Shane Phillips Shane Phillips manages the Randall Lewis Housing Initiative for the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and is the author of
The Affordable City: Strategies for Putting Housing Within Reach (And Keeping It There).
Illustrations by Mike McQuade
Image above, clockwise from top left: A U.S. Army Special Forces sniper, 1991; the aftermath of Operation Eagle Claw, the failed U.S. rescue operation in Iran, 1980; a marine during the invasion of Grenada, 1983; Captain Vernon Gillespie Jr. in Vietnam, 1964; soldiers on patrol at Camp Victory, in Somalia, 10 days after 18 Americans were killed during the Delta-led Battle of Mogadishu, 1993.
This article was published online on March 12, 2021.
Updated at 7:17 p.m. ET on March 12, 2021.
Within the span of a few decades, the United States has utterly transformed its military, or at least the military that is actively fighting. This has taken place with little fanfare and little public scrutiny. But without any conscious plan, I have seen some of the evolution firsthand. One of my early books,
Timothy Keller Timothy Keller is the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, chairman of Redeemer City to City, and author of the forthcoming book Hope in Times of Fear: The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter.