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PARADE Magazine Articles
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Why You Need To Know The Scots-Irish
October 3, 2004

Going South on I-81, the mountains are beautiful-smoky from the haze that the sun makes when it burns into the pine. You may see cars and Burger Kings on that highway, but I am watching my own ghosts: tough, resilient women on buckboard wagons, hard men with rifles walking alongside, and kids tending cattle as they make their way down the mud trail called The Wilderness Road.

It is here in the Appalachian Mountains that my people, the Scots-Irish, settled after leaving Ireland and the north of Britain in the 18th century. They tamed the wilderness, building simple log cabins and scraping corn patches in thin soil. And they pressed onward, creating a way of life that many would come to call, if not American, certainly the defining fabric of the South and the Midwest, as well as the core character of the nation's working class.

I am determined to reclaim the dignity of these people - for themselves and for America. It's long overdue. Read on...

A Message for Corporal Ramirez
September 12, 2004

THE FOUR-ENGINE C-130 Hercules descends toward total darkness above Tarin Kowt in the plains of central Afghanistan, 70 miles north of the ancient capital of Kandahar. Its wheels finally bite into an unmarked dirt airstrip. The aircraft brakes hard, then taxis along the strip. Billows of dust engulf us. The rear door yawns open, and we trundle down the tailgate onto an eerie, empty landscape lit only by the brightness of the moon. As I step onto the runway, my boots sink into six inches of powder, so fine and dry that it might be talc. Read on...

Is America Neglecting A Good Friend?
January 12, 2003

For nearly 60 years, Japan and the United States have been close allies, to our mutual benefit. But with U.S. leadership now focused on China and the war against global terrorism, a veteran Asia expert warns of a cooling off with Tokyo and its consequences. Read on...

The Price of Duty
May 27, 2001

Johnny Liverman died in Vietnam more than 32 years ago. Yet his father, a decorated World War II Veteran, still maintains a graveside vigil. On this Memorial Day, they are a poignant reminder of our nation's citizen soldier legacy.

My office looks out on Arlington National Cemetery. Finishing a jog or restless with my writing, I often stroll its rolling hills and think of those who served our country during troubled times, now gathered in their final formations. Frequently, I find myself in one small corner of the cemetery where my father is buried, not far from a heroic squad leader who died under my command in Vietnam. Read on...

Should We Leave Okinawa?
March 11, 2001

The first time I ever saw Okinawa, in 1969, I arrived at Kadena Air force Base on a military charter from California, by way of Hawaii and Wake Island. Military buses shuttled us past fields of sugarcane and small, windswept towns rebuilt in the quarter-century since the island had been flattened in World War II's costliest Pacific battle. Like most of the 400,000 Marines who went to Vietnam, I was "processed" at Camp Hansen. Back then, the camp was an ocean of adrenaline. Racial tensions among Americans were high. Kin, a village just outside the camp, was filled with bars and strip joints. The air was charged with the promise of violence from Marines on their way into or out of a war that would claim 100,000 casualties for their Corps. Read on...

Can We Still Rely On An Old Ally?
May 25, 1997

I AM SITTING IN A RICHLY paneled, book-lined greeting room inside historic Malacanang Palace, waiting to interview Fidel V. Ramos, the 12th president of the Republic of the Philippines. I have a question to ask him that is vitally important to America's future in Asia:

As Asia changes. can the U.S. still count the Philippines as an ally? Read on...

What We Can Learn From Japanese Prisons
January 15, 1984

FUCHU PRISON, near Tokyo is home to 2500 of Japan's most hardened criminals. Ed Arnett is an alumnus who thinks of Fuchu daily. The dank, unheated buildings, the harshness of the guards' reports

to their superiors, the high stone walls--these are as near to him as the scars on his legs, from the frostbite he picked up in his Fuchu cell.

"I didn't know I could still cry until I went to prison in Japan," says Arnett, convicted in 1979 for possession of two kilograms of marijuana. "I wouldn't put that experience on anybody." Read on...

When A One Armed Man is Not a Loser
November 21, 1982

The day the piece of shrapnel ripped his arm away just below the shoulder, a clean swipe like a hot knife that left the arm itself intact at his feet, I cried. Mike McGarvey was my radio operator, which in a Marine rifle platoon is tantamount to shadowhood, alter ego, little brother. Everywhere I walked, he was two steps behind, carrying the PRC-25 radio that linked us to the company. Nights we slept on the same poncho, talking for hours in the darkness about home, aspirations, love, God--our soul. McGarvey was the fifth radio operator I had lost in three months. I had lured him to the job because I liked him. He was competent. He was a friend. He was 18. Read on...