Military POV

Turns out we’ve done quite a few Iraq shows from a military perspective. So we decided to assemble them into an informal series. Can you think of any we’ve missed?

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The War in First Person, 06/30/05

The Things They Blogged. America’s enlisted men and women are blogging from Iraq and Afghanistan and giving us a real-time look at the front line. The ambushes and infantry patrols, the mess hall meals and desert heat. It’s war in the first person.

Soldiers and Families: Life in the 150th, 07/18/05

The 150th Combat Engineers Battalion in Iraq: a military family that includes spouses, parents, kids, and the friends back home… people who feel as much a part of the troop as the soldiers themselves. It’s an extended community stretching from Baghdad to Biloxi that lives in the open online.

Stuck in the Pottery Barn, 11/09/05

You broke it, you own it. Putting aside the reasons for going to war in Iraq in the first place, the reality today is a gathering Iraqi insurgency, an infrastructure in ruins, and a perilously fragile new democracy. Senator Feingold is calling for troop withdrawal, but does it make any sense to turn away now?

The Iraqi Police, 05/25/06

The Iraqi Police. Three years after the fall of Baghdad, the national police force — once projected as a pillar of US success in Iraq — seems now to be at the root of the country’s simmering civil war.

The War Tapes: Cinema Guerrit&#233, 06/06/06

Cinema Guerrité. The War Tapes is a documentary that redefines “lights, camera, action”. “Light” is the blazing, Iraq desert sun, “camera” is a mini video recorder and “action” is deadly and nonstop. Soldiers film war, while waging war.

Iraq: A Military Inquest, 12/12/06

A post-Rumsfeld, post-James Baker military inquest on What Went Wrong, asking: Does the fault lie with the Pentagon civilians or the military and the Joint Chiefs? Was it a problem of conception or execution? And what are the “lessons learned?”

The Classroom Lessons of Iraq, 12/13/06

In twenty years the Iraq War, like the Peloponnesian war, will be a case study of tactics and strategy. In the classroom, will it all still come down to Clausewitz and Machiavelli, or does Iraq offer something new to teach the West Point class of 2026?

What the Active-Duty Military Wants, 01/08/07

What the American soldiers are saying. Three and a half years into the war in Iraq a majority of our troops oppose the war. There’s that threshhold of 3000 American deaths, but what else has changed for our men and women in uniform?

The Future of the All-Volunteer Military, 01/23/07

The U.S. military at a breaking point. With 150,000 troops in Iraq and 200,000 more on duty overseas, the world’s second-largest standing army is stretched thin. Whoever said an all-volunteer force could police a global beat — and constant conflict?

Do Americans Need to Serve?, 01/30/07

Whatever happened to national service? The Army is at war, a recent guest told us, but America is still at Wal-Mart. From Americorps to the Peace Corps to the Marine Corps, is our all-volunteer country volunteering enough?

Coming Home: Iraq Veterans, 03/12/07

Veterans affairs. Half a million GIs have returned from Afghanistan and Iraq, to the battles of life AFTER war. For some it’s a homecomings with prosthetic legs, or post-traumatic stress, or a homeless life on the street. For some the battle is re-learning how to talk.

Women in War, 03/26/07

One in ten American soldiers fighting in Iraq is a woman, and in a war that makes no distinction between combat and support, they’re patroling, driving, and dying — all the while fearing not just enemy IEDs but sometimes sexual assault from men on their own side.

Iraq: Military Self-Critique, 05/02/07

The US military’s report card on itself, in Iraq. Lt. Col. Paul Yingling has ignited a blogstorm with his Armed Forces Journal article blasting the military commanders of the Iraq War. Could an open, honest, public debate about the generalship of the war be next?

Deploying. Again., 05/31/07

The fourth deployment. What combination of patriotism and fatigue, eagerness and fear, arrives when Uncle Sam Fed Exes marching orders for your fourth tour in Iraq or Afghanistan?