TimeNowEncore
@petermolin.bsky.social
Links to all TIme Now: The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in Art, Film, and Literature posts in chronological order from 2012-2024.
"I’ve migrated social media announcements to Bluesky, but only to post in chronological order links to all my Time Now posts, beginning back in 2012. I’m not sure what I hope to accomplish by doing this...." From June 9, 2025. acolytesofwar.com/2025/06/09/t...
Time Now 2025
I’ve stopped publishing new material on Time Now, but the posts remain available and in fact still attract a fair amount of readers, thank you very much. On the other hand, the Time Now Twitt…
acolytesofwar.com
"The audience was upwards of 500 students and faculty, and as I spoke I couldn’t tell how I was faring, but upon conclusion the audience rose and gave me a long standing ovation, which I didn’t see coming and which moved me enormously." From Nov. 23, 2024. acolytesofwar.com/2024/11/23/v...
Veterans Day Speech, 2024
I was invited to give a Veterans Day speech this year at a high school where my friend B___ (also a veteran) teaches. I have never given such a speech before, but I accepted the offer quickly not j…
acolytesofwar.com
"The two reviews were of books outside the normal scope of Time Now, but I’m flattered the editors sought me out and I enjoyed reading and thinking about the two books’ subjects." From December 24, 2023, acolytesofwar.com/2023/12/24/2...
2023 H-Net and Strategy Bridge Book Reviews
This year, in addition to my monthly Wrath-Bearing Tree column Strike Through the Mask!, I’ve published two book reviews in reputable online sources. For the H-Net “H-War” historians’ book-re…
acolytesofwar.com
Direct link to Wrath-Bearing Tree column in the replies. From May 1 2023. acolytesofwar.com/2023/05/01/s...
Strike Through the Mask! #3
This month for The Wrath-Bearing Tree I write about a veterans-writing workshop I led for So Say We All, the San Diego-based writing-and-performance collective. I also have a little something to sa…
acolytesofwar.com
The first of 12 posts linked to articles I published in The Wrath-Bearing Tree online journal. I'll post a link to the actual article in the replies. acolytesofwar.com/2023/03/10/s...
Strike Through The Mask!
For the next 12 months I’ll be writing a monthly column for The Wrath-Bearing Tree online journal. My first post, on Elliot Ackerman’s The Fifth Act and Jamal Jan Kochai’s The Haunting of Haji Hota…
acolytesofwar.com
"Whether you are an old friend or we’ve never met, an experienced writer or one just starting out, I’d love to see you there and I promise to make it good for you." From Feb 25, 2023. acolytesofwar.com/2023/02/25/v...
Veterans Writing Workshop, March 22
I’m leading a Zoom writing workshop for veterans and people with veterans in their lives on March 22. The workshop is co-sponsored by the San Diego-based So Say We All spoken-word/performance…
acolytesofwar.com
"The books I reviewed are all non-fiction, not the fiction and poetry that Time Now specializes in, but reviewing them sowed some of the seeds that would eventuate in Time Now when I began it a few years later." From January 14, 2023. acolytesofwar.com/2023/01/14/b...
Before Time Now: Military Review Book Reviews, 2001-2009
Between 2001 and 2009, I reviewed five military-themed books for the Military Review, a professional journal associated with the Army’s Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. As I …
acolytesofwar.com
"...evidence that the military was so caught up in over-analyzing the political-military situation at the headquarters level that it had lost sight of the clear focus and directives necessary for winning the war in Afghanistan on the ground..." From Jan 9, 2023. acolytesofwar.com/2023/01/09/m...
Military PowerPoint Storyboards
I was invited to speak as part of a 2023 American Historical Association panel titled “Toward an Illustrated History of a Global War on Terror” because the panel organizer, vet scholar-…
acolytesofwar.com
"How do we measure quality and achievement? What constitutes a 'beautiful' war painting? Can a war painting be an 'anti-war' painting? How are stock scenes transformed and transcended? Can they be, or should they even try?" From Jan 1, 2023. acolytesofwar.com/2023/01/01/g...
GWOT Soldier Art
The instinct and talent to paint pictures is mysterious to those of us who possess neither. I suppose the inclination and some of the talent is god-given and then is nourished by training and pract…
acolytesofwar.com
"12 Strong aims to split the red-state/blue-state difference: its manly men may be rugged killing machines, but they believe in respecting cultural difference, forging alliances, and handing out lollipops, too." From December 26, 2022. acolytesofwar.com/2022/12/26/w...
War Film: 12 Strong
12 Strong: The Declassified True Story of the Horse Soldiers, an action-war film about the real-life exploits of a Special Forces A-team in northern Afghanistan in 2001, exudes the vibe that it mig…
acolytesofwar.com
"Thinking about my interest in war-writing, I began musing about how ChatGPT could aggregate what might be said to be the hive-mind on a subject and give it the force of authoritative expression." From Dec 24, 2022. acolytesofwar.com/2022/12/24/c...
