My theory is that Kurt had a lot of residual pain from his childhood. And when you pile that on top of his experience in World War II - he was in Dresden when it was bombed and saw a city annihilated. When you combine those two things, my impression of Kurt Vonnegut at 84 was that he was a very pained and haunted man.
All the vested interests and people who profit by war will - with the journals they control - resolutely oppose any reduction of armaments.
The forest restoration campaign is a war to ameliorate nature.
Democracy for people who are not used to it can undermine stability, resulting in war.
President-elect Donald Trump has a host of national security challenges to deal with as he assumes office, from the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan to the grinding Syrian civil war to the flexing of Russian muscles under President Vladimir Putin to how to deal with ISIS as the terrorist army retreats in Iraq.
Since the attack on the United States on September 11 2001, and the US retaliation in Afghanistan and Iraq, there must be few people who have not felt a twinge of nostalgia for the cold war.
After Sept. 11, there was a reticence and worrying about films that touched on war, and even more on terrorism.
As we get closer to the end of this Congress, we should be addressing the urgent needs of the American people - the war in Iraq, affordable health care, a sensible energy policy, quality education for our children, retirement security, and a sound and fair fiscal policy.
Women, who enjoyed a high social status and levels of education under Saddam, saw terrible setbacks as Iraq fell into civil war. As a result of the sectarian violence from 2005-2007, women retreated to their homes and fell from public view.
When I was in my early twenties, I used to grow all sorts of very weird beards. All of them awful in retrospect. I had Civil War beards for a while, then Mennonite beards.
We need to address the systemic structural issues within the VA - the misallocation of resources, the interminably long waiting lists, the bureaucratic inefficiencies - to ensure that our American heroes are properly protected the second they return home from war.
'American Sniper' is a film that erases history, spectacularizes violence, and reduces war and its aftermath to cheap entertainment, with an underexplained referent to the mental problems many vets live with when they return home from the war.
In critical ways, Obama has reversed not just Bush policy but every president's approach to the world since the Second World War, save for that of his soulmate Jimmy Carter.
Let me give you an idea of Fifties Britain. The war had ended ten years before, and most people had returned to their gardens and allotments hoping life would revert to how it was before the hostilities.
It is hard to imagine two more final endings to the 'war on terror' than the popular revolts against the authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and the death of bin Laden.
Winning the Revolutionary War, or the Civil War, or World War II were the turning points in our history, the sine qua non of our forward progress.
Latinos have fought in all of America's wars, beginning with the Revolutionary War. Many Latinos are fighting and dying for our country today in Iraq, just as several of their ancestors fought for freedom in Mexico over a century ago.
War has generally had grave and fateful consequences for the American monetary and financial system. We have seen that the Revolutionary War occasioned a mass of depreciated fiat paper, worthless Continentals, a huge public debt, and the beginnings of central banking in the Bank of North America.
John Quincy Adams most certainly was a part of the Revolutionary War era. He was a young boy, but he was actively involved.
If the Founding Fathers and other patriots who fought during the Revolutionary War could see the United States today, I believe they would be proud of the path that the thirteen colonies, now fifty strong states, have taken since then.
