War

David Sutherland is a retired U.S. Army colonel and director of the Center for Military and Veterans Community Services (Dixon Center) Paula J. Caplan is a Harvard University psychologist and author of "When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home: How All of Us Can Help Veterans" There's no mystery, but people talk as though there is. Some leaders in the Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as some psychotherapists and other citizens, express...

SO OBAMA didn't make the obligatory stop at Pat's or Geno's. I applaud him on skipping the two tourist traps that are the McDonald's and Burger King of cheesesteaks in the city. There are other joints to get a great cheesesteak, including Jim's, D'Allessandro's and John's Roast Pork. Bryan Flannery, Chalfont

WHAT IS HAPPENING to our city? A soldier had to come home from the war to bury his mother. He's been in the Army for 16 years and the last two, he's been defending our country and protecting us against the terrorists. Unfortunately, while he was over in Iraq, no one was looking out for his mother. She was a woman who worked hard trying to make a living for her family, a mother who raised five children, 17 grandchildren, 10 great-grandchildren - and all she wanted was a ride home.

Bejamin Frankin offered his thoughts on the efficacy of war in a letter to one of his sisters written from Philadelphia in 1787. It was selected by Roy Goodman, research librarian of the American Philosophical Society. I agree with you perfectly in your disapprobation of war. Abstracted from the inhumanity of it, I think it is wrong in point of human prudence, for whatever advantage one nation would obtain from another, whether it be part of their territory, the liberty of commerce with them, free passage on their rivers, etc., etc., it would be much cheaper to purchase such advantage with ready money than to pay the expence of acquiring it by war. An army is a devouring monster . . . when you have raised it, you have not only the fair charges of pay, clothing, provision, arms and ammunition, with numberless other contingent and just charges to answer and satisfy, but you have all the additional knavish charges of the numerous tribe of contractors . . . (who take)

COLUMNIST Michael Kinsley wonders what an honest opponent of the war should do now (OpEd, April 16). First, most of the organized antiwar groups aren't honest - they are the Socialist Workers Party and the free-Mumia crazies on the far left. Others, though, might admit that they were wrong, and question their weakness of character in always opposing their country. Finally, the Hollywood antiwar crowd like Tim Robbins and Mike Farrell might opt for the ancient Japanese rite of contrition called hara-kiri.

Any attempt to rescue the hostages by force would be "an absurd, catastrophic mistake. " - Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic On sending U.S. troops: "As long as the mission was strictly limited for a very narrow purpose and it was something that we could do for them that they couldn't do for themselves, upon proper consultation with Congress, I would be inclined to do that. " - President Clinton "The U.N. mission in Bosnia has failed. It must be withdrawn and the U.S. should not refuse to assist in its withdrawal.

After the first 24 hours, there was the illusion that this war would be easy. But there was a nagging sensation that the antiseptic, technology- controlled script the White House and Pentagon had created was too clean. The euphoria is gone. Now, 11 days into the war, the White House is warning that the conflict may be long and bloody. What America has seen is not the war itself, but the illusion of war. It is war by briefing, not battle. Satellite TV can relay the life and death of a smart bomb, but the war below remains inscrutable.

I am writing about the people who are protesting against the war. I think that our President knows what he is doing. . . . All of the protesting is just making his job harder. Anthony Conway There must be other options beside war. I feel President Bush is seeking revenge for, or to complete, what his father was unable to complete. This is the wrong reason for war. Ashley Taylor The writers are juniors at Mercy Vocational High School in Philadelphia.

SIGNE WILKINSON'S Nov. 8 "Stop the War" editorial cartoon accurately depicts the election results as a clear referendum on the war in Iraq. Nevertheless, her analysis is dead wrong on two fronts. First, Republicans and Democrats alike evidently voted for a change in U.S. policy in Iraq. So the words "Stop the War" ought to be purple. Using blue, over a red map of the U.S., perpetuates a false dichotomy of the electorate with regard to Iraq. Second, the cartoon implies that those who voted Democrat want the war to end, regardless of the situation on the ground.

HAS ANYONE considered researching how many presidents since FDR have had sons of eligible draft age? Almost every president has had some dealings with war. However, none, to my knowledge, has had sons who enlisted, fought or were eligible to fight in an existing war during their term. Most presidents, Kennedy excluded (John was only 3), had daughters. I believe presidents, congressmen and senators would exhibit a different mind-set if their sons were going off to war. Regina Powell, Lansdowne

For nearly a century, the Silent Sentinel watched over the graves of Civil War veterans at Mount Moriah Cemetery in Yeadon and Southwest Philadelphia. The bronze figure of a Union soldier clasping the end of a musket stood at rest amid long, neat rows of white marble headstones. Then, as though deserting its post in fall 1970, the statue disappeared. Thieves pulled it from its granite base and tried to sell it to a Camden scrap dealer, who alerted police. Silent Sentinel was recovered, repaired at a Chester foundry, and stored out of public view for more than 40 years, until a secure location could be found and money raised for a granite base.

