Thursday evening, I drove out to Loganville, Georgia. I suppose it’s not a tremendous distance from downtown Atlanta but during rush hour, it took me more than an hour before I turned right onto Georgia Highway 81, named the Michael Stokely Memorial Highway. It was the eighth anniversary of Mike’s death. He went to Iraq …
As a reporter, I have numerous conversations every day with people I don’t know that well or at all. Once in a while, those conversations strike a chord. That’s what happened a few days ago in my 30-minute discussion with Col. Kevin Brown. I’d met Brown in Baghdad in 2005; he was commander of a …
Michael Hastings died Tuesday in a car crash in Los Angeles. The news hit me hard. He was 33. He was a great journalist. He was a friend. Most people know his name for the Rolling Stone story “Runaway General,” the profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal that exposed him as a loose cannon, chiding his …
Even at the height of Iraq and Afghanistan, the wars were but a rude blip in the minds of a majority of Americans. Our military is made up of those who volunteer their services. Most Americans are disconnected from the men and women who serve in uniform. A smaller share of Americans serve in the …
My friend Joe Duran just called me after many months. I’d last seen him in November in Istanbul. Now, he was calling from his native Mexico, where he’d gone on vacation and also to sort through boxes of old things he stored at his house there. “Moni, guess what I found?” he said. I have …
I felt small standing amid the Roman ruins in Jerash. I marvel at the building accomplishments of people who lived so long ago; they intended to make structures last. How many slaves gave their lives in constructing magnificence not even an earthquake could fully take away? I think of how I’d stood in this exact …
I intended to write this for my blog Saturday. CNN decided to publish it as an opinion piece. You can also read it on CNN.com. The last of America’s mine resistant vehicles out of Iraq boarded a ship in Kuwait on Saturday, bound for Fort Hood, Texas. There, it will be displayed at the 1st …
Georgia soldiers patrolled western Baghdad in 2006 President Barack Obama made a stunning announcement Friday. The war in Iraq would be over in December when virtually all of the remaining 40,000 U.S. troops will pull out and come home . After nine long, divisive years, the Iraq war is finally coming to an end. I …
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