Photographer Lalage Snow photographed and interviewed members of 1st Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland before they were sent to Afghanistan, after three months' service, and days after they returned home. Their faces show the toll that fighting in Afghanistan takes on our troops.

Read it all and look at all thirteen images.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Military / Armed Forces • Violence • * Economics, Politics • War in Afghanistan • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

Call it freedom of religion vs. freedom from religion: The Defense Department was engulfed in a firestorm over religious expression last week, caught in the middle of a tit-for-tat fight between Mikey Weinstein, the former Air Force officer and lawyer at the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and retired Army Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, a senior official with the conservative Family Research Council.

Weinstein met with Air Force officials April 24demanding that the Air Force take stiffer action to stop the intrusion of religion in the work place. The only way to do that, he contends, is to slap offenders with nonjudicial and judicial punishment — including courts-martial.

That was enough to light up the opposition....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Military / Armed Forces • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military

From here:

The ivy-covered walls have insulated John I. Jenkins, president of the University of Notre Dame, from understanding the fact that the majority of Americans are unable to engage in the "deep and candid dialogue" he is promoting ("Persuasion as the Cure for Incivility," op-ed, Jan. 9).

They cannot frame a decent, reasoned argument because they have neither the verbal skills nor a daily educational stimulus to do so.

I would suggest that he watch one hour of "Buckwild" followed by an hour of "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" then conclude his seminar with a perusal of highlights from "Moonshiners."

Father Jenkins will then see that bluntness and coarseness have permeated all levels of American society. These elements have forever supplanted the civility he is seeking.

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A Purple Heart and a Bronze Star, and then to football as a walk on--my goodness. Watch it all (about 5 3/4 minutes). I caught this by happenstance this morning while exercizing--deeply moving; KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Marriage & Family • Men • Military / Armed Forces • Sports • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * South Carolina

There’s a common military expression: “Somewhere out there is a bullet with your name on it.” Both soldiers in the line of fire and those farther from the front lines need spiritual counsel from people who understand the high-risk, high-stress environment of military life. The people who provide pastoral care and support for those who put their lives on the line for their country—and their families—are military chaplains.

Several dozen Candler alums serve as military chaplains, among them Chaplain Matthew T. Stevens 94T, who serves in the U.S. Navy. He says that chaplains must maintain “an active, visible, constant presence with the people they serve.”

“Even when things are at their worst, a chaplain being there represents God’s presence,” says Stevens. “It reminds people that God will never leave them or forsake them, that God will always be there with them. Chaplains are a visible representation of that.”

Read it all and join me today in prayer for military chaplains worldwide--KSH.

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[Not many]...days ago, the citizens of this great land decided who would have the privilege of leading our Nation for the next four years. It is a time-honored process reflecting both the wisdom and the power of the American people. Today, America honors the men and women whose profound acts of citizenship — service in the armed forces of the United States of America — have safeguarded our country for 237 years and guaranteed our rights as Americans to choose our leaders.

Twenty-two million living Americans today have distinguished themselves by their service in uniform. Their devotion and sacrifice have been the bedrock of our sovereignty as a Nation, our values as a people, our security as a democracy, and our offer of hope to those in other lands, who dream our dreams of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

For the past 11 years, the men and women of our armed forces have stood watch in Iraq, in Afghanistan, Europe, Korea, and more than 150 other countries around the globe. More than 1.5 million Veterans have served in the combat theaters of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Horn of Africa. Since 9/11, nearly 3 million Veterans have departed the military, having fulfilled their duty to the Nation, and become eligible for the benefits and services we offer here at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Marriage & Family • Military / Armed Forces • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Economy • The U.S. Government • Politics in General

In a world tormented by tension and the possibilities of conflict, we meet in a quiet commemoration of an historic day of peace. In an age that threatens the survival of freedom, we join together to honor those who made our freedom possible. The resolution of the Congress which first proclaimed Armistice Day, described November 11, 1918, as the end of "the most destructive, sanguinary and far-reaching war in the history of human annals." That resolution expressed the hope that the First World War would be, in truth, the war to end all wars. It suggested that those men who had died had therefore not given their lives in vain.

It is a tragic fact that these hopes have not been fulfilled, that wars still more destructive and still more sanguinary followed, that man's capacity to devise new ways of killing his fellow men have far outstripped his capacity to live in peace with his fellow men.Some might say, therefore, that this day has lost its meaning, that the shadow of the new and deadly weapons have robbed this day of its great value, that whatever name we now give this day, whatever flags we fly or prayers we utter, it is too late to honor those who died before, and too soon to promise the living an end to organized death.

But let us not forget that November 11, 1918, signified a beginning, as well as an end. "The purpose of all war," said Augustine, "is peace." The First World War produced man's first great effort in recent times to solve by international cooperation the problems of war. That experiment continues in our present day -- still imperfect, still short of its responsibilities, but it does offer a hope that some day nations can live in harmony.

For our part, we shall achieve that peace only with patience and perseverance and courage -- the patience and perseverance necessary to work with allies of diverse interests but common goals, the courage necessary over a long period of time to overcome...[a skilled adversary].

Do please take a guess as to who it is and when it was, then click and read it all.

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Governor of Nations, our Strength and Shield:
we give you thanks for the devotion and courage
of all those who have offered military service for this country:

For those who have fought for freedom; for those who laid down their lives for others;
for those who have borne suffering of mind or of body;
for those who have brought their best gifts to times of need.

On our behalf they have entered into danger,
endured separation from those they love,
labored long hours, and borne hardship in war and in peacetime.

Lift up by your mighty Presence those who are now at war;
encourage and heal those in hospitals
or mending their wounds at home;
guard those in any need or trouble;
hold safely in your hands all military families;
and bring the returning troops to joyful reunion
and tranquil life at home;

Give to us, your people, grateful hearts
and a united will to honor these men and women
and hold them always in our love and our prayers;
until your world is perfected in peace
through Jesus Christ our Savior.

--The Rev. Jennifer Phillips

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Military / Armed Forces • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military

His resignation Friday as CIA director because of an acknowledged extramarital affair aborts an almost four-decade-long career in public service defined by boundless ambition, political savvy and strategic acumen. And it almost certainly tarnishes the legacy of a man seen by many as the nation’s preeminent military leader in the post-Sept. 11 world, a commander who turned around the failing Iraq war and dealt the Taliban a bloody punch in Afghanistan.

He falls from a self-built pedestal that was based on more than battlefield heroics. As a general, his principal message to the troops under his command was not just about military tactics and high-concept strategy. He preached individual leadership above all else, often telling his charges that character meant doing the right thing when nobody was watching.

