Tom Buchanan
A pointless exercise from day one
This is a story about Afghanistan, but I'm going to start in in Kuwait City. It's a long story, mostly because Americans have been dying in pointless “welfare” wars for a long time, yet even a long story can't convey the layered intricacy of the failures of U.S. military and political power.
I'll start in 1997. I was working as a photographer for World Wrestling Entertainment (WWF/WWE) in Kuwait City and escorted several wrestlers to the front line between Kuwait and Iraq for a meet-and-greet with U.S. troops during a years-long cease-fire.
Beginnings
On a Maine mountainside, a solemn memorial to the challengers of the unknown
There are several ways to begin this story, but I suppose it should start on Jan. 24, 1963, with the uneventful takeoff of a B-52 from Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts. The unarmed bomber slipped free of the runway and climbed to a low-cruise altitude, then headed north...
Pledging to a dream — with pride
‘I came to recognize that the reality of daily life in this country hadn’t yet matched the dream of the nation’s founders — or the words we were being asked to recite each morning’
It's been almost 50 years since I was a grade-schooler and first introduced to the Pledge of Allegiance. As a little boy I had no idea what that pledge meant, or that I was being indoctrinated to unquestionably accept the United States of America as a land that assures...
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A wasteful diversion of resources and attention
I guess I understand that opposing the oil pipeline at Standing Rock is supposed to be the latest liberal cause, and I've tried to give a damn, but I just can't. Many of my fellow liberals are going to hate what I'm about to say, but here it goes. First, some facts. The pipeline in question is 1,172 miles long, traveling from North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa before reaching its destination in Illinois. In the vicinity of the...
Déjà vu
In the summer of 1980, I was a young television news intern standing on the floor of the Democratic National Convention when an emotional Senator Ted Kennedy formally conceded the nomination to President Jimmy Carter. I was back on the convention floor two days later when President Carter accepted the nomination, and although the delegates were dutifully cheering for him, it was clear that many had not fully embraced him as their nominee, and his candidacy felt doomed. Now, 36...
An ignorance of our past, with fear of a changing future
My soul is filled with sadness at how bigoted, racist, and xenophobic the United States has become, and my fist is raised in anger at the opportunistic leaders who selfishly fan the flames of hatred. The country I love was once a metaphorical beacon on the hill, welcoming of strangers, and open to the tired, poor, and huddled masses yearning to breathe free. We took in wave after wave of displaced refugees and gave them an opportunity to resettle and...
The legacy of Ike
I recently returned home after a two-day, 1,000 mile trip to see the Space Shuttle Discovery, which is now on display in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum at Dulles Airport in Virginia. Discovery logged 150 million miles and 365 days in orbit before being retired in 2011 when the shuttle program was cancelled. This remarkable machine is a triumph of U.S. engineering and raw science that helped our economy to flourish, beginning with early space exploration in the...
War just goes on. And on.
The United States has been at war almost continuously throughout my lifetime. This is a sad story of wasted opportunity, wasted dollars, and wasted lives. The nation was entrenched in the Cold War when I was born in the late 1950s, and by first grade I had been taught how to “duck and cover” in case my hometown was attacked with nuclear weapons. By the mid-1960s, the U.S. was embroiled in a protracted ground and air war in Southeast Asia.