You know, as do I, that America has never been a pile of rocks and dirt between the oceans. Whether your ancestors came over the Bering land bridge time out of memory ago, came on the Mayflower, came to escape starvation in Ireland to see the sign “No Irish need Apply”, came from old Mexico to work at a meat-packing plant, or got off a 777 last night; You are here because of a dream. Bevin Alexander said it as well as anybody.

Imagine, if you will, the sense of awe that seized the first settlers at Jamestown in Virginia, in 1607, at Plymouth in Massachusetts, and at the other landings along the coast of North America in the early decades of the seventeenth century. Here were little English communities hacking out perch sites on the very edge of an unknown land. … But when they finally reached the great…

2011 U.S. Army Suicides Reached Unprecedented Level

by Mitchel L. Zoler 
Family Practice News Digital Network, April 26, 2012

BALTIMORE – Suicides by active-duty soldiers in the U.S. Army reached their highest level in history last year, with 164 confirmed instances of soldiers taking their lives.

This unprecedented level came in the seventh consecutive year of steadily increasing suicide rates; in 2008, the suicide rate among active-duty U.S. Army personnel exceeded the prevailing civilian rate for the first time in history, and in the years following 2008 the annual rate among soldiers continued to rise, Maj. Gen. L.P. Chang said at the annual conference of the American Association of Suicidology.

“The Army takes this very seriously because our most valuable asset is our soldiers,” said Gen. Chang, commanding general of the 807th Medical Command based in Fort Douglas, Utah. He noted that in 2009, with the Army’s leadership recognizing that…

What We All Need to Know About Our Government’s Shadow Wars

Reagan’s shadow government was a disaster, but it was a pygmy compared with Obama’s.

Covert operations are nothing new in American history, but it could be argued that during the past decade they have moved from being a relatively minor arrow in the national security quiver to being the cutting edge of American power. Drone strikes, electronic surveillance and stealth engagements by military units such as the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), as well as dependence on private corporations, mercenary armies and terrorist groups, are now arguably more common as tools of US foreign policy than conventional warfare or diplomacy. But these tools lend themselves to rogue operations that create peril for the United States when they blow back on us. And they often make the United States deeply…