“Your father is a murderer”

Was he? Or did William Colby act for what he saw as the highest good for America and the the world? Are the two mutually exclusive? Can we ever really know our families? These questions and more are at the center of The Man Nobody Knew, a portrait of William Colby, by his son and Emmy-award winning director, Carl Colby, our guest tonight.

Massachusetts issued the New World’s first paper currency in 1690. With poor soldiers returning from a failed campaign against the French in Quebec, the colony found itself short on silver and copper coins to pay the men for their service. To solve the problem, the government printed bills of credit—promises of payment once the colony had collected more taxes. These slips of inked paper, deeds to a future fortune, quickly spread, offering a convenient medium of exchange for all thirteen colonies, whose reserves of precious metals were scanty and often concentrated only in the hands of the rich.

Clearly, War Is A Lie is an ambitious effort, organized around ideas rather than chronology, taking in, albeit briefly, most of the wars we talk about, from Iraq and Afghanistan to the two World Wars, back to the Civil War and even to antiquity. It is full of eye-opening facts that cast doubt on the school textbook version of events, and “wow” moments where we are made to question our deepest assumptions. David Swanson whets my appetite for a much more discerning look at particular wars I thought I knew much about, and more importantly, about war itself. He is particularly effective in demonstrating the cynicism and duplicity of leaders who tell us that war is for one purpose, while knowing full well that it is for another.

Swanson’s passion for the topic, his compassion for all peoples, his fresh thinking and his commitment to questioning conventional attitudes toward war and exposing popular myths and fallacies are what stand out. He presents many significant pieces of history that are not widely known and effectively assumes the mantle of moral guide. Swanson makes a compelling case for our re-examining our own knowledge about why we make war, and underlines the deception and folly that is almost always at the core of such violent adventures. Compared to traditional histories and analyses, and even with its drawbacks, I consider War Is A Lie an important work and one worthy of our attention. I’m glad to moderate this conversation.

Rank creep is almost more pernicious than mission creep.

[Welcome Author and Journalist, Rita Cosby, and Host Dennis Showalter, Professor, History, Colorado College] [As a courtesy to our guests, please keep comments to the book.  Please take other conversations to a previous thread. - bev] Quiet Hero: Secrets from My Father’s Past “I know my dad was in the war, but I only began [...]

As we celebrate this holiday in 2010, I’d like to ask folks to pause at some point between the burgers and dogs, beer, brisket, and ribs, and the day off and reflect on the meaning of the holiday. Think about the death this past week of Lt John Finn, 100 years old and the then oldest surviving holder of the Medal of Honor for his actions during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Think about the 1,000th US casualty in Afghanistan (a “milestone” we crossed this past week), the more than 4,000 US soldiers who have died in Iraq. Think about the millions of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines who have been injured or died in the wars since the Civil War.

Adam Cohen’s prose is a rhapsody in fact. A throwback to historians such as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. or David Halberstam, in an era that issues forth vague tissues of assertions, or declarations of ideology, his are pages stamped with “In Fact We Trust.”