As the 6-year-old title character in What Maisie Knew , Onata Aprile projects a shatterproof spirit all the more remarkable for her crushing story. A superb and keenly observed update of the Henry James novel, Maisie mostly focuses on its young actress' watchful face, with its black-olive eyes and pink-rosebud mouth. Behold the shuttlecock in the unforgiving game of custodial badminton played by self-involved parents. What does Maisie know? She conveys the intense awareness that her world is spinning off its axis.

When people give so much of themselves early in life, does it stand to reason that there's next to nothing left for the remaining years? So it seems with the three decorated geriatric World War I veterans on the sanatorium terrace in Heroes , Tom Stoppard's 2005 adaptation of Gerald Sibleyras' 2003 comedy Le Vent des Peupliers . Wednesday's opening of Lantern Theater Company's production was too purposefully loopy to be traditionally heroic,...

WILL THE WAR between rival wireless power-charging technologies be won in coffee shops and fast-food restaurants? That's the hope of Ran Poliakine, chief executive of Powermat Technologies. The innovator recently started installing its cordless charging bases for mobile phones in tabletops at Starbucks (first stop: Boston). That move should pump up interest in cool companions like the Duracell Powermat case for the iPhone 5. Just plop the phone on said base - no wires needed! This week, Powermat also announced that it's combining resources with the Helsinki, Finland-based wireless-power pioneer PowerKiss to bring compatible charging stations - using safe-to-the-touch magnetic induction technology - to more than 1,000 European locations, including McDonald's.

WASHINGTON - President Obama said Thursday that the United States has reached a "crossroads" in the fight against terrorism and that it is time to redefine and recalibrate a war that will eventually end. Far from repudiating the controversial use of drones against terrorist targets, Obama defended the tactic as effective, legal, and lifesaving. But he acknowledged that threat levels have fallen to levels not seen since before the 9/11 attacks, requiring new criteria for use of lethal force.

BAGHDAD - Iraq's wave of bloodshed sharply escalated Monday with more than a dozen car bombings across the country, part of attacks that killed at least 95 people and brought echoes of past sectarian carnage and fears of a dangerous spillover from Syria's civil war next door. The latest spiral of violence - which has claimed more than 240 lives in the last week - carries the hallmarks of the two sides that brought nearly nonstop chaos to Iraq for years: Sunni insurgents, including al-Qaeda's branch in Iraq, and Shiite militias defending their newfound power after Saddam Hussein's fall.

Charles Siegel, 89, of Bryn Mawr, a decorated World War II pilot and merchandiser for 32 years with the former John Wanamaker department-store chain, died Thursday, May 16, of advanced age at his home. In April 1956, Mr. Siegel was hired as a buyer by Wanamakers, one of the first department stores in the nation. The chain became Hecht's in 1995 and later was absorbed by Macy's. Mr. Siegel rose to a senior merchandising manager, and from there to vice president for general merchandising.

This is a war story told by an eyewitness. Kevin Purcell does the driving - in a Prius, no less - as we visit the battlefields of his youth, familiar places he hadn't set foot on in decades. Here's where somebody got shot, here's where somebody got stabbed. And here, he tells me, is where "grown white men were swinging baseball bats at grown black men who were swinging back with their belts and broom handles. " For a boy of 10, as Purcell was in 1969 when these events took place in his Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood, it all seemed unreal.

When he wore that slouch hat and blue frock coat 150 years ago, Union Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade faced a crucial choice that could affect the outcome of the Civil War: Fight or flee? Across an open field at Gettysburg, the Confederate Army under its legendary commander, Robert E. Lee, was preparing a final all-out attack that would become known as Pickett's Charge. Meade stayed put and won the battle on July 3, 1863 - and now, his wool felt hat, with two bullet holes from earlier fighting at Fredericksburg, Va., and the coat with the major general's shoulder straps are part of an exhibit, "Treasures of the Civil War," at the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center.

FEW THINGS are more important to soldiers in wartime than mail from home. But getting mail from home in wartime can be a logistical nightmare for those who have to collect, sort and deliver it, particularly to combat troops moving rapidly in battle. In World War II, the job fell to a dedicated band of black female soldiers who were members of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only black Women's Army Corps unit to serve overseas in the war. One of its proud members was Janyce Stovall, who sneaked away from her Philadelphia home in 1943 as the war was raging to join the WAC. She was assigned first to Fort Dix, N.J., and then sent to Europe as a member of what the troops called the "Six Triple Eight.