The United States has once again plunged into a war convinced that righteous purpose, overwhelming force and moral certainty will deliver victory. But history — ancient and modern — keeps teaching the same lesson: macho crusades fail. They fail because they are built on arrogance, miscalculation and the belief that military might can substitute for strategy. The current U.S. war in Iran is not an exception. It is the latest chapter in a thousand-year pattern of powerful nations mistaking zeal for wisdom. 

At odd hours of the day and night, Maggie Valley resident David Crane grabs a cup of coffee, meanders to the basement of his mountain cabin and speaks with the members of the high-level international workgroup he chairs. The aim: Establish a court through which to try Vladimir Putin and others for crimes of aggression against Ukraine. 

In the early 1900s, in Tsarist Russia, young intellectuals with means would study philosophy and history. Some would feel a longing for their country to become more modern, to become a nation under the rule of law, as other nations in the world had done. 

To the Editor:

On April 12, 1776, North Carolina was the first state to call for independence from Great Britain. Her Provincial Congress, meeting at Halifax, North Carolina, passed a resolution that has come to be known as the “Halifax Resolves.”