Opinion
How to not win wars
Setting public deadlines, exit strategies, and casualty limits is a time-honored way to lose wars.
Opinion
What makes an illegal immigrant a criminal alien?
There are millions of non-citizens who are deportable but have committed no crime at all. Are we careful in our language?
Opinion
Keeping our promises to refugees
I urge our nation's leaders to thoughtfully consider the moral and humanitarian importance of the refugee resettlement program and to take steps towards its reinstatement.
Opinion
The limits of civil disobedience
We can't live in a society where words are violence, silence is violence, but vigilantes, for example, trapping a stadium full of sports fans in their seats for three hours or taking a hammer to Michelangelo's David is innocent protest.
News
Senate report: Biden administration left thousands in Afghanistan, ‘now subject to a brutal Muslim regime’
A failure of duty caused by lack of planning, coordination, and communication left hundreds of Americans and tens of thousands of allies in Afghanistan after a botched withdrawal from the country in August 2021, a new Senate report says. The U.S. will have to deal with the fallout of this failure for years to come,...
News
How did we get here: What’s it mean to be an American?
John Szoka, an Army veteran, was thinking about 9/11. About the attacks and the aftermath. The ghost-like figures, covered in ash, emerging from the destruction. All looking much the same. Shocked, shaken, and scared. No tags or labels. “You couldn’t tell if someone was black, white, Hispanic, rich, poor. Everybody was the same. We were...
News
Winning? Biden lays blame for messy exits: Americans call for more transparency
We’re winning in Afghanistan. That was the mantra, what they told us. Never entirely true. Some of it, maybe. Many of us in the U.S. were admittedly oblivious to the realities that Taliban fighters still maintained strongholds in the mountains, that ferocious attacks on allied military bases and outposts continued. Suicide bombings, car bombings. Winning? ...
News
N.C. House passes unanimous resolution on Afghanistan evacuation
The N.C. House voted unanimously Wednesday, Aug. 25, to pass a resolution urging Congress and the Biden administration to take additional steps to ensure all U.S. troops, American citizens, and Afghan allies are evacuated from Afghanistan before withdrawing a U.S. presence there. The resolution comes on the heels of a decision by the Biden administration...
Opinion
Afghanistan debacle should remind us of what authentic leadership looks like
The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan is a brutal reminder of the lack of leadership in America now. Much of the blame falls on President Biden. Yet, given the U.S. failed at an orderly retreat after its 20-year endeavor —not to mention over $1 trillion in spending on Afghanistan — a perfect symbol for an even...
News
Tillis, several GOP U.S. reps issue concerns about green-card holders
As expected, responses by state political leaders to President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on refugee resettlements follow partisan lines, varying in their intensity of support or opposition. Even so, several members of the Republican congressional delegation, including U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, expressed reservations about the order’s effect on legal permanent residents (aka green-card holders)...
Opinion
A World Not at Peace
We are at the beginning of a long, and possibly dangerous, campaign against Islamic extremism and fascism, says John Hood.
