Soldiers observe a moment of silence for those killed in last Thursday's shooting at Fort Hood, Texas on Friday, Nov. 6, 2009. (AP)

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Flags at half mast across the country. Thirteen dead, many more wounded — shot in cold blood at the Army’s Fort Hood in Central Texas on Thursday.

The alleged gunman — a military psychiatrist, an American Muslim, one of the Army’s own — faced deployment to a war he opposed.

The Army’s Chief of Staff calls it a “kick in the gut” — and warns of backlash against Muslim-American troops. Unanswered questions abound — about the shooter, the warning signs, mental health in the ranks, an Army stretched thin.

This hour, On Point: The tragedy at Fort Hood.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Guests:

Joining us from Austin, Texas, is Peter Sanders, reporter for The Wall Street Journal. He’s been reporting from Fort Hood.

Joining us from Washington is Ann Scott Tyson, military and pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post.

Also from Washington is Daniel Zwerdling, national correspondent for NPR.

And we’re joined by Reihan Salam, a fellow at the New America Foundation. His commentary on the Fort Hood shootings, “The Collateral Damage to Muslims,” appeared at The Daily Beast.

Maya Lin, "What Is Missing?" Listening Cone, 2009, installed at the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco. (Photo: Bruce Damonte Photography, Inc. © Maya Lin Studio, Inc., courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York.)

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Architect, designer, and environmental artist Maya Lin carved a permanent, powerful place in the American heart with her Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC.

She was 21 when she drew that black granite line in history, and she went on to a wide-ranging life in design.

Ten years ago, Maya Lin announced she was out of the memorial business entirely. But now, she’s done one more: to all the species vanished or vanishing from the Earth. A king-sized listening cone, filled with the sounds of birds and frogs and primates slipping away.

This hour, On Point: Maya Lin and “What Is Missing?”

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Maya Lin joins us from New York. An award-winning architect, designer and environmental artist, she’s best known for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC.  Her  latest work, which she calls her final memorial, is “What Is Missing?” It focuses on extinct and vanishing species, and incorporates sculpture, video, sound, hand-held electronics, printed material and an interactive website.

More links:

Maya Lin’s official website offers a rich visual experience. Covering the full scope of her work, it includes a wealth of beautiful images and provides detailed background information on the art and the artist.

“The Missing Piece” — Susan Morgan reported on Maya Lin’s “What Is Missing?” in a multimedia feature for The New York Times Style Magazine that includes a photo gallery.

You can also browse a slideshow of her work below, or view the slideshow at full size. Click on the images to view descriptions.

The Washington Post’s Pamela Constable joined us today from Kabul. The Post’s video blog of the battle for Helmand is a must-see. Also, this photo gallery by Post photographer Nikki Kahn, on the ground in Helmand.  Another good photo gallery from Helmand is by NPR photographer (yes, NPR photographer) David Gilkey.

The Associated Press offers this video of Marines in Helmand Province last month:

The BBC is at the front lines, too, with this video of British troops:

CNN’s Ivan Watson watched recently as U.S. forces blew up an opium poppy cache in Taliban territory:

A U.S soldier of 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division patrol, seen during a search operation for members of the Taliban, in Tangi valley of Wardak province west of Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, April 26, 2009. (AP)

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Memorial Day is a day to honor service and sacrifice.

It is also a day, in the so-called “Long War” years that have followed what was called the “War on Terror” — with American troops still deeply deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan — for all Americans to think about what we’re doing, what we’re asking, what we’re fighting for.

Onetime soldier, now scholar, Andrew Bacevich knows service — his own in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War. He knows sacrifice — his soldier son’s life in Iraq. And he is asking the biggest questions.

This hour, On Point: Andrew Bacevich on America and war.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Andrew Bacevich joins us in our studio. Professor of international relations and history at Boston University, he is a West Point graduate and a veteran of the Vietnam War and Persian Gulf War. His latest book is “The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.”

And then, in time, comes something else.  The slow, knowing telling that opens the war and its meaning to us in a new way.  The narrative that gets to its heart, its dark music, and its hold on all it touches.

For many, Michael Herr’s drug-soaked “Dispatches” did that for Vietnam.  Now, New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins is drawing comparisons for his deep telling of Iraq and Afghanistan.

This hour, On Point:  Dexter Filkins and “The Forever War.”

- Tom Ashbrook

* * *

Guest:

Joining us from Irvine, California is Dexter Filkins, foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He has covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. His new book is “The Forever War.”

