I thought it might have been Wednesday’s, where I plotted the amazing growth in U.S. air drops into Afghanistan over the past several years. Then this one stopped me cold. It’s in the Army’s just-released study into the nature and number of U.S. troops wounded in Afghanistan, conducted by the Army’s Dismounted Complex Blast Injury …
Afghanistan
Dispatches From the Third Front: Part II–the Refuge
Nearly every military installation, from our many stateside posts to larger bases in combat zones, have some form of a Morale, Welfare and Recreation center, what the troops call MWR. At Brooke Army Medical Center, the place of refuge is more than just a recreation center; it’s a central part of their healing and journey home. Our trip …
The Buried IED…Here at Home
The military’s fight against improvised explosive devices along roads in Afghanistan and Iraq — which have killed more than 3,000 Americans — has cost more than $20 billion. But that’s only the money spent by the Pentagon’s Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO, pronounced ji-dough) to stop them over there. …
The Party’s Over
It was only two years ago that Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was praising Ashfaq Kayani, the Pakistan army’s chief of staff, in the pages of TIME. “Here is a man with a plan, a leader who knows where he wants to go,” the top U.S. military officer said of his initial meeting with his Pakistani …
Afghanistan: It’s a Gas, Gas, Gas
Trouble on the blimp front: there apparently isn’t enough helium around to float the latest humongous lighter-than-air vehicles the U.S. military wants floating in the skies over Afghanistan to keep an eye out for bad guys.
The new Northrop Grumman unmanned Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle has “huge gaseous helium …
Dispatches From the Third Front: Day 1–The Hero
In north San Antonio, just off of Interstate 35, a towering hospital building dominates Brooke Army Medical Center, one of two hospitals–along with the newly unified Walter Reed National Military Center–that treat some of the most grievously wounded troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. BAMC, as the soldiers call it, is one of the …
Wars, Yesterday and Today
There’s a profound sense of deja vu among those of us who came of age — in uniform, at school, in politics — during the Vietnam war. So much of what is happening today resonates with that conflict in ways both good and ill.
Lee Barnes has just written When We Walked Above the Clouds about his experiences early in the southeast …
Leading Afghan Indicators…Of What, We’re Not Sure
As the Taliban — or somebody — was assassinating former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani in Kabul on Tuesday, a top U.S. Air Force general was explaining what he called “an amazing success story” in that war-torn land. But one needs to be careful in drawing lessons from such successes. Especially given the fact that it …
U.S. Staging 40 Night Raids in Afghanistan Every Night
Counter-insurgency is so 2007. Everybody knows that Republicans and Democrats have quietly agreed that flooding some dusty foreign land with U.S. troops is too expensive, and we can’t stomach the casualties any longer.
All the cool kids are into counter-terrorism now. (Note to think tanks: It’s no longer hip to tell reporters …
For Conspicuous Gallantry and Intrepidity…
It was just over two years ago that Dakota Meyer formally became a hero. His Marines knew it then, and the rest of us will learn about it Thursday afternoon when President Obama presents him with the Medal of Honor. Here’s what he did to earn the nation’s highest award for valor. Semper Finest.
Hunting Down IEDs: The `Red Dot’ Express
After years of climbing, it looks like combat deaths due to roadside bombs in Afghanistan are on the decline. That’s good news, because such improvised explosive devices — IEDs — have been the biggest killer of U.S. troops. IEDs are a continual game of cat-and-mouse. When pressure-sensitive IEDs kept killing too many innocent …
The Human Toll Taken by a Decade of War
Just how worn out are our troops because of non-stop combat since 9/11? To what degree has that contributed to problems like PTSD, family breakups and suicide in the ranks? This week, on Command Post, we discuss the tenacity of U.S. troops, as well as the cracks that can appear after a decade of fighting. Margaret Harrell, a
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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 …