakes in Vietnam. But another part respects him for his efforts to come to terms with his actions and to help a younger generation to learn.
Julia Plevin | Posted 09.26.2009 | World