Farnaz Fassihi’s new book about life in Iraq before, during, and after the U.S.-led invasion is about normal people struggling to live their lives amidst chaos. It’s also her own story about life and love in wartime.

Fassihi is a Wall Street Journal reporter, whose 2004 e-mail to friends and family about what was really happening in Iraq ended up on the Internet and caused a sensation. It challenged presumptions about the benefits of imposing democracy in the heart of the Middle East — and described the awful price that Iraqis paid for America’s foreign policy adventure.

This hour, On Point: Farnaz Fassihi and the unraveling of life in Iraq.

-Anthony Brooks, guest host

Guests:

Farnaz Fassihi, deputy bureau chief for the Middle East and Africa for The Wall Street Journal, based in Beirut, she covered Iraq for the Journal after the US invasion. Her new book about that time is “Waiting for an Ordinary Day: The Unraveling of Life in Iraq.” (Read an excerpt here)

Larry Kaplow, Baghdad bureau chief for Newsweek magazine.

Memorial Day is a day for remembering and honoring the sacrifices of American military men and women in war. On this Memorial Day, there is no shortage of sacrifice to consider.

In wars since 9/11, thousands have died. More than 400 in Afghanistan. More than 4,080 now in Iraq.

In March this year, when the U.S. military’s death toll in Iraq passed 4,000, we asked guests to try to weigh that sacrifice. On this Memorial Day, we hear again that conversation.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Tom Bowman, Pentagon correspondent for NPR.

Alissa Rubin, Deputy Baghdad Bureau Chief for the New York Times.

Anthony Cordesman, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

Rosemary Palmer, mother of Lance Corporal Augie Schraeder who was serving in the Marine reserves when he was killed on August 3rd, 2005 and co-founder of Families of the Fallen for Change.

Ann Scott Tyson, Military and Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post.

Paul Kane, a Marine reservist, decorated combat veteran of Iraq and Harvard University’s Belfer Center.

For most Americans, the sacrifices made by service men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan are — after all these years — still out of sight and far away.

For colleagues, for comrades in arms, those sacrifices are as close as a man’s last breath. A woman’s last word.

Memorial Day honors sacrifice across many generations. But this Memorial Day weekend, with two grinding conflicts underway and plenty of sacrifice out there, we’ll hear from those who know it firsthand.

This hour, On Point: Soldiers and Marines remember lost comrades in America’s post-9/11 wars.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Maj. Trent Gibson, U.S. Marine Corps Officer Instructor for the Naval ROTC at Virginia Tech University. He was the company commander of Cpl. Jason L. Dunham, 22, of Allegany, NY, who was killed in Karabilah, Iraq on April 14, 2004, when he covered a grenade to save his comrades during a fierce firefight. Dunham was awarded the Medal of Honor.

Sgt. Jack Lewis, US Army veteran, he served in Iraq from September 2004 to July 2005, based in Mosul and Tal Afar. His comrade, Army Staff Sergeant Donald D. Griffith, Jr., 29, of Mechanicsville, Iowa, was killed in an ambush on March 11, 2005, during an operation in Tal Afar.

Sgt. Jason Christopher Hartley, New York Army National Guard, author of “Just Another Soldier: A Year on the Ground in Iraq.” His friend, Army Specialist Segun Frederick Akintade, 34, of Brooklyn, New York, was killed on October 28, 2004, when his unit was attacked on patrol by insurgents in Abd Allah, Iraq.

Sgt. Talya Havice, an active duty Marine and NROTC student at Harvard University, she worked in intelligence in Iraq and Afghanistan. She was in Fallujah on June 23, 2005, when a convoy carrying many of her fellow Marines was ambushed, killing 6 and wounding 13. She is memorializing: Marine Cpl. Ramona M. Valdez, 20, of Bronx, NY. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Regina R. Clark, 43, of Centralia, WA. Marine Lance Cpl. Veashna Muy, of Los Angeles, CA. Marine Lance Cpl. Holly A. Charette, 21, of Cranston, RI. Marine Cpl. Chad W. Powell, 22, of West Monroe, LA. Marine Cpl. Carlos Pineda, 23, of Los Angeles, CA.

Sgt. Charles Pinder, Massachusetts Army National Guard. He was beside Sgt. Michael J. Kelley, 26, of Scituate, MA, when he was hit by shrapnel and killed on June 8, 2005, in Afghanistan.

