Compared to many of my gay and lesbian colleagues, my time in service has treated me well. In general gay officers have it easier than our enlisted counterparts, and our options with housing play a large role.
Many newly enlisted troops are forced to live in small dorms with roommates. It’s usually not the barracks scene that …
Here’s our second take on President Obama’s Afghan policy in our new video series featuring John Nagl of the Center for a New American Security and your Battleland scribe. We’re chatting this week with Dr. Nora Bensahel, a noted COIN expert formerly at the Rand Corp. and now at CNAS, and Dave Barno, the top U.S. commander in …
Speaking of Pentagon budget cuts: word from inside the Defense Department is that President Obama’s proposed $400 billion in “security” cuts over “12” years — those words in quotes because “security” is squishy and the Pentagon talks in five- and 10-year terms — may only be a “down payment.”
Though the new bogey for cuts is …
So Pentagon enforcement of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” stopped happening Friday. As of Monday morning, the U.S. military seems none the worse off. It appears – and I may yet regret saying this – that the Pentagon’s formal, 17-year ban on gay men and women serving openly in uniform is more likely to end with a whimper than a bang.
For …
Villefranche, France.
The United States has always meddled in other people’s affairs. For those readers who think this statement is an exaggeration, I urge them to peruse the chronology of interventions compiled by the Congressional Research Service. This historical predilection for meddling, however, grew enormously in depth and …
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld emerged from the woodwork last week to warn Leon Panetta not to do the wrong thing. He should know; his stewardship of DOD was an almost unmitigated laundry list (should we say “snowflakes”?) of wrong things.
But I wouldn’t recommend Panetta take his advice. Rumsfeld has no idea of how to …
The latest issue of the Association of the United States Navy’s magazine sits down with Vice Admiral Ann Rondeau, the Navy’s senior three-star officer and president of the National Defense University, to chat about how far women have come in the military — and how far they have yet to go. She discusses the myriad of changes in …
Departing defense secretary Robert Gates is the 10th military chief I have covered since Harold Brown was running Jimmy Carter’s Pentagon. After a private dinner at the White House on Wednesday night, and a final ruffles and flourishes sendoff at the Pentagon on Thursday, Gates will fly off for his home in Washington state and never …
The Pentagon — surprise! — has been unable to find who leaked word to the Washington Post last November that an early Defense Department assessment concluded there would be “little risk” if the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban on openly gay men and women serving in uniform were scrapped. While Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered that the …
Aryn Baker spells it out over on Global Spin:
If President Obama’s plan for withdrawal demonstrated the unusual feat of simultaneously pissing off both sides of the aisle in the US, he need not despair: in Afghanistan he most certainly drew applause from both the Taliban, and Karzai – who crowed in an interview with CNN on Sunday that
…
The New America Foundation’s sponsored debate over defense spending showcased two schools of American political thought entirely comfortable with allowing American power and influence to decline on the global stage.
A senior White House official was eager Thursday night to hear from a reporter on just how President Obama’s decision to pull 10,000 troops out of Afghanistan by year’s end was playing. “How do you think he did?” he asked at the fringe of Pakistani ambassador Husain Haqanni’s annual barbeque. “Well, Mullen and Petraeus were pretty …
The always impertinent Tony Karon, over on our Global Spin blog, has some questions he wants President Obama to answer:
1. What will Obama tell the loved ones of Americans killed in Afghanistan in the next three years?
2. How does the U.S. persuade Afghan civilians or neighboring countries to do its bidding when it acknowledges its …
