The problem with our view of history is we revere the violence rather than review the issues that caused it. Movies display in detail the attack on Pearl Harbor, the D-Day invasion, the Battle of the Bulge. Re-enactors playing dress-up perform in Kabuki-like ritual, a dumb show, reliving the carnage of Civil War battles, parading about old battlefields, while we dissect the tactics, the geography of military movement but rarely focus on the causes, the events which brought us into conflict. ...more

December 8, 2008

If only we could be a fly on the wall when our enemies are plotting to attack us. Better yet, what if that fly could record voices, transmit video and even fire tiny weapons? ...more

November 23, 2008

At small-town firehouses, in a field in Pennsylvania, at the Pentagon, at ground zero in Manhattan, in Kabul and in Baghdad, people paused to remember a day they will never forget. ...more

September 12, 2008

All five of my Civil War ancestors were poor, illiterate dirt farmers. Some knew how to scribble their names and others made an "X" when a signature was needed. Not one of them could write a letter home to be treasured and passed down. ...more

August 17, 2008

People have been visiting the Civil War's bloodiest battlefield since 51,000 men lost their lives here July 1 to 3, 1863. ...more

June 29, 2008

Beyond the battlefield and Lincoln, there's a fascinating past to investigate in the thriving Pennsylvania town. ...more

June 27, 2008

In "Henry VI," Shakespeare wrote, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." ...more

June 27, 2008

The U.S. Military Academy will now honor its daughters as well as its sons in two of its beloved songs. ...more

June 5, 2008

Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, on Saturday made his first public appearance here since the 2006 war with Israel, restating his claim that the militant group possessed the remains of several Israeli soldiers left on the battlefields of southern Lebanon. ...more

January 20, 2008

As an Army surgeon in the Middle East, Keith Rose watched a colleague bleed to death when a truck in his convoy was hit with a rocket-propelled grenade. ...more

December 26, 2007