ChatGPT Meets GWOT War-Fiction
ChatGPT, a sophisticated artificial-intelligence text-producing application, launched in November 2022. Immediately, a flurry of reviews and articles appeared, many of them wondering what might be …
acolytesofwar.com
"Here’s to the authors, to the readers, and most of all to the publishing houses who keep war-and-mil writing alive. More than just alive, really, but expanding and developing." From Nov 26, 2022. acolytesofwar.com/2022/11/26/w...
War Writing 2022
As memories of ground combat in Iraq and Afghanistan fade into history, so too slows the pace of narratives that depict fighting men and women in post-9/11 combat action. From what I observe, the l…
acolytesofwar.com
"Beyond Their Limits of Longing offers reflections on World War I by a who’s who of prominent contemporary vet-writers, as well as interested civilian-authors and scholars." From Nov 8, 2022. acolytesofwar.com/2022/11/08/b...
Beyond Their Limits of Longing: Today’s War-and-Mil Writers on World War I
Just in time for Veterans Day arrives the vet-mil anthology Beyond Their Limits of Longing: Contemporary Writers and Veterans on the Lingering Stories of World War I. A collection of posts first pu…
acolytesofwar.com
"The sense rendered is that Grant was unstoppable and that the Confederate generals and troops he faced were crushed as surely as a boa constrictor squeezes to death its prey." From Nov 5, 2022. acolytesofwar.com/2022/11/05/o...
On Reading Grant’s Memoirs
Prompted by a query from Brian Turner, I began reading Ulysses S. Grant’s Memoirs recently. For a while, we exchanged texts regarding our progress and impressions. The texts dropped off after a whi…
acolytesofwar.com
"I don’t use Stacey Peebles’ prescient line about contemporary war-lit’s dominant narrative arc—the story of a veteran who thought he or she was prepared for what they might face at war, only to find out how wrong they were—but it well applies." From Oct 22, 2022. acolytesofwar.com/2022/10/02/p...
Post-War Blues
Early in the emergence of Iraq and Afghanistan war-writing as a recognizable genre, the center-of-gravity, to use military-speak, shifted from interest in events experienced on deployment and the b…
acolytesofwar.com
"Kudos to the Department of English and Fine Arts at the United States Air Force Academy for sponsoring both conferences. It was very prescient and magnanimous of them to have done so." From August 26, 2022. acolytesofwar.com/2022/08/26/w...
War, Literature & the Arts Conferences, 2010 and 2018
Below are the schedules of presentations taken from the programs for the War, Literature & the Arts (WLA) conferences held at the United States Air Force Academy in 2010 and 2018. The 2010 WLA …
acolytesofwar.com
"Oates' Carthage seems a piece with Roxana Robinson’s Sparta and Cara Hoffman’s Be Safe, I Love You, two other novels written by accomplished civilian authors about troubled veterans and set in New York State that arrived about the same time." From August 22, 2022. acolytesofwar.com/2022/08/22/t...
Time Now Shorts
Some things old, some things new, some things borrowed, some things blue…. Lions for Lambs. I finally caught up with Lions for Lambs, a 2007 film directed by Robert Redford and featuring Redf…
acolytesofwar.com
"...an essay on Catch-22 I contributed to a student study-guide anthology published in 2021 by Salem Press. The guide, titled Critical Insights: Catch-22, is part of a series aimed at undergraduates and advanced high-school students." From August 11, 2022. acolytesofwar.com/2022/08/11/c...
Catch-(20)22
Matthew Komatsu, an Air Force pararescue jumper, has twice now published articles reflecting his love for Joseph Heller’s satirical World War II novel Catch-22. Both pieces argue that Catch-22, gre…
acolytesofwar.com
"As a family-romance/domestic-drama clothed in war-film garb, Brothers takes smart aim at the troubled veteran motif and intensifies it by setting it within the context of a military family." From July 11, 2022. acolytesofwar.com/2022/07/11/b...
Brothers (and Wife/Sister-in-Law)
In terms of military actualities, the set-up that drives the action of the 2009 film Brothers is intriguing, if not preposterous. On his fourth tour overseas, US Marine Captain Sam Cahill and Priva…
acolytesofwar.com
"Director Susanna White excels at making scenes set inside Marine Humvees taut; the series is prescient in recognizing the vehicle cabin as the site of intense drama for men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan." From July 8, 2022. acolytesofwar.com/2022/07/08/g...
Generation Kill
Generation Kill, the 2008 HBO seven-part miniseries produced by David Simon and Ed Burns, the two savants behind the massively acclaimed miniseries The Wire, was based on Evan Wright’s 2004 non-fic…
acolytesofwar.com
