In a new book, this historian and professor of international relations writes that America’s long military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq “demonstrated the folly of imagining that war could be mastered” and demolished “Washington’s pretensions to moral superiority.” More →

August 6, 2010

“American citizens must look beyond the vicissitudes of military leadership to the form of ordered peace they desire their military power to bring about.” More →

June 24, 2010

Will General Petraeus enlist the aid of anthropologists and other social scientists to advise on religion, ethics and local cultural practices in Iraq? More →

June 24, 2010

Ethicists and religious leaders are only just beginning to think about the moral questions and ethical consequences of unmanned weapons systems. More →

May 14, 2010

Watch more of our conversation with World Vision president Rich Stearns on dual catastrophes in Chile and Haiti, the military’s role in humanitarian relief, and the Obama White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. More →

March 5, 2010

“To be successful you need 10 years, not two years, not six months, and one of the problems of our aid program is that there is so much pressure from the Pentagon and the State Department for immediate results in 6 months or a year that we distort the aid program.” More →

February 19, 2010

Watch John Carlson, associate director of Arizona State University’s Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, talk about President Obama’s Afghanistan speech and the ethical implications of a new Afghanistan strategy. More →

December 4, 2009

In his book “Gray Land: Soldiers on War,” portrait and documentary photographer Barry Goldstein writes that “even at its best, day-to-day life in a combat zone has a corrosive effect on mind, body, and spirit.” More →

November 12, 2009

Revisit our November 2007 Web-only essay on dealing with the spiritual and moral pain of war. “My sense is that this is a fundamentally religious issue,” says clinical psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, an expert on combat trauma. “It’s possible to package it as a mental health issue, but I think we lose out.” More →

November 6, 2009

Read an excerpt adapted from Michael Sledge’s book SOLDIER DEAD: HOW WE RECOVER, IDENTIFY, BURY, AND HONOR OUR MILITARY FALLEN (Columbia University Press, 2005): Burying military dead with honors is not a recent practice. Thucydides’ account of the funerary rites … More →

May 25, 2007