While the Pentagon’s decision last month to lift its ban on women serving in combat has garnered national attention, the announcement will also directly affect the female cadets of Stanford’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC).
On Veterans Day, six student veterans joined a panel to discuss their experiences of war. The event, titled “Voices from the front: Stanford students returning home from war,” was hosted by the Stanford Storytelling Project. These are some of their stories.
Karl Eikenberry M.A. ’94 has had a distinguished military and diplomatic career. Prior to his current position as the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), he spent 35 years in the United States Army. As U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from May 2009 to June 2011, he led President Obama’s civilian surge, which occurred in conjunction with a 30,000-troop surge.
We study, work, hang out with friends and talk about politics like everyone else. But we always remember one thing, which sets us apart: nothing is certain in war. Not even an ordinary dirt road.
Speaking Thursday afternoon at the Cemex Auditorium in the Graduate School of Business (GSB), four-star General Stanley McChrystal said that the United States has struggled to find answers to global and national issues not because the country has gotten lazy or selfish, but because it has continued to apply an outdated model of leadership instead of adapting to the changing times.
Associate Professor of History Priya Satia discussed the British invention of air control as a military surveillance tactic in Iraq during the interwar years. She said British perceptions of the region, which they called “Arabia,” allowed British officials to reconcile their ethical scruples with the violence of the tactic, and she added that these British experiences in Iraq have influenced Americans’ thinking about the region today.
America’s last “good war” – that is, a war the vast majority of the population could agree was worth fighting – formally ended on the… Continue Reading »
As the future of Iraq hangs in the balance, Stanford service members reflected on the Iraq withdrawal.