Sam Smith – I was a high school sophomore when Queen Elizabeth was coronated. My parents bought their first TV in order to watch the event, which has resulted in decades of empathy on my part towards the queen and pointless fascination with the British royalty. Eventually I stumbled upon a reality that is viewed … Continue reading Prince Andrew and Vladimir Putin
War
The murder capital
Sam Smith, 2016 - A chance surf landed me on the beach in time for some rare unpredictable C-SPAN moments. There was a supercilious Michael Lind, lately proposing that the Vietnam War was a good thing, and a mild and bemused novelist, Tim O'Brien, who thought nothing of the sort, in part because he had … Continue reading The murder capital
Time warp
Sam Smith, 2011 - I was 34 when the draft ended. In the preceding years my own views had shifted from those of a cold war liberal to those of an ambivalent apathetic and finally to those of a situational pacifist. But whatever my personal beliefs, I was deeply and constantly conscious of the inevitability … Continue reading Time warp
Learning Vietnam
Sam Smith I am more tolerant of Ken Burns’ Vietnam series than some because I lived through that period with some of the same confusion the TV series recounts. Shortly before I left the Coast Guard in June 1964, the cutter Spar's crewmembers were presented the Defense Service ribbon in delayed recognition of the fact … Continue reading Learning Vietnam
Can we admit that we’ve failed in the Mid East and start to move on?
Sam Smith - Regardless of our military strategy, regardless of how many laptops we ban from trans-Atlantic flights, regardless of how many Syrian refugees we keep out of the United States, our Mid East war is the longest and one of the most futile in our history. There is really no mystery to this; we … Continue reading Can we admit that we’ve failed in the Mid East and start to move on?
How wars hurt the economy
Sam Smith,2011 The fantasy parading as serious negotiations over the nation's debt collapses on the recognition of one fact: our absurdly expensive wars are not even on the table. A Brown University study finds that the figure just for our post 9/11 misbegotten escapades approaches $4 trillion. That's about 25% of our whole national debt … Continue reading How wars hurt the economy
An unasked question about Benghazi
Sam Smith - Former Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who headed the the Benghazi Accountability Review Board, appeared on Mark Thompson’s Sirius XM show during my slot there, and I asked him a question that has been troubling me: if the people killed in Benghazi had just been privates or low ranking civilians would this incident have … Continue reading An unasked question about Benghazi
The war on terror: Misnamed, misfought, misthought
Sam Smith - According to the belligerently bombastic Daily Beast: ISIS continues to gain substantial ground in Syria, despite nearly 800 airstrikes in the American-led campaign to break its grip there. At least one-third of the country’s territory is now under ISIS influence, with recent gains in rural areas that can serve as a conduit … Continue reading The war on terror: Misnamed, misfought, misthought
I’m confused
Sam Smith - If beheadings are what have us so upset, why aren't we bombing Saudi Arabia? If the killing of innocent Americans is what has us so upset, why aren't we bombing Ferguson, Missouri? If the largest military force in the world is so afraid of ten to thirty thousand rebels, why are we … Continue reading I’m confused
Why I remember World War One
Sam Smith - This month marks the one hundredth anniversary of the start of World War One, the biggest war that most Americans never think about. I'm one of the exceptions for two reasons. The first is that I came to comprehend an aspect of the conflict that is generally ignored. World War One helped … Continue reading Why I remember World War One
The rise of boutique warfare
Sam Smith As a general rule, I like to have a little time to get ready for the next global crisis. Stuff like deciding which side I'm on, how to pronounce the participants' names and so forth. While I know some people get turned on by rapid developments, and it does save Wolf Blitzer from … Continue reading The rise of boutique warfare
The good thing about war
Sam Smith There is some good news. This is the first time in modern history that the American public has gotten its leaders to back off on their war plans - at least for a while. Even if not permanent, what has happened in the past few days has been extraordinary. But, although we don't … Continue reading The good thing about war
Resurrection in a pew
Sam Smith 2006 The memorial service for Gene McCarthy ran a bit long, considering it was a tribute to a man who had once suggested reducing the number of commandments from ten to four. And it was disturbing to see Bill Clinton shamelessly delivering a tribute to a man of integrity, especially one who had … Continue reading Resurrection in a pew
The new shape of fear
Sam Smith - In attempting to understand why the Boston bombing is such a shock, it is worth considering something that differentiated it from, say, 9/11, which is that the target was not some iconic tower of power but our capacity for terror. It was just a place, which meant it could have been anywhere. … Continue reading The new shape of fear
Weapons of crass destruction
Sam Smith - To understand why Obama and others in Washington have become so obsessed with drones, it's important to remember that traditional warfare has been a total failure for nearly seven decades and that our "military experts" may finally be admitting it.America's only successful invasion in that period was Grenada with a population of … Continue reading Weapons of crass destruction
Sam Smith's Essays 