IN DECEMBER 2001, I volunteered to be part of the team that reopened the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan. A month later, a few of us went to Bagram Air Base in Kabul to wish Afghanistan’s interim leader, Hamid Karzai, good luck as he left for Washington to attend the State of the Union address. We encouraged him to secure commitments for military and development funds, knowing that America’s attention seldom […]
Tag Archives | Defying Conventional Wisdom
David Krieger | Nuclear weapons DON’T keep us safe
THE BELIEF THAT NUCLEAR WEAPONS KEEP their possessors safe, though it may be widespread, is neither true nor rooted in wisdom. The fact is that nuclear weapons are far too dangerous for any country to possess—let alone use–and that the U.S. and other countries have been playing nuclear roulette with them for nearly seven decades. Nuclear weapons have come close to being detonated by accident or design on numerous occasions […]
Anita Moorjani | From death’s door to another world
AS I WAS BEING RUSHED to the hospital, the world around me started to appear surreal and dreamlike, and I could feel myself slip further and further away from consciousness. The moment the oncologist saw me, her face visibly filled with shock. “Your wife’s heart may still be beating,” she told Danny, “but she’s not really in there. It’s too late to save her.” Who’s the doctor talking about? I […]
John Vicary | The Lonely Baker
FOR THE THIRD NIGHT IN A ROW, the baker found herself up alone at two a.m. making sausage. She had long been in the habit of rising early, but what was less usual in this instance was the food that she had been drawn to prepare the last few nights. She did not often make things from the savory end of the spectrum, as she was a boulanger: a maker […]
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