Embedded Files
150th Anniversary of the Civil War
Why we shouldn't "celebrate" the Civil War (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
Commemorating secession in Alabama (New York Times)
American and coalition forces deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010 - graphic
PBS/Frontline video about videogame recruitment center
Nicolas Kristof in Cairo (February 3, 2011)
Gene Weingarten on fear in the age of terrorism and traveling in Israel
Other Suggested Readings
A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo
The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford
The Father of All Things by Tom Bissell
Current Events
Spc. Salvatore A. Giunta, the recent Medal of Honor recipient
The Sal Giunta story (youtube)
Rolling Stone article about psychological warfare being used against our own Congressmen.
New York Times article about artists at the McGuire VA Hospital here in Richmond.
"It is not always the unfathomable terror seen in war that can leave a man depressed, but rather it is the nonchalant manner in which a soldier can welcome death." -Brady Straus (Collegiate '13)
Hermann Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
Gustave Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
In an interview with Gilbert in Göring's jail cell during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials (18 April 1946)
"The first casualty of every war is the truth." Eric Schlosser
"War is an illness caused by youth." - John Bissell
"What war does is distort normal feelings, not validate abnormal ones." - Tom Bissell
"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." - Leon Trotsky (apocryphal)
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