U.S. Army

Kanwar Singh 8-02-2017

Image via RNS/AP Photo/Morry Gash

A neo-Nazi had walked into a gurdwara — or Sikh temple — in Oak Creek, Wis., and gone on a rampage, fatally shooting six worshippers and wounding several others, including a police officer. To this day, the attack on the Oak Creek gurdwara remains one of the deadliest acts of violence on an American house of worship in our nation’s history.

the Web Editors 9-09-2016

Image via Sergey_R/Shutterstock.com

An effort by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to stop the construction of a four-state Dakota Access oil pipeline was denied by a federal judge on Sept. 9, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Shortly following the court decision, the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Army, and the U.S. Department of the Interior issued a joint statement ordering suspension of the construction of the pipeline.

Ed Spivey Jr. 2-06-2015

Illustration by Ken Davis

IF YOU’RE TRAVELING by air to Washington, D.C., this winter, be sure to look out your window. You don’t want to miss the lovely patchwork of monuments that covers the city, or the scenic curves of the Potomac River, or the giant dolphin-shaped balloons within arms-reach of your seat in coach. But don’t try to pet them. Setting aside the problem of rapid decompression if you open a window, the balloons are property of the U.S. Army, and they don’t like people touching their stuff.

The balloons—I call them balloons, although they’re actually reconnaissance blimps designed to warn against hostile missiles—float about 10,000 feet above the ground, tethered by inch-wide cables, presumably not held on the other end by children at, say, the zoo. Each blimp looks like a huge white dolphin with an unfortunate—and apparently undiagnosed—abdominal growth protruding from its belly. Clearly, it’s something a qualified medical professional should look at. Of course, if it’s just a navel, there’s no problem. But it’s definitely an outie.

There are two of these blimps, each 243 feet long and weighing, well, nothing, because they’re filled with helium, the gas that would have been used in the Hindenburg had the construction crews been smokers. (Smokers may not be smart, but they’re fast learners.) The blimps float above the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, just outside D.C., in some of the busiest airspace on the East Coast, and trail about two miles of cable connected to the ground. What could possibly go wrong?

Shane Claiborne 11-11-2011
St. Martin by Fidelis Schabet (19th century) in Katholische Pfarrkirche St. Mart

St. Martin by Fidelis Schabet (19th century) in Katholische Pfarrkirche St. Martin, Unteressendorf

“I wore chains just like these for over six years, a burden too great to bear for many like me, who stood ready to do violence in the name of the American people and way of life. In Genesis, Cain was the first person to have killed another human being, and we’ve been doing it ever since. As punishment, Cain was sentenced to a life of wandering, a burden he claimed was too great to bear. 

"After the towers fell a decade ago, I reenlisted and was deployed overseas with an infantry platoon for Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2004. Wandering the Mesopotamian wilderness like Cain before me, I saw things nobody should ever have to see. My heart hardened in the desert heat like the mud bricks I watched cure in the Iraqi sun.

"After coming home, I found war had infected my mind. Images and memories from Iraq would haunt my dreams and invade my thoughts. Not too different from the suffering endured by American and Iraqi families who have lost someone to war, I too lost someone on the field of battle – myself. I had sacrificed more than I bargained for, a lifetime of mental health and well-being forever crushed by the heavy yolk I bore as a combat soldier."

Joseph Mulligan 12-09-2009
The following is part of the author´s "jail journal," written in early 2004 while he was serving a 90-day sentence in Georgia for having "crossed the line" at Ft.
Julie Clawson 9-16-2009
I spent some time this summer visiting my parents in Taos, NM, and while doing all the touristy things there, I couldn't help but encounter stories of the history of the place that truly made me th

As the situation regarding the military ouster of Honduras' President Manuel Zelaya continues to develop, I Metroed across town to the U.S. State Department to photograph a protest calling for cutting off U.S. aid to Honduras until Zelaya's reinstatement.

Rose Marie Berger 6-03-2009
Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba wrote the U.S. Army's report on the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. He was then forced into retirement.

Jarrod McKenna 5-13-2009

"Jesus Killed Mohammed" was written in Arabic in large red letters on the side of a U.S. Army Special Forces vehicle, armed to kill and rolling through a town in Iraq. It sounds like a bad Mad-Maxesque Hollywood adaption of the Crusades set in our contemporary context. The scene gets more chilling and horrific:

Jennifer Svetlik 11-19-2008

Last spring, I made a pilgrimage to rural El Salvador to learn about the violence that had occurred there during the U.S-supported Salvadoran Civil War. The journey became a sacred one for me my first evening there, in the home of my host Florinda.

Biblical wisdom teaches: "Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good" (Romans 12:21).