Read it all (my emphasis).

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Watch it all--if it doesn't bring tears to your eyes, something is wrong.

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The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Tuesday ordered the entire U.S. military to scour its training material to ensure it doesn’t contain anti-Islamic content, Danger Room has learned. The order came after the Pentagon suspended a course for senior officers that was found to contain derogatory material about Islam.

The extraordinary order by General Martin Dempsey, the highest-ranking military officer in the U.S. armed forces, was prompted by content in a course titled “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism” that was presented as an elective at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia. The course instructed captains, commanders, lieutenant colonels and colonels from across all four armed services that “Islam had already declared war on the West,” said Lt. Gen. George Flynn, Dempsey’s deputy for training and education.

“It was inflammatory,” Flynn told Danger Room on Tuesday. “We said, ‘Wait a second, that’s really not what we’re talking about.’ That is not how we view this problem or the challenges we have in the world today.”

Read it all.

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Despite high rates of alcohol abuse, the Army has delayed for nearly three years a plan to offer all soldiers access to confidential counseling for drinking problems, a move that leaders in alcohol abuse treatment say is a mistake.

The Army began a pilot program in 2009 for confidential treatment, but it continues debating what to do next because of a high dropout rate.

One in four GIs now have a drinking problem, and alcohol has been linked to record numbers of suicides, sexual assaults and domestic abuse cases, Army research shows.

Read it all.

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Glorious God, we give thanks not merely for high and holy things, but for the common things of earth which thou hast created: Wake us to love and work, that Jesus, the Lord of life, may set our hearts ablaze and that we, like Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, may recognize thee in thy people and in thy creation, serving the holy and undivided Trinity; who livest and reignest throughout all ages of ages. Amen.

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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Watch it all.

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Episcopalians make up one of the smaller mainline church denominations in Kansas, with about 15,000 members statewide.

For that reason alone, the Rev. Don Davidson said he found it highly unusual that Episcopal clergymen have been selected three times in a row for the post of state chaplain of the Kansas National Guard.

“That is weird,” Davidson said, “because the Army doesn’t care if a chaplain is a Baptist, a rabbi or an imam.”

He said, only half-jokingly, that Episcopalians make up only about “0.0002 percent of the population of Kansas.”

Read it all.

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The families of soldiers from Yorkshire killed in action or seriously injured in Afghanistan joined The Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu at a special service of remembrance and thanksgiving at Bishopthorpe Palace in York...[this past Friday].

The service, which was held in the chapel at Bishopthorpe Palace, was attended by over 50 parents and partners, brothers and sisters, Visiting and Welfare Officers from across the York Diocese.

The Archbishop said: “We should not forget our brave servicemen and women, who put their lives on the line on a daily basis. We have the best and bravest troops in the world and it is important that they know how highly they are thought of by this nation.”

Read it all.

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[George] Hursey, originally from North Carolina, was 21 years old at the time of the Dec. 7 attack. Hursey and the 130 others in his unit - Battery G of the 64th Coast Artillery - jumped into action when the strikes began at 7:55 a.m.

“Nobody was scared,’’ he said. “We had a job to do. It’s what we were trained to do....’’

Hursey worries that national leaders have forgotten past events like Pearl Harbor, which he believes leads to events like the terrorist attacks of 2001.

“The worst thing that happened to this country is 9/11,’’ he said. “Soldiers are supposed to die, we get paid for it. There were so many people who weren’t supposed to die in those attacks.’’

Read it all.

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For more than half a century, members of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association gathered here every Dec. 7 to commemorate the attack by the Japanese that drew the United States into World War II. Others stayed closer to home for more intimate regional chapter ceremonies, sharing memories of a day they still remember in searing detail.

But no more. The 70th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack will be the last one marked by the survivors’ association. With a concession to the reality of time — of age, of deteriorating health and death — the association will disband on Dec. 31.

“We had no choice,” said William H. Eckel, 89, who was once the director of the Fourth Division of the survivors’ association, interviewed by telephone from Texas. “Wives and family members have been trying to keep it operating, but they just can’t do it. People are winding up in nursing homes and intensive care places.”

Read it all.

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You just have to love it, watch it all.

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Cpl. Heinz Arnold of Patchogue, N.Y., played "Onward Christian Soldiers" on the mighty coronation organ. With stately strides, Sgt. Francis Bohannan of Philadelphia advanced up the center aisle carrying a huge American flag. Behind him came three chaplains, the dean of the Abbey, and a Who's Who of top American admirals, generals and diplomats. On the high altar, other soldiers draped an even larger American flag.

Their faces "plainly reflected what lay in their heart," one reporter noted, as the visitors sang "America the Beautiful" and "Lead On O King Eternal." The U.S. ambassador to Britain, John G. Winant, read a brief message from President Franklin D. Roosevelt: "It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord. Across the uncertain ways of space and time our hearts echo those words." The Dean of Westminster and one of the Abbey's chaplains also spoke. "God has dealt mercifully and bountifully with us," the chaplain said. "True, we have had our difficulties . . . but all of these trials have made us stronger to do the great tasks which have fallen to us."

Throughout Britain, the first global Thanksgiving gave men and women from the New World and the Old World a much-needed feeling of spiritual solidarity. Let us hope that today's overseas service men and women can have a similar impact on a troubled and divided world. Happy Thanksgiving—and our nation's sincerest thanks— to them all, wherever they may be deployed.

Read it all.

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As I write this, the majority of Americans are tucked safely into bed in anticipation of the next day’s food and festivities. Here in Afghanistan, Soldiers are beginning to wake up. Breakfast is just being served and others are out exercising. I want to take a moment and just tell you what I’m thankful for this year.

First and foremost, I’m thankful for a forgiving God. I’m thankful for the atonement of his Son, Jesus Christ, that made it possible for me to live again in spite of my sins and shortcomings. Though many, I have been provided with opportunity and grace through humility and repentance.

I’m thankful for my life. As some of you know, I had a close call last year and the past 18 months have been rebuilding and strengthening my mental and emotional well-being. It’s been a rough journey for me and especially my family. Which leads me to my next thanksgiving.

May all who serve and their families be remembered this day--read it all (and do not miss the picture).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Military / Armed Forces • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • War in Afghanistan • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

ROBERT BENTLEY: My father never talked about it until he joined the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. We were in school. If we were studying World War II, you ask him a question about it, he said, read your history book. That was the only answer we got.

