In Hue 1968, Mark Bowden describes the horrors of war through the eyes of those who fought the battles. His work is carefully researched, well organized, and smoothly written.

Talks between the Trump administration and the Taliban have broken down. We should be happy they did not reach a deal, in part because an Iraq-style drawdown would leave a vacuum, and terrorists abhor a vacuum.

Eric Patterson’s Just American Wars is not only a book about America’s wars. It is also a book about the ongoing moral effect of just war tradition on American values and behavior.

World War I profoundly affected American churches and Christian thought. Recalling that impact offers counsel for the future.

St. Thomas Aquinas’ ideas about just war still affect how Americans feel about wars, including World War II and the Persian Gulf War.

Some in the US government have suggested that we should make a grand bargain with Russia over Syria that would let Assad stay as Moscow curbed Iran’s power in the country. But such a deal would lead to the mass exile or massacre of civilians stuck in the international community’s failed de-escalation zone of Idlib and cement Iran’s control over Syria.

Russia and Iran are coordinating to prop up Assad in Syria but this could bring Iran one step closer to war with Israel.

If war occurs between Israel and Lebanon, the embattled Christians of Lebanon will suffer in what would be yet another front of Iran’s quest for regional control.

Foretelling a time of cultivation, Isaiah prophesies, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.” One cannot plow a field with a sword, nor prune a tree with a spear. In this article, originally published in Christianity and Crisis on March 8, 1943, John Knox contrasts the promotion of good with the destruction of evil, particularly in conflict. Promoting good is insufficient; the conduct of war and the creation of peace are distinct phenomena to be pursued with discrete tools.