war
This Is What Winning Looks Like
I didn’t plan on spending six years covering the war in Afghanistan. But with each year, casualties and deaths rose as steadily as the local opium crop and I became obsessed with what I witnessed there—how different it was from the conflict’s portrayal...
A Long Way from Home
What has America done to Chechnya? While we’ll still be searching for more information about the Tsarnaev brothers and what motivated them for months—if not years—to come, their roots in Chechnya and the history of that country are a good place to...
A Red Line for Syria - Obama Is Trapped by His Own Rhetoric
How perversely ironic it was, last Thursday, when Obama had to pay public homage to his predecessor—a guy whose invasion of Iraq was based on faulty intel about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction—at the same time he was weighing intel about...
Beyond the Mortar Fire: Sebastian Junger Remembers Tim Hetherington
There’s a moment in 'Which Way Is the Front Line from Here,' Sebastian Junger’s excellent new documentary about the life of acclaimed war photographer and Oscar-nominated British filmmaker Tim Hetherington, when Tim literally saves a man’s life.
Thomas Dworzak Takes Photos of Sad Marines and Taliban Poseurs
Thomas Dworzak's books often deal with war: 'M*A*S*H IRAQ' examined the daily lives of US Medevac teams in Iraq, and his latest, 'Kavkuz,' explored the impact of war on the Caucasus region. But oddly enough, in spite of shooting in some of the most...
Steve McCurry Photographs the Human Condition
Steve McCurry's photo, 'Afghan Girl,' appeared on the cover of 'National Geographic' in 1985 during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and quickly became one of the most famous photos in the world. He has documented the human impact of wars across...
Sitting Down in the Deep End
It was an oppressively cold day in New York. The wind was particularly icy. I was huddled between my girlfriend and a posse of union organizers. By nightfall over 14 million people would have marched against the US invasion of Iraq all over the world...
Fire in the Hole
The convoy stops, and the lieutenant lowers his binoculars and opens his door and points at four Afghan men standing on a ridge beside a red telephone tower. They look little more than dots against the horizon. Boulders lie strewn across the slope of...
Who Cares About Putin When You Have Islam?
The Russian republic of Chechnya has been undergoing an Islamic revival. Having existed under Soviet rule for 70 years before getting caught up in a war with the Russian Federation that lasted almost two decades, the tiny state has turned to Islam in...
What the Hell Was That: Happy Tenth Birthday, Operation Iraqi Freedom
I got an @reply the other day from a guy I met ten years ago in Fallujah, where I was working as a reporter for MTV: a young captain in the 82nd Airborne who was part of the moveable feast of infantry interviews that made up my life at the dawn of the...
How Cops Became Soldiers: A Chat With Radley Balko
Balko, an investigative reporter and expert on police militarization, opens up on cops going ham.
Is 'Chapo' Dead?
Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known simply as "el Chapo," changed why and how drugs are muled across borders. He is legend. And he was maybe just gunned down along the Mexico-Guatelama border.