And how might we consider the long-term psychological or spiritual trauma that those who experience war so often suffer? I’m talking about those who died from substance use, excessive risk taking or the cumulative stresses of homelessness. Even if they were not killed in action, many no doubt were killed by action. Should we inscribe their […]
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I have no doubt there’s a few dissertations’ worth of argument about exactly why political consensus around the war and consensus around bodily autonomy had such disparate trajectories. Ultimately, it just seems like stories about dead soldiers and the constantly shifting foreign policy objectives that doomed them have an effect that stories about desperate women […]
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“I think Bush is an extraordinarily complex person,” said Melvyn P. Leffler, a University of Virginia historian who just published “Confronting Saddam Hussein,” a book examining the war. “On the one hand, he appears to believe that his decision to invade Iraq was correct. On the other hand, looking at his book of paintings, you […]
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It was supposed to be a farewell party. Young soldiers and their barely older civilian government colleagues were dressed in swimming trunks, cannonballing into a palace pool that had once been a symbol of the deposed dictator Saddam Hussein’s power. Other young Americans were chowing down on corn on the cob and burgers. I was […]
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BAGHDAD — The thump of a car bomb explosion, then a whoosh of flame interrupting homework; the low boom of a roadside bomb and seconds later the shattering of glass jolting families awake; an apartment door being kicked open in the middle of the night and someone shouting in a foreign language; the pop, pop, […]
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The magazine’s case for war rested on three pillars: first, the alleged threat posed by Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction (a grab-bag term that included nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons), which, if not used by Saddam himself, could be handed off to terrorists; second, Saddam’s brutal dictatorship, which besides depriving his people of […]
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A couple of streets away from the new buildings and noisy main road of the desert city of Falluja, there was once a sports stadium. The goal posts are long gone, the stands rotted years ago. Now, every inch is covered with gravestones. “This is the martyrs’ graveyard,” said Kamil Jassim Mohammed, 70, the cemetery’s […]
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The explosions on the first night, lighting up the sky as they burned through buildings below, were only the earliest blasts of the yearslong war to come. For the thousands of days and nights that followed, eruptions across Iraq came from warplanes and cannons, grenade launchers and mines, machine guns, pistols and handmade bombs. What […]
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There is a question about the American-led invasion of Iraq that, 20 years later, remains a matter of deep uncertainty and debate among historians, political scientists and even officials who helped set the war in motion. It’s not the war’s toll in American military deaths (about 4,600) or Iraqi lives (estimates generally fall around 300,000 or […]
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But all my intimate experience of the ways in which America and Iraq clashed and intersected, psychologically, culturally, professionally, geographically, violently, and lovingly, were useless in the spring of 2003. The tiny things: a little brass Ottoman shoe with the upturned toe among the small suitcase of things my mother had carried with her when […]
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But all my intimate experience of the ways in which America and Iraq clashed and intersected, psychologically, culturally, professionally, geographically, violently, and lovingly, were useless in the spring of 2003. The tiny things: a little brass Ottoman shoe with the upturned toe among the small suitcase of things my mother had carried with her when […]
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This differs greatly from how the term was used in the early twentieth century, as part of the Black struggle and calls for greater political and social consciousness. Since then, the term “staying woke” has come to refer to a broader awareness of one’s place within a system; some people have even used it in […]
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This differs greatly from how the term was used in the early twentieth century, as part of the Black struggle and calls for greater political and social consciousness. Since then, the term “staying woke” has come to refer to a broader awareness of one’s place within a system; some people have even used it in […]
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BAGHDAD — When the United States and Iraq recently put tough new international banking rules into effect, the intent was to stem the illicit flow of dollars to criminal actors and money launderers, including those helping groups in Iran and Syria. But in a country with a primarily cash economy, the changes created unintended hardships […]
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Young, the lead Republican sponsor in the Senate, told me that he believed the legislation has a “strong chance of meeting with success” this year, compared to the previous years that it’s been introduced. “Each time, support grows a bit, and we’ve seen that this go around. So I’m optimistic,” Young said. Support for the […]
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A Chinese balloon seen hovering over Montana this week has been described as an “intelligence-gathering” airship by the Pentagon and a stray civilian research airship by China. Whatever its intended use, the balloon offers a reminder of how for more than a century, governments have used balloons for surveillance and observation, most often during times […]
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