SWEENEY: I hear a lot of this from family members here, who say the survivors group gave their fathers and husbands a place where they could finally open up and begin to heal.

This group plans to continue to meet unofficially as the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors. Al Pomeroy is another of these sons. He says keeping the group going is a matter of respect.

Read or listen to it all.

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[Sebastian] Junger said the trips help the soldiers make sense of what they've been through.

"It takes vets and it takes them to some of the most rugged and beautiful parts of America, of that country they were defending," Junger said.

The trips also help remind the men of teamwork and the challenges of the natural world. It gives them a place, away from society, to bond again and to be understood by people who have been through the same thing.

"When I was in Afghanistan, I watched people literally die for each other, and then I come back to a society that honks at me if I've taken too long to make a right-hand turn," said Brendan O'Byrne, another veteran from the 173rd Airborne who was on the trip.

Read it all (the video is terrific if you have time).

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As the nation prepares to welcome home some 45,000 troops from Iraq, most Americans have little or nothing in common with their experiences or the lives of the 1.4 million men and women in uniform. The past decade of war by volunteer soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines has acted like a centrifuge, separating the nation's military from its citizens. Most Americans have not served in uniform, no longer have a parent who did and are unlikely to encourage their children to enlist.

Never has the U.S. public been so separate, so removed, so isolated from the people it pays to protect it.

Every day, U.S. troops fight and work on all seven continents, but in most ways the nation has moved on to new challenges: the economy and a looming presidential campaign in which the wars bump along at the bottom of a list of public concerns topped by jobs, debt, taxes and health care. Over the past generation, the world's lone superpower has created--and grown accustomed to--a permanent military caste, increasingly disconnected from U.S. society, waging decade-long wars in its name, no longer representative of or drawn from the citizenry as a whole. Think of the U.S. military as the Other 1%--some 2.4 million troops have fought in and around Afghanistan and Iraq since 9/11, exactly 1% of the 240 million Americans over 18. The U.S. Constitution calls on the people to provide for the common defense. But there is very little that is common about the way we defend ourselves in the 21st century.

Read it all.

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There is a fabulous resource for this courtesy of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. There are many themes from which to choose, and various letters to see the text of and listen to. Take a moment a drink at least one in, and, if you have a moment, tell us your thoughts in the comments.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military

Despite the marketing pitch from the armed forces, which promises to prepare soldiers for the working world, recent veterans are more likely to be unemployed than their civilian counterparts.

Veterans who left military service in the past decade have an unemployment rate of 11.7 percent, well above the overall jobless rate of 9.1 percent, according to fresh data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The elevated unemployment rate for new veterans has persisted despite repeated efforts to reduce it.

Read it all.

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[Marine Sgt. Craig] Santos, an Air Control Squadron 2 aviation supply specialist at the base in Beaufort, had tried Twitter and Craigslist and gotten nothing. He was running out of time. Angela was getting weaker.

Santos put an ad for a kidney donor on a website called beaufortyardsales.com.

Cpl. Stephanie St. Laurent, a Fighter Attack Squadron 533 jet mechanic, saw the ad and stepped forward.

"A Marine was helpless," she said after the operation. "His wife was dying and he needed help."

Read it all from today's local paper.

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Inside the narrow valley, Taliban insurgents were dug into the high ground and hidden inside a village, pouring down deadly fire at Afghan forces and their American advisers. Armed militants swarmed the low ground to try to finish off the troops.

[Marine Cpl. Dakota] Meyer's team was pinned down near the village. He wasn't going to wait and see whether they would get out. Defying orders to stay put, Meyer set himself in the turret of a Humvee and rode straight into the firefight, taking fire from all directions. He went in not once, but five times, trying to rescue his comrades.

During about six hours of chaotic fighting, he killed eight Taliban militants and provided cover for Afghan and U.S. servicemen to escape the ambush, according to a Marine Corps account of the events.

Read it all.

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On Sunday 4th September, the Archbishop of York will lead the Forces Commemoration Service for the 14 service personnel who lost their lives on a Nimrod in Afghanistan in 2006.

The Archbishop is visiting the Yorkshire Air Museum to lead the Forces Commemoration Service dedicated in honour of the 14 service personnel who lost their lives on Nimrod XV230 in Afghanistan 5 years ago on September 2nd 2006. The Yorkshire Air Museum is home to the Allied Air Forces Memorial, which recognises and commemorates the achievements and sacrifice of allied airmen and women in all conflicts.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of York John Sentamu • * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

He is still standing guard--take a look.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Military / Armed Forces • * General Interest • Natural Disasters: Earthquakes, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, etc.

This week a federal grand jury indicted Army soldier Naser Jason Abdo, age 21, on three charges related to a plot to attack soldiers near Fort Hood, Texas. When authorities arrested him, they found in his possession bomb-making materials, a gun, ammunition, and the article "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom," from a recent issue of al-Qaeda's English online journal Inspire. Initial questioning of Abdo indicates that his intended targets were U.S. military personnel....

Any effort to make sense of this troubled young man will need to include understanding how he chose to approach and interpret his religion, and perhaps most importantly, why he adopted the interpretation he did. Any effort to understand Abdo without considering this question would be profoundly incomplete.

Yet tucked away, often near the closing paragraph of the articles about this case, is mention of an issue that I believe warrants more attention than it has received in the past decade of terrorism studies: namely, pornography. And in Abdo's case, child pornography.

Read it all.

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The Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Revd Nigel McCulloch, said on Wednesday that riots in Manchester and Salford on Tuesday night were acts of “thuggery, vandalism, and theft”. Greater Manchester Police said that its officers had faced “un­precedented violence”.

Speaking on Wednesday morning, Bishop McCulloch, who had been in Manchester city centre since 7 a.m., said: “Here in the Manchester area we have young people out fighting in Afghanistan, putting their lives on the line for our freedom, and here we have these kids in a society that has put self-interest above everything else.”

He said that one of the lessons that had been learnt after previous episodes of violence in Manchester — including the IRA bomb in 1996 — was that “it is crucial for local morale that by the time people come in the next morning the city is looking as normal as can be.” He said that it was “heartening” to see hundreds of young people who had come to the city centre with brushes and pans, having been alerted on Twitter, the social-networking site. “It shows the majority of young people are law abiding.”

Read it all.

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A concert event organized by atheist, agnostic and other non-theist soldiers has been cleared by the Army to take place next spring at Fort Bragg, concert organizers and a spokesman for the post said Monday.

