Three Italian brothers who went to war

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Today, I’m posting a piece I wrote for Veterans’ Day in 2006. Because the piece touched a lot of people, I thought it worth publishing it again. Here it is.

They were three Italian brothers. With World War II in play, they were expected to serve their country, but the country they would serve was not the country whose language they learned at birth. Sons of Italian immigrants who settled in Ohio, they were Americans.

The brothers came from humble stock. At ...

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25
MAY
9

The Military

Does something get lost in the ISIS-Islam debate?

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President Barack Obama has taken heat for trying to distinguish between ISIS and Islam. I don’t care to debate whether ISIS fighters represent an extreme wing of Islam or are just madmen who try to cloak themselves under the veil of Islam. They’re killers and thugs.  That’s enough for me.

But since Islam has become part of the discussion regarding terrorism—rightly or wrongly—maybe it’s worth looking at Islam from another angle. Let’s look at Muslims who serve in the U.S. military.

The ...

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17
MAR
4

Social Issues, The Military

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War no longer involves the nation as a whole

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A letter to the editor in The Dispatch last Saturday from a retired Army major general caught my eye. He proposes that before sending troops into combat we should bring back the draft and enact a special war tax. The general wants to make “limited liability patriots and chicken hawks think twice before committing American blood and treasure to another war in the Middle East.”

I share the general’s sentiment, but for a different reason: war doesn’t have an impact ...

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20
OCT
0

The Military