war

Each week my church includes a prayer for the families of American soldiers who have died. As the names are read, I try to hold them in prayer. But I have wrestled with these prayers.

Karl Marlantes's new book is not fiction, but it develops the idea of his novel Matterhorn: that war provides a
sense of transcendence that can be found nowhere else.

We owe our homeland patriotism, but not just any kind of patriotism—because just as we don't choose our parents, neither do we choose our country of origin.

Via Rose Berger,
the summer issue of Portland magazine
includes an essay by Portland editor
and Century contributor Brian Doyle,
in which he quotes at length a conversation with a young U.S. war veteran named
Jackie. She paints a striking picture.

From 1995-2005, 2 million child soldiers were killed and 6 million permanently disabled or injured. An estimated 300,000 children (younger than 18) are currently serving as soldiers. Some have joined voluntarily out of economic desperation or for their own safety; others have been forcibly recruited by rebel forces. Still others have been by recruited by recognized sovereign governments—and eight of the nine such governments receive military assistance from the U.S.

Jeremy M. Loveless. Nathanael J. Doring. Richard A. Bennett. James A. Funkhouser. J. Adan Garcia. According to a recent article in the New York Times, these are the names of the five soldiers killed in Iraq over the three-day Memorial Day weekend this year. If I had nothing else to say in this column, I would also name the 24 soldiers killed over Memorial Day weekends since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, along with the 4,000-some Americans who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq since the wars in those countries began. I wish I could also name the Afghan and Iraqi dead, but I do not know anyone who keeps track of their names.