Organizers planned to hold the Rock Beyond Belief event this year, but they canceled after saying Bragg leadership was not providing the same support it gave to an evangelical Christian concert last fall.

Supporters hailed the Army’s decision.

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George Krowska traveled to Myrtle Beach this spring after a relationship went sour.

He had been staying in a Colorado shelter for a couple of months, the first time in his life the 62-year-old Army veteran was homeless. But in Myrtle Beach, he was abandoned, he said.

Krowska has a heart blockage that qualifies him for disability benefits and requires a certain proximity to a VA hospital, so he hitchhiked to Charleston. At the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center, he received treatment, learned about Crisis Ministries, the area's homeless shelter and got a bus pass.

The former construction worker is living off of $923 a month, but cannot work because of his heart. More than two months into a maximum 90-day stay, he said he's growing worried about where he'll go next.

Read it all.

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More than 10,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are homeless or in programs aimed at keeping them off the streets, a number that has doubled three times since 2006, according to figures released by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The rise comes at a time when the total number of homeless veterans has declined from a peak of about 400,000 in 2004 to 135,000 today.

"We're seeing more and more (Iraq and Afghanistan veterans)," says Richard Thomas, a Volunteers of America case manager at a shelter in Los Angeles. "It's just a bad time for them to return now and get out of the military."

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Major [David] Bowlus is part of a cohort of military chaplains who have gone through the same kind of multiple deployments as American soldiers in nearly a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and suffered similar emotional aftershocks.

“I found myself at a crossroads of giving and pouring out and having to find a way to refill my reservoir,” Major Bowlus said in an interview last month, recalling his lowest ebb. He continued a few moments later: “I realized my passion for God and my love for people was waning. I cared, but I didn’t care as much as when I first went in. I was lovingly going through the motions.”

Major Bowlus’s challenges, his struggle and his ultimate recovery — to the point that he now instructs chaplains at the military’s school for them at Fort Jackson — exemplify the experiences of his peers. And it sets this group of military chaplains apart from their predecessors in the Vietnam War era, the last period of sustained American combat overseas.

Read it all.

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Watch it all--please.

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Try to picture these little Fort Apaches on this day: It is ferociously hot; the food is bad; the sanitation is often little more than a hole in the ground. For a feel of the battle “outside the wire,” listen to Master Sgt. Stephen Light of the 870th Military Police Company. He’s describing how he and two other American soldiers fought alongside Afghan police to take out four Taliban suicide bombers on May 22. It’s a heroic tale, but told in the flat, unemotional voice of soldiers everywhere. What’s intense is the look of mutual respect when Light’s eyes meet those of the Afghan cops who fought alongside him.

We think on the Fourth of July not just of soldiers but also their families. On this trip, I met several military women who had left young children back home during their year-long deployments. Many moms have trouble leaving their little ones for 24 hours. Try 12 months. One woman said she had stopped making Skype calls to her 4- and 5-year-olds. It was just too hard.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Military / Armed Forces • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

The letter arrived out of the past, addressed to former G.I. William Graver.

In a one-page note, the government of South Korea told Graver he was a hero and the country wanted to recognize his service fighting there in 1953. They were offering a flight back to Korea where he would join other aging soldiers as national guests.

"We hope that you will see what you made possible," the kind note said. "And hope that your families will feel renewed pride in what you did for us many years ago."

Read it all from the local paper.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • Korea

"Today we stand on an awful arena, where character which was the growth of centuries was tested and determined by the issues of a single day. We are compassed about by a cloud of witnesses; not alone the shadowy ranks of those who wrestled here, but the greater parties of the action--they for whom these things were done. Forms of thought rise before us, as in an amphitheatre, circle beyond circle, rank above rank; The State, The Union, The People. And these are One. Let us--from the arena, contemplate them--the spiritual spectators.

"There is an aspect in which the question at issue might seem to be of forms, and not of substance. It was, on its face, a question of government. There was a boastful pretence that each State held in its hands the death-warrant of the Nation; that any State had a right, without show of justification outside of its own caprice, to violate the covenants of the constitution, to break away from the Union, and set up its own little sovereignty as sufficient for all human purposes and ends; thus leaving it to the mere will or whim of any member of our political system to destroy the body and dissolve the soul of the Great People. This was the political question submitted to the arbitrament of arms. But the victory was of great politics over small. It was the right reason, the moral consciousness and solemn resolve of the people rectifying its wavering exterior lines according to the life-lines of its organic being.

"There is a phrase abroad which obscures the legal and moral questions involved in the issue,--indeed, which falsifies history: "The War between the States". There are here no States outside of the Union. Resolving themselves out of it does not release them. Even were they successful in intrenching themselves in this attitude, they would only relapse into territories of the United States. Indeed several of the States so resolving were never in their own right either States or Colonies; but their territories were purchased by the common treasury of the Union. Underneath this phrase and title,--"The War between the States"--lies the false assumption that our Union is but a compact of States. Were it so, neither party to it could renounce it at his own mere will or caprice. Even on this theory the States remaining true to the terms of their treaty, and loyal to its intent, would have the right to resist force by force, to take up the gage of battle thrown down by the rebellious States, and compel them to return to their duty and their allegiance. The Law of Nations would have accorded the loyal States this right and remedy.

"But this was not our theory, nor our justification. The flag we bore into the field was not that of particular States, no matter how many nor how loyal, arrayed against other States. It was the flag of the Union, the flag of the people, vindicating the right and charged with the duty of preventing any factions, no matter how many nor under what pretence, from breaking up this common Country.

"It was the country of the South as well as of the North. The men who sought to dismember it, belonged to it. Its was a larger life, aloof from the dominance of self-surroundings; but in it their truest interests were interwoven. They suffered themselves to be drawn down from the spiritual ideal by influences of the physical world. There is in man that peril of the double nature. "But I see another law", says St. Paul. "I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind."

--Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1828-1914)

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

When Kasey Sands and her family returned home last month a few days after a tornado flattened much of Joplin, Mo., a dozen strangers were removing trees toppled in their yard.

"I asked them who they were, and they said they were veterans," says Sands, 27. "They said they like to help with peace and not just with war."

They were Team Rubicon, a non-profit group of veterans formed after the 2010 Haiti earthquake to help in the immediate aftermaths of disasters. They also raced in after tornadoes struck Alabama in April and following earlier crises in Chile, Burma, Pakistan and Sudan. More than 500 people have volunteered; 25 were in Joplin for a week.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Charities/Non-Profit Organizations • Military / Armed Forces • * General Interest • Natural Disasters: Earthquakes, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, etc.

