Author: Norman Solomon
-
Biden and Cluster Munitions: “In a Dark Time, the Eye Begins to See”
By Norman Solomon “In a dark time,” poet Theodore Roethke wrote, “the eye begins to see.” Stanley Kunitz observed: “In a murderous time / the heart breaks and breaks / and lives by breaking.” In the current murderous time, amid the dim media swirl, acuity arrived for some with the news that President Biden had…
-
Making Madness Normal in Wartime
By Norman Solomon Midway through his cumulatively stunning new book “Soldiers Don’t Go Mad,” author Charles Glass quotes a declaration from The Times of London on August 18, 1917: “The war has brought new opportunities of heroism to us all. Every Briton in the full strength of manhood is a soldier, and the business of…
-
The Patriotism of Killing and Being Killed
By Norman Solomon The Fourth of July — the ultimate patriotic holiday — is approaching again. Politicians orate, American Flags proliferate and, even more than usual, many windows on the world are tinted red, white and blue. But an important question remains unasked: Why are patriotism and war so intertwined in U.S. media and politics?…