Things have gotten so grim in the defense world that advocates of maintaining current levels of military spending have started rolling out the heavy artillery. “Do we want to reinstitute the draft?” Rep. Howard McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, asked Wednesday on Fox News. “Some of the cuts we’re talking …
Politics
Study: Federal Spending on Defense Doesn’t Create As Many Jobs As Education Spending
Despite vast Republican opposition on federal spending to create jobs (“stimulus”), some Republicans (and, surprise!, defense contractors and defense contractor-funded consultant Loren Thompson) support federal spending on defense to create jobs or to support the ones that already exist, i.e. protecting the defense industrial base. For …
Alleged War Savings and OMB Head-Butting
You know that the tussles over Pentagon spending were going to get interesting once Battleland‘s own Gordon Adams — who ran the Office of Management and Budget’s national-security shoppe when now-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ran OMB — started arguing math with his former boss. Gordon declaredMonday that the Obama …
60 Seconds Over Taipei!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztn9YJdbdvI&feature=player_embedded]
Even though the Obama Administration hasn’t officially declared Taiwan won’t be getting the new F-16s it craves, that hasn’t slowed down Taiwanese animators from commenting on the apparently crashed deal. In English, even. (h/t The Cable)
“Morally, Ethic’lly, Spiritually, Physically, Positively, Absolutely, Undeniably and Reliably Dead”
Sure, the Munchkins said it about the Wicked Witch of the East.
And the Pentagon personnel chief has finally and officially said it about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
The Latest Marine Hymn
As Battleland comrade Chuck Spinney predicted last week, the warfare among the services for bigger pieces of a shrinking pie has begun. All the services are engaged, although most tend to do it covertly. But the Marine Corps is different – their leader has written Defense Secretary Leon Panetta a letter implicitly pleading for …
Cutting Defense: Budget-Weenie Drill
Todd Harrison is one of the most thoughtful students of defense spending (okay, granted — it’s not a very big group) in the country. An analyst at the independent, non-profit Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, he’s the kind of guy who drops things like this into the middle of his latest study:
I’ve never been …
Another Afghan War Expert Weighs In, Tet-a-Tet
Tony Cordesman, the resident military èminence grise at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, starts out riffing more optimistically than ex-DIA analyst John McCreary on what the Kabul attack means for Afghanistan. But then he details a daunting laundry list of things going wrong that must be reversed — soon — if …
Afghanistan 2.0
Some old-timers speak of deja vu all over again: just as Afghanistan became the Soviet Union’s Vietnam, it could also become America’s. Tuesday’s complex attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul — reputed to be a safer place — raises anew questions about the scope of the decade-old U.S. war in Afghanistan, and its chances for success.
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Redefining Patriotism: Reflecting on the Past Decade
In an era where yellow “Support the Troops” magnets adorn every other vehicle on the road and where rubber bracelets (color-coded for the cause célèbre) serve more as accessories than symbols of true compassion, I find myself wondering what we have learned as a nation during a decade of war. As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 …
Member of Congress on “Doomsday” Defense Cuts: “We’re Not Going There”
This week, some members of Congress drew a stark red line against any additional defense cuts, particularly those from a “Doomsday” trigger scenario if the Joint Deficit Reduction Committee fails or Congress does not pass their spending cut proposals.
“Defending Defense”–a joint initiative of The Heritage Foundation, American …
GOP Debate Shows Freedom Fries are Long Gone
The GOP has been demonstrably hawkish for decades. Part of this is philosophical, but acting tough has also been reliable currency in the Republican Party for years.
It’s interesting what 10 years of war will do.
Politicians know which way the wind blows, and America is war-weary — ten-years-of-war weary. They are sick of the …
The Protected Principles of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
On my desk I have a proposed bill ensuring no troop is “pressured to approve of another person’s sexual conduct if that sexual conduct is contrary to the personal principles of the member” with respect to the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
What I should do here is point out what is obviously upsetting about this …