A new study may help explain why some military personnel exposed to blasts have symptoms of brain injury even though their CT and M.R.I. scans look normal.

Using a highly sensitive type of magnetic resonance imaging, researchers studied 63 servicemen wounded by explosions in Iraq or Afghanistan and found evidence of brain injuries in some that were too subtle to be detected by standard scans. All the men already had a diagnosis of mild traumatic brain injury (synonymous with concussion), based on symptoms like having lost consciousness in the blast, having no memory of it or feeling dazed immediately afterward.

About 320,000 American troops have sustained traumatic brain injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of them mild, according to a 2008 report by the RAND Corporation. The injuries are poorly understood, and sometimes produce lasting mental, physical and emotional problems.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Military / Armed Forces • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Iraq War • War in Afghanistan

Check it out, especially fitting the week of Memorial Day.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Military / Armed Forces

Leader: Let us give thanks to God for the land of our birth with all its chartered liberties. For all the wonder of our country’s story:

PEOPLE: WE GIVE YOU THANKS, O GOD.

Leader: For leaders in nation and state, and for those who in days past and in these present times have labored for the commonwealth:

PEOPLE: WE GIVE YOU THANKS, O GOD.

Leader: For those who in all times and places have been true and brave, and in the world’s common ways have lived upright lives and ministered to their fellows:

PEOPLE: WE GIVE YOU THANKS, O GOD.

Leader: For those who served their country in its hour of need, and especially for those who gave even their lives in that service:

PEOPLE: WE GIVE YOU THANKS, O GOD.

Leader: O almighty God and most merciful Father, as we remember these your servants, remembering with gratitude their courage and strength, we hold before you those who mourn them. Look upon your bereaved servants with your mercy. As this day brings them memories of those they have lost awhile, may it also bring your consolation and the assurance that their loved ones are alive now and forever in your living presence.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Military / Armed Forces

I have no illusions about what little I can add now to the silent testimony of those who gave their lives willingly for their country. Words are even more feeble on this Memorial Day, for the sight before us is that of a strong and good nation that stands in silence and remembers those who were loved and who, in return, loved their countrymen enough to die for them.

Yet, we must try to honor them -- not for their sakes alone, but for our own. And if words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and with the vision that led them to battle and to final sacrifice.

--President Ronald Reagan in remarks at Memorial Day Ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery in 1982

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces

“…that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain…”

–Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, November 19, 1863

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • Office of the President

As the flowers rest on the decorated graves and the sunlight shines on the beautiful sailboats, Uncle Sam whispers in my ear about how we should care for the soldiers and remember the ones that have died. Swimming pools open, BBQs fry. Today is the day to think of what they have done for us. There are blurs of red, white and blue marching down the street and flags are lowered at half-mast. But we should always remember and never forget what set us free, from this very day on.

--From Ali M. in 2001, a 3rd Grader at Academy Elementary School, in Madison, Connecticut

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Children • Military / Armed Forces

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Military / Armed Forces • Music

Check out all 31.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces

Perhaps it is because both my parents were teachers, but this is my favorite scene from the movie. Watch it all--KSH. (It ties in with the finale as those of you who know the movie well know; it can be found here).

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Education • Military / Armed Forces • Movies & Television • Young Adults

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Military / Armed Forces

I walk down the garden-paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jeweled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden-paths.
My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

And the splashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover.
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon--
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
"Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se'nnight."
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
"Any answer, Madam," said my footman.
"No," I told him.
"See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer."
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, "It shall be as you have said."
Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?

--Amy Lowell (1874 - 1925)

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces • Poetry & Literature

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Military / Armed Forces

As a boy I had a vague appreciation for Memorial Day because my father, a Vietnam veteran, treated it as sacrosanct. After watching the morning parade in our home town, he spent time alone, somber and distant, while my friends flocked to the beaches and malls with their families to celebrate the beginning of summer.

Were they wrong to celebrate, I wondered.

I didn’t know. My father rarely spoke about his five years in the Marines. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized he still carried the war with him every day, along with the faint scar across his cheek from an enemy bullet that somehow didn’t kill him in a jungle 13 years before I was born....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Absolutely not to be missed--made me cry.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces

While scores of veterans die each year in a military community like Charleston, only about a half-dozen buglers are available to honor them, according to Coates. He served at about 75 funerals last year and played taps at about 50 of them.

Coates, 53, is a Navy veteran who works full time as a welder and metal fabricator. He's been playing trumpet since the third grade and plays taps on the trumpet.

A trumpet has valves, while a bugle does not. Both are hard to play when it's hot or cold or emotions are running high.

"As a bugler, I have to tune all of the emotion out of it," Coates said. "More than once I have bugled for friends and acquaintances, and that is hard. Also, it's hard when the crowd is very emotional. In order to be professional, sometimes you have to mentally leave that service for a while and think about something else, bad as it sounds, because with a friend you want to be a part of it."

Read it all from the front page of the local paper.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces • Music

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Watch it all--wonderful stuff.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces

More than 100,000 people are expected to attend activities at VA's national cemeteries, with color guards, readings, bands and choir performances. Events will honor more than one million men and women who died in military service during wartime, including more than 655,000 battle deaths.

At Rock Island National Cemetery in Illinois, Rep. Bobby Schilling will present the son of a deceased World War I veteran with his father’s Silver Star certificate....

On May 29, at Riverside National Cemetery in Southern California --VA’s busiest -- volunteers will read aloud the names of more than 5,000 people who were buried there since last year’s Memorial Day....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces

Traditional observance of Memorial day has diminished over the years. Many Americans nowadays have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day. At many cemeteries, the graves of the fallen are increasingly ignored, neglected. Most people no longer remember the proper flag etiquette for the day. While there are towns and cities that still hold Memorial Day parades, many have not held a parade in decades. Some people think the day is for honoring any and all dead, and not just those fallen in service to our country.

There are a few notable exceptions. Since the late 50's on the Thursday before Memorial Day, the 1,200 soldiers of the 3d U.S. Infantry place small American flags at each of the more than 260,000 gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery. They then patrol 24 hours a day during the weekend to ensure that each flag remains standing. In 1951, the Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts of St. Louis began placing flags on the 150,000 graves at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery as an annual Good Turn, a practice that continues to this day. More recently, beginning in 1998, on the Saturday before the observed day for Memorial Day, the Boys Scouts and Girl Scouts place a candle at each of approximately 15,300 grave sites of soldiers buried at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park on Marye's Heights (the Luminaria Program). And in 2004, Washington D.C. held its first Memorial Day parade in over 60 years.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

The Nashville VA Cemetery is home to a unique monument where long forgotten history is now being honored. The cemetery has been home to war monuments for decades, but the latest statue, erected to honor the nearly 2,000 U.S. Colored Troops from the Civil War who are buried there, is unlike any other in the country.

