This essay was first published in Tikkun, November-December 2002. In his 1986 Nobel lecture, Elie Wiesel spoke with characteristic gravity on any attempt to reckon with the Holocaust: “There are no theological answers, there are no…
Secretary of State John Kerry asserted About Russia’s behavior in Crimea: “It is not appropriate to invade a country And at the end of a barrel of a gun Dictate what you are trying to…
Napoleon is said to have described the English as a nation of shopkeepers. It is a fitting description. They hold whatever dominions they have for the sake of their commerce. Their army and their navy…
President Richard Nixon: “We’ve got to be thinking in terms of an all-out bombing attack [of North Vietnam]…Now, by all-out bombing attack, I am thinking about things that go far beyond…I’m thinking of the dikes,…
The Nixon tapes record the following urging Of President Richard Nixon to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger During the Vietnam War: “I just want you to think big, Henry For Christ sakes the only place…
1. The following prayer was composed by Dr. Gordon Livingston, who graduated from West Point and did three tours in Vietnam as a surgeon with the 11th Armored Calvary Regiment. At a 1968 ceremony for…
1. In War without Fronts: The USA in Vietnam, German historian Bernd Greiner explains his focus: “At the heart of this book are the wartime atrocities and war crimes committed by the ground troops. To…
The case of Bradley Manning matters. The reason is simple: He touched a nerve. Before releasing over 250,000 diplomatic cables to Wikileaks, Manning commented, “Hilary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going…
On Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, The Politics of Genocide. Many years ago, I wrote a critical study of acclaimed moralist Elie Wiesel in which I tried to account for his trajectory from being…
Reading Overview (9:30 minutes) 1. Information and Ideas Reading Closely Determining Central Ideas and Themes Understanding Relationships 2. Rhetoric Analyzing Text Structure Analyzing Point of View Analyzing Arguments 3. Synthesis Analyzing Multiple Texts 4….