Opinions

Reflections on a Prayer Service for Gaza

Coming up from the Metro into the Main Hall of Union Station, on my way to a prayer service for the people of Gaza, I paused to look at the Roman legionnaire statues standing guard over the crowds who entered and exited the great neo-Classical building. Appropriate statuary, I thought, for an imperial city—Rome 2000 years ago, Washington today. […]

Opinions

Old and New Thinking

     Also implicit in the Secretary’s old thinking is that sacred cow of establishment thinking, deterrence. As long as we have more of the latest, fastest, most intelligent and most destructive weapons, we will not need to use them, because that will be sufficient to make our enemy think twice before taking us on. But contemporary asymmetric warfare (think 9-1l-2001, 10-7-2023), let alone the likelihood of either human or A.I. error,  effectively undermines deterrence theory. […]

Opinions

Imagining the Unimaginable

    A few years ago we spent a week at Auschwitz/Birkenau in contemplation of horrors truly beyond imagination that we felt compelled to imagine nonetheless. We sat in meditation alongside the gas chambers and crematoria, in the grove where the children clung to their mothers awaiting their turn to die, letting the blood in the earth open and break our hearts. […]

Opinions

The Serious Black Columnist

   Speaking about myself, The Gantt Report is as serious as a heart attack! Why? It is because Black people in America, in Africa, in South America, in the Caribbean, and in most other parts of the world continue to face serious problems and dangerous consequences. […]