Watch it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces • Race/Race Relations

“My Fellow Americans:

“Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our Allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.

“And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

“Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

“Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

“They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

“They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest -- until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

“For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and goodwill among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.&

“Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

“And for us at home -- fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas, whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them -- help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.

“Many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

“Give us strength, too -- strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

“And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

“And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment -- let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

“With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace -- a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

“Thy will be done, Almighty God.

“Amen.”

You can listen to the actual audio if you want here.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • Office of the President

Actor Joe Mantegna, co-host of the annual event Memorial Day concert at the U.S. Capitol, shares his feelings about this very special holiday as a time of remembrance to honor those who've died serving our country -- as well as to show appreciation for our nation's military and its Veterans.

Watch it all.

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• NCA currently maintains nearly 3.1 million gravesites at 131 national cemeteries in 39 states and Puerto Rico, as well as in 33 soldiers’ lots and monument sites.

• Approximately 340,000 full-casket gravesites, 93,000 in-ground gravesites for cremated remains, and 111,000 columbarium niches are available in already developed acreage in our 131 national cemeteries.

• There are approximately 19,968 acres within established installations in NCA. Nearly 60 percent are undeveloped and – along with available gravesites in developed acreage – have the potential to provide approximately 6.0 million gravesites.

• Of the 131 national cemeteries, 71 are open to all interments; 19 can accommodate cremated remains and the remains of family members for interment in the same gravesite as a previously deceased family member; and 41 will perform only interments of family members in the same gravesite as a previously deceased family member.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

–Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)

In thanksgiving for all those who gave their lives for this country in years past, and for those who continue to serve–KSH.

P.S. The circumstances which led to the poem are well worth remembering:

It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915 and to the war in general. McCrea had spent seventeen days treating injured men -- Canadians, British, French, and Germans in the Ypres salient. McCrae later wrote: "I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days... Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done." The next day McCrae witnessed the burial of a good friend, Lieut. Alexis Helmer. Later that day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the field dressing station, McCrea composed the poem. A young NCO, delivering mail, watched him write it. When McCrae finished writing, he took his mail from the soldier and, without saying a word, handed his pad to the Sergeant-major. Cyril Allinson was moved by what he read: "The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene." Colonel McCrae was dissatisfied with the poem, and tossed it away. A fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England. The Spectator, in London, rejected it, but Punch published it on 8 December 1915. For his contributions as a surgeon, the main street in Wimereaux is named “Rue McCrae”.

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Almighty God, our heavenly Father, in whose hands are the living and the dead: We give thee thanks for all thy servants who have laid down their lives in the service of our country. Grant to them thy mercy and the light of thy presence; and give us such a lively sense of thy righteous will, that the work which thou hast begun in them may be perfected; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord. Amen.

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Military grave markers only allow a few words — most begin with the word "Beloved." This one reads: "Husband, son and brother." But the father realized he had more to say.

Back home, the walls of Griffin's office are lined with books. But the one he is holding in his hands is his most cherished. He flips through the pages.

They are underlined, highlighted with bright colors and bookmarked with post-it notes. On the cover it lists two authors: Darrell Griffin Sr. and Darrell Griffin Jr.

Read or listen to it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Children • Marriage & Family • Military / Armed Forces

As Memorial Day approaches, we must remember. The Indy 500 will come and go. People will gather for reunions and barbeques. Many of us will enjoy the liberties attained by years of “blood, sweat and tears” to quote Winston Churchill.

In far off lands and in this country, our service men and women sacrifice time, family and safety to do far more than insure that we can enjoy fun weekends. They serve for a variety of reasons, and their families live with the unknown as they hope and pray for the safe return of sons, daughters, husbands, wives and parents, but a common thread binds us all with these people and with those who suffered physical and psychological maiming or death. That common thread is the desire for freedom, liberty and justice for all, not just in this nation, but in every land.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • Ministry of the Ordained • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Military / Armed Forces • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military

First lady Michelle Obama has asked religious leaders to join her initiative to assist military families by increasing programs to support veterans and the families of military members deployed far from home.

“The faith community has been a strong bedrock for me as first lady,” she told religious and community organization leaders on Wednesday (May 18). “So I would be remiss if I didn’t bring this issue to you as well, and ask for your support, your leadership, and your guidance.”

Read it all.

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A recent Navy memo that would permit military chaplains to officiate at same-sex marriage ceremonies upon repeal of the military’s Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell policy is creating tension amid an already fractious debate.

“It is absolutely deplorable,” said the Rev. Billy Baugham, executive director of the International Conference of Evangelical Chaplain Endorsers. “It is a total surprise to us in the sense that we did not know it would really come to this.”

The chief of Navy chaplains announced in an April 13 memo that training materials for the expected repeal have been changed to allow chaplains to officiate at some same-sex ceremonies.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Military / Armed Forces • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships

Dogs have been fighting alongside U.S. soldiers for more than 100 years, seeing combat in the Civil War and World War I. But their service was informal; only in 1942 were canines officially inducted into the U.S. Army. Today, they're a central part of U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan -- as of early 2010 the U.S. Army had 2,800 active-duty dogs deployed (the largest canine contingent in the world). And these numbers will continue to grow as these dogs become an ever-more-vital military asset.

So it should come as no surprise that among the 79 commandos involved in Operation Neptune Spear that resulted in Osama bin Laden's killing, there was one dog -- the elite of the four-legged variety. And though the dog in question remains an enigma -- another mysterious detail of the still-unfolding narrative of that historic mission -- there should be little reason to speculate about why there was a dog involved: Man's best friend is a pretty fearsome warrior.

Simply amazing stuff from Foreign Policy Magazine and yes, read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Military / Armed Forces • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * General Interest • Animals

Check out all 21 shots.

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FFG: What side did the bishops take? How did the Vatican figure in?

Barnes: The archbishop of New York, “Dagger” John Hughes, who built St. Patrick’s Cathedral, was a very important figure in the northern war effort. He supported the Union. Abraham Lincoln consulted him a number of times during the war. And he was instrumental in calming New York after the draft riots.

