Afghanistan

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Review: Hell and Back Again

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, Hell and Back Again offers a potent documentary correlative to the narrative of The Hurt Locker .
The real-life story of a young marine
By GERALD PEARY | January 06, 2012

Memo to Jack Reed: Cut the bull on Afghanistan; iPad iLliteracy; hazing Cain

Phillipe and Jorge love Senator Jack Reed, but there comes a time when you just have to say, "Don't try to bullshit two bullshitters."
Lipstick on a pig
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | November 04, 2011

Afghanistan: 10 years of war

October 7, 2001. Military jets slice through the skies of Afghanistan, marking the beginning of what has evolved into the longest war in American history.
Artist and critic Greg Cook confronts the experience
By EDITORIAL | October 07, 2011

A decade of turmoil

9/11 has become such a given — such a fixed star in American culture and politics — that as the tenth anniversary approached, it was easy to imagine we had somehow come to terms with the attacks.
Rhode Island’s brightest minds on where we are now
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | September 09, 2011

Shamayel seeks a little lamb

Twenty-one years ago Shamayel Kargar and her husband had a hankering for good lamb.
And finds it not far from Portland at all
By LINDSAY STERLING | July 29, 2011

Will anything change now that Osama is dead?

The death of Osama bin Laden and the impending 10-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks have many people contemplating the gains and futility of nearly a decade of American engagement overseas.
Give peace a chance
By DEIRDRE FULTON | May 06, 2011

The death of Osama bin Laden proves that pragmatic progressivism works

You saw the meme buzzing around the Net on Monday: Barack Obama, in dark sunglasses, smirking: "SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG TO GET YOU A COPY OF MY BIRTH CERTIFICATE," it read, in I Can Has Cheezburger all-caps. "I WAS TOO BUSY KILLING OSAMA BIN LADEN."
Hope at last
By GREG COOK | May 06, 2011

Taking the long view

The surprising and dramatic death in Pakistan of Osama bin Laden at the hands of American Special Forces operating under shoot-to-kill orders from President Barack Obama was a triumph of singular rarity in the annals of international conflict.
Obama's secret. Plus, Bill Taylor, RIP.
By EDITORIAL | May 06, 2011

Libya: Why Obama is right

That the nation is apprehensive and ambivalent about President Barack Obama's military intervention in Libya is natural, even healthy.
What's wrong with saving lives?
By EDITORIAL | April 01, 2011

Give Malalai Joya a visa

In a display of mendacity worthy of the days when the late Senator Joseph McCarthy stifled free speech from coast to coast, the United States Department of State has denied a visa to Afghanistan's most internationally recognized activist, Malalai Joya.
Plus, Obama's Libyan War
By EDITORIAL | March 25, 2011

Review: A Marine's Guide to Fishing

On the one-year anniversary of a life-changing incident on a foreign battleground, a Marine (Matthew Pennington) begins to take up his old life again.
A snapshot of a returned veteran's life
By JEFF INGLIS | March 11, 2011

Reed on the Arizona shootings, the Tea Party, and why Bob Gates might stick around

Just days after the Arizona tragedy, the Phoenix sat down with Senator Jack Reed for a Q+A about the shooting, the Tea Party, and some troubling news out of Pakistan.
Ask the Senator
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | January 14, 2011

Review: The Lyric does Dickens

Plenty of theaters make A Christmas Carol sing. But the Lyric Stage Company of Boston, under the frenzied baton of Spiro Veloudos, is rendering an entire Dickensian symphony in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.
Plus Iraq in the Aftermath
By CAROLYN CLAY | November 05, 2010

Review: Ariana

This fine new Afghan restaurant makes it official: the odd-numbered side of Brighton Avenue between Harvard Avenue and Linden Street has so many good ethnic restaurants that you could eat out in a different country every week and never even cross the st
A winning take on fantastic ancient cuisine
By ROBERT NADEAU | October 29, 2010

Review: Medal of Honor misses the target

Could this be, at long last, the video game that deals frankly with the morass of war? Don't kid yourself.
Fog of war
By MITCH KRPATA | October 23, 2010

