William Donovan is an authentic American hero, the man who single-handedly founded our country's first unified intelligence service. Unfortunately, much of what was written about him in the past was clumsy hagiography, based on information that Donovan and aides hand-fed to writers; one book was even vetted by his law firm.
"Geography" is as much a question of cultural distance as it is mileage on a Mercator projection.
From the 1950s Pentagon to today's Obama administration, the United States has repeatedly pondered, planned and threatened use of nuclear weapons against North Korea, according to declassified and other U.S. government documents released in this 60th-anniversary year of the Korean War.
AMERICAN GUERRILLA: THE FORGOTTEN HEROICS OF RUSSELL W. VOLCKMANN
Most Americans realize that the war against Nazi Germany was a team effort. Indeed, the Soviets did the bulk of the fighting and dying. Americans are less aware that the campaign against Japan also was a team effort. Americans did the bulk of the fighting and dying. Nevertheless, the Allies also were involved.
I'm sorry to say that initial enthusiasm turned to disappointment as I read the Thursday Commentary column by John C. Waugh, "McClellan and McChrystal." I had been waiting for someone to use the Abraham Lincoln comparison with regard to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's firing, but I don't agree with the one Mr. Waugh used.
It couldn't have played out any other way. History tells us so. When Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal stepped over the line, criticizing his civilian superiors in public, he did what a general must never do. As President Obama said when he accepted the general's resignation as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan last week, Gen. McChrystal "undermined civilian control of the military, which is at the core of our democratic system." It cannot be tolerated.
With 2008 marking the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I, a visit to the places where American soldiers fought and died evokes memories of that war. The names are familiar to an older generation: the Marne, the Meuse, Argonne Forest, Verdun, Champagne, Lorraine.
Doris Macauley, international correspondent and author of "Bread and Rice," which won the Pearl Buck "East West" award, died at her Margate, Fla., home Sunday, on her 95th birthday.
