A federal appellate court has barred further enforcement of the U.S. military’s still-existing ban on openly gay men and women serving in uniform. Wednesday’s brief, two-page order from the California-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules it is unconstitutional to treat gay Americans differently than their straight compatriots. …
Troops
White House Suicide Condolence Letters for Troops Exclude Most Deaths
A new White House policy to send condolence letters to the family of troops who go to war and commit suicide excludes the vast majority of those soldiers and their families, undercutting President Obama’s stated effort to defray the stigma associated with mental health problems from combat. The loophole has also disappointed veteran …
Bringing the U.S. Sailors Home from Libya
President Obama and his national-security team have said will be no “U.S. boots on the ground” inside Libya. Yet 13 U.S. Navy commandos remain interred on Libyan soil. There’s a growing push to bring them home after more than 200 years on the shores of Tripoli. It’s a strange tale: the 13, led by Navy Master Commandant Richard …
USA-Made Fireworks Over (or at least close to) China
Barring Women From Combat: “This Last Vestige of Paternalism”
In 1993, I was involved in the Navy’s transition of women from non-combatant ships to combatant ships — from support craft like oilers and salvage vessels, to warships like destroyers and cruisers, in other words. Newly-elected President Clinton and his defense secretary, Les Aspin, determined — after the success of women in …
Rumsfeld Redux: He Doesn’t Get It
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 …
On Coming Out, Part 1
For those of you who follow my Twitter feed, you may recall something I tweeted a few weeks back after coming out to my brother. In case you missed it, it went something like this: “Just outed myself to my brother. His response… ‘Did you say hobo, or homo?’ There’s nothing to do in that scenario but laugh.”
I’ve learned there are …
Last Draftee Set to Retire
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There was a spate of print and TV stories over the holiday weekend telling us that Sergeant Major Jeffrey Mellinger — drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War and believed by the service to be the last draftee still in uniform — is going to hang up his fatigues for good later …
Rebuilding the Pentagon for Tomorrow
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Always interesting to tussle with smart folks like Jim Glassman, Rudy DeLeon and Arthur Herman over the nuts (and we mean that in a good way) and bolts of Pentagon priorities and strategies, and how much we’re paying for them.
A Mixed Message about Stigma in Military Mental Health Care
The military keeps talking about eliminating stigma related to seeking mental health treatment. Then why don’t they change the policies that promote it?
To decrease stigma, the Army now uses the term “behavioral health.” The Defense Department – of which the Army is a part — prefers “psychological health.” They have …
What a Dog Can Do for PTSD
When we did a story last year on what a boon dogs are becoming for troops coming home from the wars with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Luis Carlos Montalvan was one of the soldiers we interviewed. He served as an Army captain in Iraq, where he garnered the Combat Action Badge, two Bronze Stars, and the Purple Heart — as well as a …
“Eating Us Alive”
That’s what former defense secretary Robert Gates said about Pentagon health-care costs. A just-released Congressional Budget Office chart makes that stunningly clear: Defense Department medical costs have skyrocketed over the past 30 years, going from about $10 billion in 1980 to $50 billion annually now — and are on track to reach …
Focusing on Skills, Not Gender, in the Military
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 …