Dan Murphy, father of Lt. Michael P. Murphy, 29, of the Navy SEALs, who died in Konar Province, Afghanistan on June 28, 2005, and was awarded the Medal of Honor, the only U.S. service member in the Afghanistan conflict to receive that honor.

Telling the story of war is an art, and a jumble. Today, we see television images of shock and awe, bloody children’s slippers, troops at dangerous work, and the sad toll of suicide bombers.

In the heart of the 20th century, it was World War II that gripped the planet. And among its most artful chroniclers was the great A.J. Liebling. He reported from North Africa, from the skies over France, from a landing craft on D-Day.

Now, in another wartime, Liebling’s fellow New Yorker Pete Hamill has edited a new collection of his works.

This hour, On Point: Pete Hamill on A.J. Liebling, and the art of telling war.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Pete Hamill, journalist, novelist, and editor of the Library of America’s new volume, “A.J. Liebling: World War II Writings.”

Gerhard Weinberg, professor emeritus at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of “A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II.”

In our post-9/11 world, religion is often seen as one of the most divisive forces. And for good reason. Religious extremism drives conflicts from Afghanistan to Iraq, fuels terrorism from Europe to Sri Lanka, and makes enemies of Israelis and Arabs.

And yet, says scholar Alan Wolfe, the world is not headed for a new era of religious wars. Quite the opposite. Around the world, he points to a decline in religious extremism as societies modernize and become more secular.

This hour, On Point: religion, secularization, and the coming era of religious peace.

-Jane Clayson

Guests:

Alan Wolfe, professor of political science and founding director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, he is the author of many books, including “The Transformation of American Religion.” His article on “the coming religious peace” appears in the March issue of The Atlantic.

Martin Marty, professor emeritus of religion at the University of Chicago, and a Lutheran pastor, he is the author of more than 50 books, most recently “The Christian World: A Global History.”

Daniel Philpott, associate professor of political science and a faculty fellow of the Joan B. Kroc Institute of International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, he studies the role of religion in global politics.

For too many of us, it’s the forgotten war. High up along the rocky ridges of eastern Afghanistan, American soldiers are fighting a grueling fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. And they’re doing it the old-fashioned way: up close and personal.

In the Korengal Valley, one of the most dangerous places in the world for U.S. troops, the combat is non-stop and stripped down: a gun on the shoulder, feet on the ground.

Writer Sebastian Junger and filmmaker and photographer Tim Hetherington have been embedded with the 503rd Infantry.

This hour, On Point: in the valley of death with Second Platoon.

-Jacki Lyden

Guests:

Sebastian Junger, correspondent for Vanity Fair. His article, “Into the Valley of Death” appears in the January 2008 issue.

Tim Hetherington, filmmaker and photojournalist. His photographs accompany Junger’s article “Into the Valley of Death.”

You know the news out of Iraq these days: the surge seems to be working, at least for now. Some refugees are trickling back in. The U.S. military complains that Iraq’s politicians aren’t doing their part to stabilize the country. Foreign jihadis are on the run. There’s still not much oil flowing.

To Iraqi citizens these headlines don’t exactly ring false — but they don’t really speak to their daily struggles to stay alive and look ahead to when this mess is over.

This hour, On Point: On being a civilian in Iraq today. Life? Maybe. Liberty and the pursuit of happiness? You’ve got to be kidding.

-Jacki Lyden

Guests:

Sarah Sewall, director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, she served during the Clinton administration as the first deputy assistant secretary of defense for peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance.

Dr. Najib Hanoudi, an Iraqi ophthalmologist and former resident of Baghdad, now residing in the United States.

Kristele Younes, an advocate and analyst for Refugees International.

Michael Youash, project director for Iraq Sustainable Democracy Project.

One point six million American military service members have now been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. When they come home, they are veterans of those wars. And their struggles to reintegrate and recharge are part of the cost of those wars.

For the last year, NPR correspondent Daniel Zwerdling has been digging into how we and how the US military treat returning soldiers. Zwerdling’s work has been some of the most moving and influential reporting of these wars. He’s brought us the voices of vets and what they’re up against. He’s brought change.

This hour, On Point: NPR’s Daniel Zwerdling on the full cost of war.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Daniel Zwerdling, NPR correspondent.

September 16, Nisour Square, Baghdad. Heavily-armed guards from Blackwater USA, on the job, opened fire, and left seventeen dead: men, women, and children.

In the weeks since, the world has opened fire on Blackwater, and the exploding, multi-billion dollar realm of super-charged private armies that it represents. The “mercenary industry” is the new tag. Gunfire, and much more, for hire.