"Obama’s Wars" by Bob Woodward: The inside scoop — so far

Subcultures spawn defining rituals: fans of Insane Clown Posse have the Gathering of the Juggalos; practitioners of radical self-realization congregate at Burning Man; and for...
By Peter Kadzis | September 24, 2010

Interview with Bar-Lev, part 3

PREVIOUSLY: Part I | Part II PK: So did you have particular filmmakers that inspired you to want to make movies? ABL: Yeah, I had...
By Peter Keough | September 06, 2010

Just a reprieve? Unless Republican leaders learn from the past, another Iraq is in our future

In his address to the nation Tuesday evening, discussing the end of American combat operations in Iraq, Barack Obama took great pains to be apolitical, nonjudgmental, and even gracious toward his predecessor.
In terms of foreign policy, the Republican Party remains unapologetically committed to Bush/Cheneyism
By EDITORIAL | September 03, 2010

Review: The Tillman Story

An extraordinary convergence occurs about halfway through Amir Bar-Lev's infuriating, heartbreaking account of the life, death, and afterlife of NFL star turned problematic war hero Pat Tillman.
The fraud of war: a hero of our time
By PETER KEOUGH | September 03, 2010

Holy Everglades, Batman!

What a shock to see the discovery of an alligator at Sissons Pond in Portsmouth! Based on the photographs, Phillipe and Jorge reckon it has to be the largest reptile ever seen in the Biggest Little outside of the State House.
A 'gator in the biggest little; angry Americans are still angry; a few great women
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | September 03, 2010

Interview with Amir Bar-Lev, part 2

In which Pvt. Tillman Meets Pvt. Lynch and Bar-Lev sees religion in everything. (Read Part I of my interview here.) PK: Also, military service was...
By Peter Keough | September 01, 2010

Interview with Amir Bar-Lev, director of "The Tillman Story"

Now that the Iraq War is over we can focus more of our anxiety, outrage, and depression on another flummoxed and bloody miscue, the war...
By Peter Keough | August 31, 2010

Afghanistan: The war that's killing us

For several years now, I've been reading Andrew Bacevich's articles and books that argue for a reimagination of how American government conceives of and executes foreign policy.
Interview: Former Army colonel and current Boston University professor Andrew Bacevich explains why staying is a big mistake
By PETER KADZIS | July 30, 2010

WikiLeaks: What it means

Only a day after three of the world's most-prominent news organizations — the New York Times , the Guardian , and Der Spiegel — published reports based on the 90,000-plus purloined secret Afghanistan War documents released by WikiLeaks, the US House
Plus, Mitt Romney — right-wing nut
By EDITORIAL | July 30, 2010

Obama's Afghanistan promise

This is a totally different war, guys.
Idiot Box
By MATT BORS | July 30, 2010

Rough Seas Ahead

Eighteen months after Barack Obama took office with the largest plateful of troubles of any president in recent memory, it would seem only fair for him to finally get a stretch of smooth sailing.
Will the economy, the oil spill, and Afghanistan conspire to sink Obama's presidency?
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | July 16, 2010

Buzz off

Michael Steele, the imbecile chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), has gotten himself in trouble — again — with the party faithful.
By shouting down dissent, Washington is ignoring the sad truth in Afghanistan
By EDITORIAL | July 09, 2010

PODCAST: Sebastian Junger on "War," "Restrepo" at the Brattle [MP3]

Trailer for Junger's documentary "Restrepo"Juan Restrepo's job was to save lives. He wasn't able to save his own. His brothers weren't able to, either.The U.S....
By Andrew Cominelli | July 02, 2010

Review: Restrepo

Before his name became that of a hellish outpost on a mountaintop in the Korengal Valley, perhaps the most dangerous place on earth, PFC Juan S. Restrepo was a human being, a 20-year-old single father, an accomplished guitarist, and a medic in the 173rd
War in the raw: taking the high ground in Afghanistan
By PETER KEOUGH | July 02, 2010

Worse than Afghanistan

At almost the same moment that Rolling Stone was reordering the political landscape with its devastating profile of the now-resigned Afghanistan commander General Stanley McChrystal, a smaller, lesser-known political monthly, The American Conservative
Mainstream media flunks again
By PETER KADZIS | July 02, 2010

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