Browsing: Iraq

Even if we can’t agree that Julian Assange is a journalist, and even if we can’t agree on support for him as a person, it is imperative that we agree on the principles of the situation. Prosecuting someone whose actions align with the daily practices and goals of journalism would be an attack on the First Amendment freedom that allows the press to give the public the news it needs.

With as much attention as the issue has been receiving lately, the U.S.’s decisions concerning the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and its many threats to national security has the nation wondering what the near future is going to look like.

Blast barrier walls topped with barbed wire snake across the Iraqi capital, encircling government buildings like a fortress and enshrining the separation of neighborhoods increasingly divided by religious sect.

Nothing — not even the dangers of war — could stop Truett Seminary graduate Jeremy Courtney from moving to Iraq in 2007. Co-founder and executive director of the nonprofit organization Preemptive Love Coalition, Courtney’s life changed course while visiting a friend in Iraq during the middle of the war.

You don’t have to be a soldier to serve in Iraq.

Baylor alumni and students are attempting to make a difference in Iraq through a group called the Preemptive Love Coalition, an organization that works to provide lifesaving heart surgeries to Iraqi children.

A Baylor assistant professor criticized President Barack Obama’s use of targeted drone strikes in the Middle East at a public lecture Tuesday, prompting praise from the event’s sponsors but vocal disagreement from several audience members, including a former soldier.

Members of the Baylor community poured into a packed Waco Hall on Wednesday to hear former U.S. secretary of state Dr. Condoleezza Rice discuss U.S. foreign policy issues and her new book with Baylor President Ken Starr.

Monday the Baylor and Waco communities will have the opportunity to listen to a performance of traditional Kurdish music by two Iraqi musicians as part of the program “American Voices: Art in Difficult Places.”

Eight years ago on a night in March, they interrupted our regularly-scheduled programs for a breaking news bulletin. We sat before our televisions and watched rockets arc into the skies over Baghdad. Many of us had doubts about the stated and implied causes of the war that began that night: the need to secure Saddam Hussein’s stockpile of WMD and to retaliate for his part in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

When I think of the rights that are unique to American citizens, one of the first things that comes to my mind is the right to free speech. Since the birth of the United States, citizens have been able to share their thoughts without restriction from the government, excepting of course the Sedition Act put into effect in 1918 that was quickly shot down in 1920 after the end of World War I.