On the southern side, there was the bishop of Charleston, S.C., Patrick Neeson Lynch. He was born in Ireland and emigrated to the United States as a young man and was ordained a priest in Charleston and ultimately became the bishop. He was a quite unapologetic Confederate, a strong supporter of the confederacy. In fact, the day Fort Sumter fell, he presided over a high Mass of thanksgiving in the cathedral. He, in a kind of mirror image of the way Lincoln treated Hughes, was quite influential in his own way in the Confederacy....

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But even putting political hyperbole aside, the Civil War does still very much inform the American experience. The emancipation of blacks is not quite resolved and the disagreements between Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln throw their long shadows across issues like health-care reform and entitlements. Moreover, the tea party, promoting small government, has risen to challenge the post-Civil War view of government as a superior, benevolent force of good.

After the Civil War, "the older Jeffersonian tradition was suppressed by the new Lincolnian vision of a unitary nationalist regime, and it was never able to digest the Jeffersonian tradition," says Donald Livingston, a philosophy professor at Emory University in Atlanta. "But it's still there, suppressed, in the memory of Americans. What's interesting about the South is that it held onto the Jeffersonian tradition longer – which is why you can't understand America today without seeing this deep conflict between these two groups."

Indeed, 56 percent of Americans, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center, believe the Civil War remains relevant. That's partly because of its overarching themes, but also because it remains a deeply personal conflict for many Americans: One out of 17 Americans – or about 18 million – can claim a direct line to someone who fought in the war. "It really wasn't that long ago," says Michael Hill, president of the League of the South, a Southern nationalist group in Killen, Ala.

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More than once during the Civil War, newspapers reported a strange phenomenon. From only a few miles away, a battle sometimes made no sound — despite the flash and smoke of cannon and the fact that more distant observers could hear it clearly.

These eerie silences were called “acoustic shadows.”

Tuesday, the 150th anniversary of the first engagement of the Civil War, the Confederacy’s attack on Fort Sumter, we ask again whether in our supposedly post-racial, globalized, 21st-century world those now seemingly distant battles of the mid-19th century still have any relevance. But it is clear that the further we get from those four horrible years in our national existence — when, paradoxically, in order to become one we tore ourselves in two — the more central and defining that war becomes.

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On April 12, 1861, the first shots of the Civil War rang out in South Carolina.

Confederate forces, firing on the Union garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, helped launch a four-year war that would kill more than 620,000 soldiers.

It's been nearly 150 years since the war began. But even now, the city of Charleston is still figuring out how to talk about the war and commemorate the anniversary.

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The number of veterans' disability claims taking more than four months to complete has doubled, prompting criticism from veterans and Congress that the Department of Veterans Affairs failed to prepare for a rise in cases it knew was coming.

"Without question, I believe that the VA disability claims system is broken," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., chairwoman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, said Wednesday.

The number of claims that take more than 125 days to decide has gone from 200,000 a year ago to 450,000 today, according to administration budget documents. As a result, veterans must wait even longer to receive payments for disabilities.

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A group of religious non-believers at Fort Bragg is pushing for the U.S. military to make sure they get the same treatment as religious groups.

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The attack on a busload of U.S. Air Force troops at Frankfurt airport that killed two is being investigated as a possible act of Islamic terrorism, German federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Two airmen were also wounded late Wednesday when a man identified as a 21-year-old ethnic Albanian from Kosovo fired on the servicemen at close range. His family said the young man worked at Frankfurt airport and was a devout Muslim.

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The communication gap that once kept troops from staying looped into the joyful, depressing, prosaic or sordid details of home life has all but disappeared. With advances in cellular technology, wider Internet access and the infectious use of social networking sites like Facebook, troops in combat zones can now communicate with home nearly around the clock.

They can partake in births and birthdays in real time. They can check sports scores, take online college courses and even manage businesses and stock portfolios.

But there is a drawback: they can no longer tune out problems like faulty dishwashers and unpaid electric bills, wayward children and failing relationships, as they once could.

The Pentagon, which for years resisted allowing unfettered Internet access on military computers because of cyber-security concerns, has now embraced the revolution, saying instant communication is a huge morale boost for troops and their families. But military officials quietly acknowledge a downside to the connectivity.

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Airman [Anthony] Mena died instead in his Albuquerque apartment, on July 21, 2009, five months after leaving the Air Force on a medical discharge. A toxicologist found eight prescription medications in his blood, including three antidepressants, a sedative, a sleeping pill and two potent painkillers.

Yet his death was no suicide, the medical examiner concluded. What killed Airman Mena was not an overdose of any one drug, but the interaction of many. He was 23.

After a decade of treating thousands of wounded troops, the military’s medical system is awash in prescription drugs — and the results have sometimes been deadly.

By some estimates, well over 300,000 troops have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan with P.T.S.D., depression, traumatic brain injury or some combination of those. The Pentagon has looked to pharmacology to treat those complex problems, following the lead of civilian medicine. As a result, psychiatric drugs have been used more widely across the military than in any previous war.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • Military / Armed Forces • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Iraq War • War in Afghanistan

Military veterans are much more likely to be homeless than other Americans, according to the government's first in-depth study of homelessness among former servicemembers.

About 16% of homeless adults in a one-night survey in January 2009 were veterans, though vets make up only 10% of the adult population.

More than 75,000 veterans were living on the streets or in a temporary shelter that night. In that year, 136,334 veterans spent at least one night in a homeless shelter — a count that did not include homeless veterans living on the streets.

Simply heartbreaking--read it all.

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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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The elite troops of U.S. special operations forces are showing signs of fraying after nearly 10 years at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, their commander said Tuesday.

Adm. Eric T. Olson says that while the number of special operations forces has doubled to about 60,000 over the last nine years, the total of those deployed overseas has quadrupled. Roughly 6,500 special operators are in Afghanistan and about 3,500 are in Iraq, though those numbers can vary as units move in and out of the war zone.

Olson said the demand for the specialized units in Afghanistan is insatiable, forcing troops to deploy to war at a rate that is off the charts. And he said he does not see that demand declining in the next several years.

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A Colorado theology school is teaching Air Force chaplains to consider the religious beliefs of servicemen and women to better help them cope with post-traumatic stress.

The goal is to build trust so a chaplain can encourage service members to draw on their individual concepts of God and spirituality, said Carrie Doehring, an associate professor of pastoral care at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver.
Doehring helped develop the one-year program for the Air Force, which wanted another way for its chaplains to respond to the stress of deployments amid two protracted wars.

