The first Time Now post, reprinted below, was published on June 23, 2012. Things started slowly, and the next post didn’t come until November, 2012, but by 2013 we were off and running. From 2013 through 2018 I published some 35-40 posts a year. I’ve slowed down since, but more posts are coming, rest-assured. No promises though that I’ll keep it going another ten years….
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“Time now,” in military radio-speak, refers to the present moment. Most commonly the phrase is used in reports such as, “We’re returning to base, time now,” or, “Request artillery support, time now.” I like its urgency, the way it doesn’t just name but intensifies the temporal dimension of the event to which it refers. Kind of like the way art intensifies the life it represents, so as to make it both more understandable and more deeply felt.
This blog features art, film, and literature about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As I write this post, in June 2012, imaginative representations of the wars have begun to accrue complexity and depth. Still, no site I know of devotes itself to cataloging and discussing these artworks–a great lack in my opinion, since in the final analysis our artists will explain best how the wars were experienced and how they are remembered.
I was an active-duty career Army officer. I served in infantry units at Fort Drum, New York; Fort Bragg, North Carolina; and in Korea. In 2008-2009, I was an advisor to Afghan National Army forces in Khowst and Paktya provinces in Afghanistan. You can read about my experiences there in my blog 15-Month Adventure.
Time Now: The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in Art, Film, and Literature 
Congratulations, Peter on 10 years
Thank you! Ten years in the blogging game is a long time, but looking back even more surprising than the longevity was the quantity and length of the posts during the high-water years around 2015. There was a lot to write about, and I had a lot to say.
Congratulations!
Thank you Lisa for your support over the years, and thank you even more for the great poetry. Hope more is coming soon!
Dear Sir, I’d like to congratulate you on the success of your blog for surviving all those long years and becoming the best, if not the only, collective resource of literature on wars both in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’d also express my gratitude for your efforts in providing, in one place, links and lists of the most of works that evolved around the two wars. I’d thank you, especially, for helping me identify most of the books I needed in writing my thesis titled (The Image of Iraq in American Narrative from 2003 to 2015) which was completed and discussed at the University of Mustansiriya, Baghdad, Iraq in 2017. In which I used Imagology as an approaching method to discuss images of Iraq settings and Iraqi characters in US stories written around the war of Iraq. Best regards,
Raheem, thank you for the kind words and congratulations on completing your thesis. Is it posted to an Internet database? If so, I’d love to take a look at it.
Thank you, it’s in Arabic, I don’t know if you have access to it or have people around you who can help. However, I will send you the English summary of the thises to your email address. For the moment, the thises at the Ministry of Culture in Iraq to be published as a book.
Yes, I was wondering which language it was written in. The American university library I have digital access to lists lots of theses and dissertations written at overseas universities in English, so I thought yours might be, too. Send your summary to the address on the webpage and I look forward to seeing the thesis in book form, too.