Shannon M. Smith, College of Saint Benedict & Saint John's University
Some 5,000 National Guardsmen will stay in Washington to protect the Capitol into March, according to the Pentagon. The Guard is seen as a reliable peacekeeping force – but it wasn’t always that way.
The Office of Military Commissions building in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was where much legal activity about the detainees’ cases was handled.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Lisa Hajjar, University of California, Santa Barbara
The release of a new movie calls public attention to the US government’s treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and what the detainees’ future might be.
Foreign military students from the U.S. Navy’s Patrol Craft Officer course conduct a field training exercise at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi in 2009.
Department of Defense
The US Armed Forces run 14 programs in over 150 countries, providing education and training for roughly 70,000 foreign military personnel each year. What, if anything, are they learning?
Militia members associated with the Three Percenters movement conducting a military drill in Flovilla, Ga., in 2016, days after Trump’s election. After his 2020 defeat, Three Percenters were involved in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Mohammed Elshamy/Anadolu Agency/Getty Image
A leaked database shows at least 10% of the far-right Oath Keepers militia is active police or military – people professionally trained in using weapons and conducting sophisticated operations.
Rioters mass on the U.S. Capitol steps on Jan. 6.
Samuel Corum/Getty Images
Ostensibly protesting an election they may have thought was stolen, their actions fed a larger set of goals that American militants are seizing upon to take more extreme action.
Afghan security forces gather near the site of an attack in Jalalabad in August 2020.
AP Photo/Rahmat Gul
Pulling out roughly half the U.S. troops in Afghanistan is part of an effort to find peace, but may unbalance a precarious stalemate.
U.S. Army veteran Derek Martin gives his son a big hug at a veteran support group cookout on Nov. 7, 2015.
Jon Hatch/Digital First Media/Boulder Daily Camera via Getty Images
About 2.9 million eligible American voters live abroad, including members of the military and embassy staffers. Just 5% of them cast their ballots in 2018.
There is a long history of links between white nationalist movements and the U.S. military.
Bo Zaunders/Corbis Documentary via Getty Images
The link between foreign military training and local insurgencies has yet to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
A visitor looks at the faces of some of the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing at the Oklahoma National Memorial museum in Oklahoma City.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The Sept. 11 bombings killed almost 3,000 Americans. But if you exclude that unique event for the last two decades of terrorist activity, a different picture of US vulnerability appears.
National Guard members and protesters in Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 20, 2020.
Seth Herald/AFP via Getty Images
The US military can exempt from service those who are religiously or morally opposed to violence. But conscientious objector status won’t help soldiers who disagree with specific lawful orders.
Members of the military wearing U.S. Army Special Forces insignia block protesters near Lafayette Park and the White House on June 3, 2020.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
There is a long line of military heroes who had the moral courage not to follow immoral orders. In the days ahead, some may have to consider what exactly their oath to the Constitution requires.
Poverty, inequality and social isolation have an impact on mental health.
Juan Ignacio Roncoroni/EPA
Army physicians are turning to drugs approved for other conditions or newly developed treatments such as the antiviral Remdesivir to treat infected personnel.
U.S. Air Force troops erected a temporary hospital in Liberia in 2014 to help fight an Ebola outbreak.
John Moore/Getty Images
There is plenty the military could do to help protect public health, such as by helping with supply logistics and providing workers to do important tasks – including health care professionals.
Members of the New York Army National Guard are setting up a 1,000-bed hospital at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan.
Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images
A commission looking at the future of service is set to makesits recommendations. It is hoping to make a year of service ‘a norm’ for all Americans. What does it mean to serve?
President Donald Trump with members of the armed forces.
AP Photo/Kevin Wolf