Laws of war and the so-called rules of engagement have always been confusing to me.  We live in a society where killing people is morally wrong, yet we have a framework through which we can justifiably engage in killing on a national level?  Granted, many of these laws are easy to support — don’t kill civilians, finish [...]

The mere existence of drones as a military technology is terrifying on a number of levels. American drones, whether under the purview of the Pentagon (an acknowledged program) or the CIA (a “secret” program), are operated from behind a screen like a video game, except real people are dying when you press ‘X.’ And just [...]

Many All Things Consider readers may have heard about an American soldier murdering 16 Afghanis last Sunday.  It was a horrific event, and presented in this way—a lone gunmen “inexplicably” massacres Afghan civilians—it seems difficult, if not impossible, to understand.  The American soldier, Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, had a perfect military record, and it’s easy to write off his [...]

As mentioned in the Liftoff, over the weekend the U.S began a round of military attacks on Libya in an attempt to reduce General Qaddafi’s ability to inflict air attacks on civilian rebels in the country.  Starting as simply as a round of missile strikes on air defense targets, this new “war” has striking similarities [...]

It began with reports of massive amounts of birds dropping dead on the streets of New York, New Jersey, Louisiana, Kentucky and other states around the U.S. around Christmas time. Researchers concluded that the deaths must have been related to the fireworks from the celebrations and the birds were either killed by the explosions or [...]

Mitch Horowitz writes for today’s Big Think: Thanks to the growing numbers of modern U.S. soldiers who practice Wicca, Neopaganism, and other nature-based traditions, Halloween is recognized as a religious festival in the military, and is probably in line to become the nation’s next major faith-based holiday. Though people of all religions today dress up for [...]