September 2013

Andalusia

2015-01-23T00:41:43+00:00September 11th, 2013|Defense|

Originally published September 11, 2013

In a broadcast following the attacks of 9/11, bin Laden began his statement with the following:

Let the whole world know that we shall never accept that the tragedy of Andalusia would be repeated in Palestine.  We cannot accept that Palestine will become Jewish.

By mentioning the “tragedy of Andalusia,” bin Laden referred to the bloody expulsion of Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula by the Spanish and Portuguese.  The final Muslim kingdom fell in the year 1492.

Bin Laden believed the same thing was happening today to the displaced Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.  Since the formation of Israel in 1948, Palestinians had been pushed further and further from the lands they had inhabited for centuries.  Just as Westerners had conquered Spain, bin Laden thought the West was now in the process of conquering Palestine.

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March 2011

Remembering the Great War

2016-12-28T21:37:57+00:00March 24th, 2011|Defense|

Originally published March 24, 2011

Last month, 110-year-old Frank Buckles — our final surviving veteran of World War I — died peacefully in his sleep. His passing marks the end of an era and the fading of a conflict that is increasingly footnoted and ignored in American studies of history.

In some ways, this diminishment is inevitable. WWI began the better part of a century ago. Its causes are diverse and complicated. It offers no cosmic battle between the evils of fascism and the good of democracy, and it has no happy ending. Literature regrets it, video games ignore it and Tom Hanks hasn’t even done a miniseries about it.

Yet four million Americans fought in it, joining a staggering total of 65 million combatants who took up arms between 1914 and 1918. The extent of their sacrifice was unprecedented. And the significance of their struggle — one which profoundly changed both east and west — haunts us to this day.

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