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The Army is facing questions over a “spiritual fitness” portion of a mandatory questionnaire, with some atheists calling it “invidious and not inclusive” of soldiers who are nonbelievers.

The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation learned in December that soldiers were being asked to respond to statements such as “I am a spiritual person” and “I believe there is a purpose for my life.”

If soldiers received a low score on their spiritual fitness questions, they received an assessment that said “Spiritual fitness is an area of possible difficulty for you. ... Improving your spiritual fitness should be an important goal.”

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At a time of new beginnings in Washington, and as a new year starts, some thoughts on leadership that begin with two questions. First, why is it a good thing that the captain of the USS Enterprise was this week relieved of his duties? Second, why is the movie "The King's Speech" so popular and admired? The questions are united by a theme. It is that no one knows how to act anymore, and people miss people who knew how to act.

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Life changed for Shawn Eisch with a phone call last January. His youngest brother, Brian, a soldier and single father, had just received orders to deploy from Fort Drum, N.Y., to Afghanistan and was mulling who might take his two boys for a year. Shawn volunteered.

So began a season of adjustments as the boys came to live in their uncle’s home here. Joey, the 8-year-old, got into fistfights at his new school. His 12-year-old brother, Isaac, rebelled against their uncle’s rules. And Shawn’s three children quietly resented sharing a bedroom, the family computer and, most of all, their parents’ attention with their younger cousins.

The once comfortable Eisch farmhouse suddenly felt crowded.

“It was a lot more traumatic than I ever pictured it, for them,” Shawn, 44, said. “And it was for me, too.”

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i found this just mesmerizing--check it out.

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Check it out--it looks well worthy of consideration.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Books • Military / Armed Forces • * Economics, Politics • Iraq War • War in Afghanistan

For G.I.’s, life on the front lines has two sides. There are, of course, the adrenaline-fueled moments of fighting, when soldiers try to forget their fear, remember their training and watch one another’s backs.

And then there is everything else, the dirty, sweaty, unglamorous and frequently tedious work of being infantrymen. Filling sandbags. Stirring caldrons of burning waste. Lying in the dirt while on guard duty. Cleaning weapons. And more than anything else, waiting — for orders, for patrols, for the chance to sleep or eat. They even wait for the fighting they know will come.

It is a life of wild pendulum swings. One moment, their sergeants are barking at them to stay ready, eyes focused, rifles loaded, protective gear at hand. In the next, the soldiers are searching for amusement, killing time with the skill of people who have had plenty of practice.

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From here:

The chill from the language of destruction, evil, and suffering that Jesus uses in...[Luke's] Gospel will confront us in other vivid ways, as we stop to remember those from our own time, our own land, and perhaps our own family and neighbourhood, who have died in the context of war. We shall gather at war memorials, stand in silence, and confront our own need for the hope and vision of peace.

Remembrance Sunday is not the moment to attempt a prophecy about the future, or apportion blame for the past. Rather, it is the opportunity to be silent and to reflect on the sum of wartime grief and loss, military and civilian, knowing that of ourselves we cannot restore life that has been lost: that belongs to God.

But we can commit ourselves to shaping a world of justice and of peace. And if the words we speak in making that solemn commitment do not have the whole truth within them, may the memorials to our dead sting us into shame and repentance.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces • * Theology • Eschatology • Pastoral Theology • Theology: Scripture

Veterans' Day in 2010 falls on Thursday, November 11. In most years and most times, Veterans' Day passes in our churches with little or no mention. Historically and traditionally, Veterans' Day has been more a civic than a sacred observance. As with New Years Day, Mother's Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, and others, Veterans' Day is not a part of the liturgical calendar — although sometimes local congregations will observe these days in some manner in Sunday congregational worship.

Check it out and note especially the Litany from The Book of Worship for United States Forces (1974) at the bottom.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • History • Military / Armed Forces

This is very enjoyable--check it out.

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Guess before you check the answer.

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Since June, the 29-year-old [Cherish Cornish] has lived on the fifth floor of a temporary housing facility run by Father Bill's & MainSpring, a private nonprofit group in Brockton, Mass. Cornish lives in one of five rooms reserved for homeless female veterans. She's struggling to make a life for herself after the military.

"When I joined the Army, I was barely 20 years old," Cornish says with a Southern accent, a legacy of years growing up in Texas. "I come out, and I'm 23, and so I just kind of came of age in the military. I wind up on my own again in an apartment. It's the first time I've had to pay rent since I was a teenager. It's the first time I had to pay a light bill — pretty much ever — and all these responsibilities and budgeting and stuff that I'd really never had to deal with in the military."

There are other complications. Cornish suffers from PTSD. It took the VA several years to diagnose her. Cornish believes her trauma stems from her service in Iraq. She was a transmission specialist working at isolated outposts monitoring and intercepting radio communications. Still, she thinks she lucked out, because often she'd just miss getting physically hurt.

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Clayton Kendrick-Holmes, football coach at SUNY Maritime College and a graduate of the Naval Academy and a lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve, soon will be deployed to Afghanistan. This is part of his story.

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With wars continuing in Iraq and Afghanistan, the number of military veterans grows every Veterans Day. Commentator Forrest Brandt served in an earlier conflict — he was with the 1st Infantry Division in Lai Khe, Vietnam, from 1968-69.

Brandt, now a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves and an adjunct professor at Northern Kentucky University, wrote about the day he came home, July 18, 1969.

You need to listen to it all, all the music as well as the narration.

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In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

--Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae (1872-1918). It is just so moving and powerful you find yourself coming back to it again and again--KSH.

P.S. the circumstances which led to the poem are well worth remembering:

It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915 and to the war in general. McCrea had spent seventeen days treating injured men -- Canadians, British, French, and Germans in the Ypres salient. McCrae later wrote: "I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days... Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done." The next day McCrae witnessed the burial of a good friend, Lieut. Alexis Helmer. Later that day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the field dressing station, McCrea composed the poem. A young NCO, delivering mail, watched him write it. When McCrae finished writing, he took his mail from the soldier and, without saying a word, handed his pad to the Sergeant-major. Cyril Allinson was moved by what he read: "The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene." Colonel McCrae was dissatisfied with the poem, and tossed it away. A fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England. The Spectator, in London, rejected it, but Punch published it on 8 December 1915. For his contributions as a surgeon, the main street in Wimereaux is named “Rue McCrae”.

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There is a fabulous resource for this courtesy of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. There are many themes from which to choose, and various letters to see the text of and listen to. Take a moment a drink at least one in, and, if you have a moment, tell us your thoughts in the comments.

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