The following is a review written by Gregory A. Daddis of the book “Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak out against America’s Misguided Wars,” written by Andrew Bacevich and Daniel Sjursen, former EMN Director.

Within an American society where reflexive genuflection to military service has become the model expression of “patriotism,” the editors of and contributors to this slim but excellent volume offer an alternative. Antiwar dissent can be patriotic.

Such an unorthodox view should not be dismissed as uninformed political grandstanding, for every essayist in Paths of Dissent is a veteran of the United States armed forces. Many have served in combat. Some have suffered severe physical and emotional wounds. Here is a collection of authors who are speaking from professional experience, as much as they are from any scholarly research or intellectual interests.

These eighteen compact and searing essays—what we might call “veteran testimonials”—cut across a range of emotions, from anger to regret, from shame to a guarded sense of continued patriotic duty…

If war is as much a cultural construct as it is a political one, then we need to elevate these dissenters’ voices in our culture.

Read the full article here.

If war is as much a cultural construct as it is a political one, then we need to elevate these dissenters’ voices in our culture.

Gregory Daddis