Peter Molin

Peter Molin is a retired US Army infantry officer. For over ten years, his blog Time Now has chronicled art, film, and literature about the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For the coming year, he will write a monthly column titled “Strike Through the Mask” for Wrath-Bearing Tree exploring matters of war, military, and veteran interest.

Peter Molin’s “Strike Through the Mask!”: The Clock Strikes Twelve

My year-long run as guest-columnist for The Wrath-Bearing Tree comes to an end this month. I’m not sure if WBT founde…

Peter Molin’s “Strike Through the Mask!”: The Great Contemporary War-Writing Quiz

30 questions; let’s see who knows their stuff. Answers below. 27-30 Correct: Expert 23-26: Sharpshooter 19-22:…

Peter Molin’s Strike “Through the Mask!”: Three Vignettes

Memoirs written by soldiers and Marines who fought in the Second Battle of Fallujah in Iraq and the Korengal Valley i…

Peter Molin’s “Strike Through the Mask!”: Fallujah-Korengal/Korengal-Fallujah

In my blog Time Now: The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in Art, Film, and Literature I rarely reviewed memoir and non-f…

Peter Molin’s “Strike Through the Mask!”: Memory and Memoir in Afghanistan

The opening of this month’s column repeats much of a Time Now: The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in Art, Film, and Lit…

Peter Molin’s “Strike Through the Mask!”: Interment at Arlington

The vet read that the hero’s burial ceremony in Arlington Cemetery was taking place the following Tuesday. As it happ…

Peter Molin’s “Strike Through the Mask!”: The Afterlife of Words and Deeds

A recent Los Angeles Times review of A Line in the Sand, the latest novel by Kevin Powers, the author of seminal Glob…

Peter Molin’s “Strike Through the Mask!”: Spotlight on MilSpeak and Middle West Presses

Major publishing house enthusiasm for war, mil, and vet-themed books has noticeably waned in the past few years, but …

Peter Molin’s “Strike Through the Mask!”: American Veterans and the Ukrainian Crisis

Bordentown is a pleasant town located on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River about twenty miles north of Philad…

Peter Molin’s Strike Through the Mask!: “So Say We All and the Veterans Writing Workshop”

Justin Hudnall, the founder and director of the San Diego-based performative writing-and-reading collective So Say We…

Peter Molin’s Strike Through the Mask!: A Review of Andrew Bacevich’s “Paths of Dissent”

What did you do if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan and believed the wars you volunteered to fight were uneth…

Peter Molin’s Strike Through the Mask!—Elliot Ackerman’s “The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan” and Jamil Jan Kochai’s “Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories”

It’s a commonplace that America largely ignored the long war in Afghanistan while it was being fought. Now, aft…