The most overlooked story this year continues to be Trump’s conflicts of interest and the lack of legal mechanisms to protect the executive branch of the federal government from corruption. In 2016, the press — with the exception of Kurt Eichenwald at Newsweek — ignored the vast web of global business interests and questionable connections that Trump and his company had and how they might conflict with American foreign policy interests. 

Corruption, fraud, theft, waste. These four dull horsemen of the auditor’s apocalypse are as common as violent death in Afghanistan and as the man responsible for overseeing the United States’ $109.7 billion reconstruction effort in the country, John Sopko is as well acquainted with their depressing ubiquity. The former prosecutor was appointed Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction by President Obama in 2012 and his caustic quarterly reports to Congress open a window onto a world in which these four horsemen have never been reined in, while cowboys run riot in Kabul.

 

Director Peter Berg’s “Lone Survivor” ranks alongside 2001’s “Black Hawk Down” and 1998’s “Saving Private Ryan” as one of the finest depictions of combat and military camaraderie put to screen. The film is based on the true story of a group of Navy SEALs who found themselves trapped in hostile Taliban territory during a covert mission in Afghanistan. The events took place in 2005, and Marcus Luttrell first recounted them in his 2007 book, Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of Seal Team 10.

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, an agency charged by Congress with monitoring liberty of conscience around the world, has just issued a report on prosecutions for blasphemy in other countries. Predictably, the leading offenders are Muslim countries, such as Egypt, Iran, Bangladesh, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Pakistan is cited as “the most egregious example … where blasphemy charges are common and numerous individuals are in prison, with a high number sentenced to death or life terms.”

For every Syrian who escaped the civil war in his or her homeland by crossing international borders, there are three more displaced within the country. Those who manage to leave become refugees. Those who stay behind remain invisible. But they are part of a growing population of refugees that are often without international support, a sub-group of people whose basic needs are rarely addressed by the global community: the internally displaced. 

There is great division of opinion regarding potential U.S. military action in Syria. However, one group is ecstatic over President Obama’s endorsement of a military attack on Damascus. These are the neconservatives who dominated the George W. Bush administration, and who still hold tremendous influence in Washington. An attack on Syria would be one step in fulfilling “stage two” of a longstanding neoconservative plan to bring about regime change throughout the Middle East in three stages: Iraq, Syria and finally Iran. 

The ghetto birds, the cop choppers, ”the largest ... airborne law enforcement operation in the world.”  No, do not mistake these nouns and adjectives for descriptions of a regimental-sized air element of a first-world military tasked with destroying enablers and instruments of international  terror.  This litany does, however, provide many with a common slang for the Los Angeles Police Department’s presence above the labrynthine sprawl of the city it “protects and serves.”

Modern realignments have altered the military landscape along with prospects of future conflicts which have shifted away from the type of heavy land battles that tanks are required for. As political and military realities shift and the historical presence of tanks as main combat tools is scaled back, the battle over the tanks has found a new frontier in Congress, concerning political posturing and defense budget cuts. 

Vice possesses a mixed bag of stories loaded with thousands of news pitches that it receives daily from its 35 offices spread out across 18 countries, and which is reflected in the absurd, frightening and mind-bending situations the correspondents find themselves in. So, for those who are expecting ongoing war zone coverage reminiscent of the Dan Rather golden days of journalism, which could become tiresome and fade interest, the burly and bearded Smith promised good storytelling, which although violent, is not sensationalistic, but true to the story. 

On the eve of the presidential election, I wish to tell whoever will become the next president of the United States that the Vietnam syndrome cannot be kicked through acts of war, that only through a view that's rooted in people, rooted in human kindness, and not historical vehemence, would a country open itself up and stop being a haunting metaphor. That not until human basic needs are addressed and human dignity upheld can we truly pacify our enemies and bring about human liberty. And that more soldiers and bombs and drones in the sky will never appease the haunting ghosts of the past.