Tom Barnett raised some eyebrows Wednesday with his grim prognosis on Battleland on the U.S. role in Afghanistan:
It’s a dependency – pure and simple. The longer we stay, the more we’ll infantilize the system. Ten years in and virtually everything we’ve set about to create is still described as “fragile” – meaning it collapses and
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This is a photograph that NPR photographer David Gilkey took at a military base in Afghanistan. Tom Bowman, NPR’s ace Pentagon correspondent, says “This is NOT a joke.”
First, the Army ditches the black beret for most soldiers at most times. Now it’s abandoning the wearing of combat fatigues inside the Pentagon. “Is it bad that this excites me more than the death of Bin Laden?” one soldier, apparently from Fort Drum, N.Y., writes on an Army Facebook page. “Kidding…Kind of.”
A decade after 9/11, …
Soldiers call them “Doc,” but Scott McGaugh calls the military’s medics “Battlefield Angels” in his new book by the same name. Not actually doctors — but not really nurses, either –they’re out on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, armed with guns as well as gauze, and are usually the first ones tending to the physical and …
It’s without an ounce of wistfulness that I bid adieu to one of the most ridiculous and unpopular pieces of Army-issue equipment–the black beret. For the past decade, when soldiers were not in Iraq or Afghanistan, they suffered through parades, formations and all manner of long walks with sweaty, misshapen plops of wool covering …
The one-time head of the Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade — one of the service’s most celebrated units — had an “inappropriate relationship” with the wife of his Iraqi cultural adviser, an Army investigation has concluded. The probe, obtained by Stars and Stripes, concludes Colonel James H. Johnson III was infatuated with the woman, …
“We are no longer in the Cold War,” Leon Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee at his confirmation hearing Thursday. “This is more like the blizzard war, a blizzard of challenges that draw speed and intensity from terrorism, from rapidly developing technologies and the rising number of powers on the world stage.”
USA …
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Battleland comrades Mackenzie Eaglen (defense analyst at the Heritage Foundation) and Gordon Adams (former defense chief at the Office of Management and Budget, …
The fighting season in Afghanistan is in full swing, and the early reports indicate this one will be tough. After last year’s surge, American units, and the Afghan Army and police they’re partnered with, will be fighting to hold the areas they paid for dearly a year ago. One of the key provinces will be Kandahar.
In the months …
The U.S. military is the world’s pre-eminent military force — by far — and most of that is because of its people and the way they train and led. But they’re none to shabby on the hardware side of the house, either. I just cobbled together a menu of the weapons systems used in recent U.S. military actions for Time.com and it has …
The Navy keeps losing commanders over problems associated with sexual fraternization. A dozen COs have been relieved of command this year so far, many of them because of relationships they shouldn’t have been having. Over on the U.S. Naval Institute’s blog, CDR Salamander — a respected but anonymous former Navy officer — weighs in …
Before I introduce myself, I want to thank all of the readers of this column for your kind words about my first post. David Self was a wonderful person and a dedicated NCO. Men and women like him are the backbone of our armed forces; they do the tough business in training and in combat. We lose them far too often and it’s always …
