5 books found
This book raises questions about the just war tradition through a critical examination of its revival and by juxtaposing it with a literary phenomenology of war. Recent public debate about war has leaned heavily on a just-war tradition dating back many centuries. This book examines the recent revival of that tradition in the United States and Britain, arguing that it is less coherent and comprehensive as an approach to the ethical issues arising from war than is generally supposed, and that it is inconsistent in important ways with the theology on which it was originally based. A second line of criticism is mounted through close readings of modern texts in English - from Britain, Australia and the USA – that together constitute a more subjective, bottom-up understanding of the moral dilemmas of military life. In this second tradition the task of representing war is seen as more problematic, and its rationality more questionable, than in just war discourse. Works by William Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, James Fennimore Cooper, Stephen Crane, John Buchan, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, Tim O’Brien and Kurt Vonnegut are featured. The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of security studies, military studies, theology and international relations.
This material was written by a former Shake'n'Bake, instant NCO who survived a year in the jungles of central Vietnam on search and destroy missions with the 173rd Airborne Brigade. It pays tribute to the soldiers he served with and expresses his feelings of responsibility for his men. It also lays bare his realization of the fine line between rational leadership, irrational killing, and young men conquering their daily fears in the elements knowing if they are exposed long enough to the enemy they are challenging the odds of survival. Through a potpourri of combat yarns, he gives extraordinary glimpses of the chancy and hard life of the airborne grunt that actually did the fighting. Included in One More Wake-Up, are stories about life after Vietnam where as a veteran remembering the past he copes with the present.
by Sam Charles Sarkesian, Robert E. Connor
1999 · Psychology Press
Addresses US military professionalism and the revisions, modifications and changes necessary to respond to the changed domestic and strategic environments of the new world order.