Critics say those muscle-bound men in the wrap-around sunglasses are a threat far beyond Baghdad, and to more than kids in cars.

This hour, On Point: investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill on what Blackwater means.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Jeremy Scahill, author of “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.” He is a correspondent for Democracy Now, a national daily news program, and contributor to The Nation magazine.

Iraqi scholar Kanan Makiya was a passionate, powerful advocate of American intervention in Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein. He laid Saddam’s crimes before the world, begged for action, dreamed of the democracy that could be.

He promised George Bush in the Oval Office that American soldiers would be greeted with “sweets and flowers” in the streets of Iraq. Now, American soldiers are dying in those streets.

Sober minds call Iraq a catastrophe. And Kanan Makiya — activist and advocate — has had to search his soul.

This hour, On Point: Kanan Makiya now, on his Iraq and America’s war.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Kanan Makiya, professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University and author of “Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq,” “The Monument: Art and Vulgarity in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq,” and “Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising, and the Arab World”

War by war, icon by icon, public television documentarian Ken Burns is putting his trademark video stamp on American history.

With his colossally popular renderings of the Civil War and baseball, Mark Twain and jazz, Thomas Jefferson, Lewis and Clark and more, Burns — often with collaborator Lynn Novick — is shaping our collective memory of what we’ve been, our sense of what we are.

This time out it’s with a massive retelling of World War II. Millions are watching.

This hour, On Point: Ken Burns and co-producer Lynn Novick discuss their latest march on American history – “The War.”

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Ken Burns, one of the best known documentary filmmakers in American history. He is co-producer of the new documentary “The War,” a 15-hour, seven-part series about World War II airing on PBS.

Lynn Novick, longtime collaborator with Ken Burns and co-director and co-producer of “The War.” She began working with Ken Burns in 1989 on the series “The Civil War.” She then worked with him on the “Baseball,” “Frank Lloyd Wright,” and “Jazz.”

In the neoconservative camp that pushed for war with Iraq, Norman Podhoretz is a great patriarch, one of the old originals. But he’s hardly out to pasture. He’s a senior adviser to Rudy Giuliani. He counsels George W. Bush in the White House.

And here’s what he’s saying. We are in the midst of World War IV, a life and death super-struggle with Islamofascism. We should bomb Iran and anyone who doesn’t agree is a threat to the nation.

Hawks love him.  Critics say he’s hysterical and dangerous. He’s still pushing.

This hour On Point: Norman Podhoretz and the debate over his World War IV.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Norman Podhoretz, author of “World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism.” He is currently serving as one of the top foreign policy advisors to presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani.

Christopher Dickey, Middle East Regional Editor and Paris Bureau Chief for Newsweek Magazine.

Gen. William Odom, a retired Army Lt-General, Director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988 and Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence for the US Army from 1981 to 1985. He is currently a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a professor (political science) at Yale University.

Americans overwhelmingly say they oppose the war in Iraq, but the war in Iraq goes on.

So, where’s the antiwar movement?

Well, it’s all over — and nowhere. It’s in Congress, among Democrats and some Republicans. It was in the streets of Washington, D.C. this weekend, with a few thousand protestors chanting and marching. It was in the rhetoric in Iowa, at Senator Tom Harkin’s steak fry. But where’s the beef?

Last week belonged to Petraeus and Bush. Today, we hear from the antiwar crowd.

This hour On Point: Iraq war opposition, from the halls of Congress to the streets.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Brian Becker, national coordinator of the ANSWER antiwar coalition.

Tom Andrews, national director of the antiwar coalition Win Without War.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Democrat from Maryland.

Rep. Howard Coble, Republican from North Carolina.

Michael Crowley, senior editor at The New Republic and author of the recent New York Times Magazine artlicle “Can Lobbyists Stop the War?”.

Later this week, the President will address the nation with his onward vision for the U.S. military in Iraq. With a hard war in its fifth year, benchmarks unmet, and polls showing American disillusionment, it will not be an easy sell.

But the way is being paved before Congress this week in the testimony of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. They are talking progress, hopes, and limited withdrawals — and asking for more time. Yesterday, before the House. Today, the Senate.

This hour, On Point: Petraeus and Crocker before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Bing West, served as a Marine in Vietnam and as assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan, author of “No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah”.

Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret.), served in the Gulf War, author of “Breaking the Phalanx” and “Transformation under Fire”.