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Robert C. Koehler

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.

Articles by this author

	Views Thursday, March 23, 2017 The Mosque That Disappeared We committed a quiet little war crime the other day. Forty-plus people are dead, taken out with hellfire missiles while they were praying . Or maybe not. Maybe they were just insurgents. The women and children, if there were any, were . . . come on, you know the lingo, collateral damage. The... Read more
	Views Thursday, March 16, 2017 The Deep State Hasn't Gone Away “In a statement to WikiLeaks , the source details policy questions that they say urgently need to be debated in public . . .” Let me interrupt this quote from the world’s declassifier in chief, regarding its latest release of impertinent, humiliating and shocking data about the American security... Read more
	Views Thursday, March 09, 2017 The Moment of the Fool Obama . . . Trump. Could there be a bigger contrast — in attitude, style, comportment, philosophy? What irony that the two names are now linked in history: Donald Trump forever the successor to Barack Obama, forever the orange-haired blot on his legacy, forever the surrealistic next chapter of the... Read more
	Views Thursday, March 02, 2017 A Crisis of Relevance: Why We Need a New 'Public Plan' for Peace And the word of the moment is . . . opportunity: “What unites our party is a belief in opportunity, the idea that however you started out, whatever you look like, whoever you love, America is the place you can make it if you try.” Could you be any more tepid? The words were those of the former... Read more
	Views Thursday, February 23, 2017 Costa Rica’s Peace Journey “This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” Dwight Eisenhower gave the world some extraordinary rhetoric — indeed, his words have the sting of ironic shrapnel, considering how little they have influenced the... Read more
	Views Friday, February 17, 2017 Resisting Trump: The Great American Awakening Old wounds break open. Deep, encrusted wrongs are suddenly visible. The streets flow with anger and solidarity. The past and the future meet. The news is All Trump, All the Time, but what’s really happening is only minimally about Donald Trump, even though his outrageous actions and bizarre... Read more
	Views Thursday, February 09, 2017 The Mass Grave We Call Collateral Damage “Lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. Boy, you think our country’s so innocent? You think our country’s so innocent?” We have carnage and we have irony. The speaker is the president, of course. It’s Super Bowl Sunday and here he is, generating another eyeball-popping headline as he dares to... Read more
	Views Thursday, February 02, 2017 Creating Enemies, Creating Hell “Numerous foreign-born individuals have been convicted or implicated in terrorism-related crimes since September 11, 2001.” As Donald Trump sets out to “protect America,” I dedicate the words of his explosively controversial proclamation banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries from... Read more
	Views Thursday, January 26, 2017 The Birth of a Movement The sense of resistance was fierce: “Grab ’em by the profits” . . . “Keep your hands out of my wherever” . . . “NOT DECLAWED” . . . But it was also, oh Lord, joyous — in a scraped raw kind of way, you might say. For instance, the young woman with the bullhorn, who led the chant where I was walking... Read more
	Views Thursday, January 19, 2017 Tomorrow Is Today The icon’s day has come and gone, and — oh, the irony — eight people were fatally shot in Chicago on his weekend. Another eight were shot during a Martin Luther King rally and celebration in Miami. God knows how many more died this past weekend: around the country, around the world. An enormous... Read more

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