Arnold R. Isaacs

ARNOLD R. ISAACS

~ musings, rants, life stories, and publications ~

Arnold R. Isaacs is a writer, educator, and the author of two books relating to the Vietnam war, Without Honor: Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia and Vietnam Shadows: The War, Its Ghosts, and Its Legacy. He has also written From Troubled Lands: Listening to Pakistani and Afghan Americans in Post-9/11 America, available online at www.fromtroubledlands.net .
He was formerly a reporter, foreign and national correspondent, and editor for the Baltimore Sun. During six years as the Sun's correspondent in Asia, beside covering the closing years of the Vietnam war, he traveled throughout Southeast and South Asia. Since leaving daily journalism he has taught or conducted training programs for journalists and journalism students in more than 20 countries in Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and has written studies for the Critical Incident Analysis Group and the Academy for Critical Incident Analysis on subjects including the Virginia Tech shooting, displacement after Hurricane Katrina, the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and other events that challenged American society and its institutions.

RECENT WRITINGS:

2021

Leaving Saigon: I wrote this in 2005, 30 years after the end of the Vietnam war and my last flight to a Navy ship in the South China Sea. In the summer of 2021, as another failed war came to its chaotic end, this essay sounds hauntingly resonant.

Missing Voices from the Vietnam War: unpublished, originally written in 2018. I have no doubt that similar voices have been similarly missing in Afghanistan.

Three last letters (all unanswered) to my Republican representatives about Trump's stolen-election lie.

2020

A post-election email discussion: For weeks after Election Day 2020, my Republican representatives in the state and county legislatures studiously avoided expressing an opinion on voter fraud or on President Trump's campaign to overturn the election result.

Remembering Timmie: The woman whose chronic anxiety made me a reporter. First of two unpublished essays reminiscing about my early days in journalism.

Mr. Dorsey's World: Second reminiscence, about my first managing editor.

An Open Letter to My Old Tribe: Suggestions for journalists covering the final weeks of the 2020 presidential election campaign.

"A very small close-up from a very big picture": a report on a Black Lives Matter protest in very white, very Republican, Pasadena, Maryland

2019

"A new type of wound in a new type of war": some musings on Moral Injury

Review of The Education of an Idealist, by Samantha Power

President Trump's latest anti-refugee, anti-immigrant actions reach a new low of inhumanity

Remembering Vietnam Veterans

Whatever the Democrats are having in Miami, it's not a debate. What should we call it?

Echoes from 100 Years ago: On immigration and other issues, some surprisingly strong similarities between 1919 and 2019

A Catalog of Heartlessness: Trump's inhumane policies on refugees and other immigration issues are cruel to large numbers of legal immigrants and those seeking to enter the U.S. lawfully

2018

Making America's Wars Great Again: The Pentagon whitewashes a troubling past

Review of Anatomy of Victory: Why the United States Triumphed in World War II, Fought to a Stalemate in Korea, Lost in Vietnam, and Failed in Iraq, by John D. Caldwell

Moments of Truth About Truth: Old lessons on the power of lies, and reflections on facts vs falsehoods in the Trump era

A remembrance of John McCain

Real Facts About the Islamophobes' False Facts

Review of 1947: Where Now Begins, by Elisabeth Åsbrink,

In America, anti-Muslim bigotry is more acceptable than other prejudices

In Present Wars, Repeating Past Mistakes -- Reading about Iraq and Afghanistan, remembering Vietnam

Review of The Violent American Century -- War and Terror Since World War II, by John W. Dower

Excerpts from Frederick Douglass's last published essay before his death in 1895, "Why Is the Negro Lynched?" These quotes were prepared for a program on Douglass's bicentennial, organized by the local chapter of the Fulbright Association. The essay gives a remarkable view of the post-Reconstruction era, which restored white supremacy rule in the South and largely nullified the emancipation -- a period in America's racial history that is usually overlooked in our customary celebratory narrative. The full text is available online.

Podcast interview 3/15: "calling out BS" about immigration and terrorism (ARI segment begins at minute 17:00; follows an earlier segment on a college course called -- really! -- "Calling Out Bullshit," which is worth a listen too)

Using Fake Facts to Make Us Afraid: On Immigration and Terrorism, the Trump Administration misleads about its own misleading data

Review of The Ghosts of Langley: Into the CIA’s Heart of Darkness, by John Prados

2017

Fact-checking the Pentagon's misleading Vietnam War 50th Anniversary Commemoration website

A video accompanying "Remembering Vietnam"
I am one of several talking heads appearing in this video, which accompanies an exhibition of Vietnam war documents at the U.S. National Archives in Washington (third of three segments, arranged chronologically; this one covers the years 1970-1975)

Review of Anatomy of Failure: Why America Loses Every War It Starts, by Harlan K. Ullman

Review of Bringing Vincent Home, a very unusual Vietnam war novel by Madeleine Mysko

"Facts About the Vietnam War," 5-part series in advance of Ken Burns-Lynn Novick Vietnam documentary: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V

Podcast interview, 9/7: separating myth from facts about the Vietnam War

Review of A Rift in the Earth, by James Reston Jr., on the creation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

In shaping Trump's immigration policies, Jeff Sessions misrepresented his own data on refugees and terrorism

Lies have power even when we know they're lies

Remembering a long-ago encounter with John McCain -- reprise (originally published in 2000)

Podcast interview 7/24: telling the truth in the Trump era, and whom do you trust on the facts? (go to minute 30:55)

The Real Danger of Fake News

Are David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt (Planned Parenthood sting videotapers) really journalists?

Review of Generation Revolution, by Rachel Aspden

Podcast interview 3/7: more perspective on American fears of terrorism and the roots of Islamophobia (go to minute 22:25)