HOUSTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a sombre ceremony attended by former members of the Bush administration, the former Vice-President Dick Cheney marked the tenth anniversary of making up a reason to invade Iraq. Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/13883iE

(Source: newyorker.com)

The Syrian war looks, too, like dusty shoes spilling out of a cardboard box by the open door of a deserted, partially destroyed home in a town that, like many, is devoid of civilians. The box is near a child’s black-ink drawing on the wall, of a helicopter. There are a little girl’s white sneakers with blue butterflies near a woman’s black wedge-heeled slipper, a man’s lace-up dress shoes, and a toddler’s orange patent-leather sandals. Things are in their place; their owners are gone. It also looks like things that are out of place, like a kitchen sink in somebody’s grassy, rubble-carpeted garden. The Syrian war looks like the millions of people who have become refugees or are internally displaced. It looks like others who say they’d rather die in their homes than live off of handouts in a tent…

What does the Syrian war look like? What does it sound like? Rania Abouzeid reflects on the past two years in Syria: http://nyr.kr/13YWmKL

Photograph by Moises Saman/Magnum.

Ten years after the bombing of Baghdad and the start of the Iraq war, Seymour Hersh asks, what’s up with our Constitution? “How could a small group of hard-line conservatives around President Bush… so quickly throw us over the cliff? It’s not enough to blame it on the fear, anger, and confusion brought on by the 9/11 attacks… Is our Constitution that fragile?” Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/ZBToV5

Photograph by Peter van Agtmael/Magnum. See more images from “Photojournalists on War: The Untold Stories from Iraq.”

   Read “Kattekoppen,” this week’s fiction by Will Mackin, about one soldier’s experience as a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan: http://nyr.kr/15WX5eh In this Q&A, Mackin, who as an officer in the Navy has been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, discusses his story, the difficulties of writing about traumatic events, and how he feels about others’ attempts to represent the war in fiction and film: http://nyr.kr/15sjBup

Years of secrecy surrounding the United States’ drone program have left many questions—about targeted killings, transparency and due process; the power of President; and where battlefields begin and end.
 
Today at 3 P.M. E.T., Michael Walzer, the author of “Just and Unjust Wars” and professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton; Jeff McMahan, a professor of philosophy at Rutgers and the author of “The Ethics of Killing”; and New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer will discuss the ethics of drone warfare in a live chat with readers. 

Follow the link to help get the exchange started by leaving questions in the comments section, and be sure to return at 3:00 for the discussion: http://nyr.kr/WJNjcj

(Source: newyorker.com)

Amy Davidson on the Obama Administration’s rationale for killing American citizens without any proper due process, and which Americans are targets: http://nyr.kr/UBnOuE

In today’s Daily Comment, Dexter Filkins looks at the truth about drone warfare, and the information black hole in America’s secret wars: “The best and most painstaking attempts to get at the truth of the drone war—like one by the New America foundation—acknowledge the difficulty of the enterprise.”  Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/XpGxUF

Amy Davidson on what Richard III’s skeleton can tell us about warfare and its lack of limits: http://nyr.kr/WnOPPf

Photograph by Dan Kitwood/Getty.

Dexter Filkins on why the “non-combat” distinction is meaningless given the nature of our recent wars: “In the twelve years since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began, the military has been steadily pushing women into jobs that no one could call ‘non-combat’ without stripping the phrase of its meaning…” Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/10SsrlV

(Source: newyorker.com)