“I predict that traumatic brain injury is going to be the Agent Orange of this conflict.”
Afghanistan
Afghanistan: “It’s Just Damage Limitation Now”
Briton Ben Anderson is a documentary filmmaker (the BBC, HBO, the Discovery Channel), but he turns to the written word in No Worse Enemy: The Inside Story of the Chaotic Struggle for Afghanistan. The book offers a gritty – and …
Body Armor for Women…At Last
11 Years Later: The Unquiet Hero
Watching ex-SEAL Matt Bissonnette on 60 Minutes was equal parts fascinating and disturbing.
Eleven years since the horror of 9/11, some of us watched, transfixed, as someone who gave his word never to write of what he had …
Graduating Into War
The U.S. Naval Academy’s Class of 2002 was just beginning its senior year on September 11, 2001. Thirty-three of its 965 members this week will be publishing In the Shadow of Greatness: Voices of Leadership, Sacrifice, and …
Leaving Home: All War Stories Begin Like This…
The hardest part of the deployment was saying goodbye to my wife and 15-month-old son. The emotions I felt the morning I left were not of pride and excitement but of dread, regret, and overwhelming heartache. It took several …
Seeds of Peace
Army Colonel Brian Copes and the Indiana Army National Guard headed off to war with a pitchfork, not a rifle. As commander of the 1-19th Agribusiness Development Team in Afghanistan in 2009, Copes’ team deployed to Khost …
“When it comes to sensitive special operations missions, such as the operation that took down Osama bin Laden, it is important that those who are involved in such operations take care to protect sensitive and classified information…the author in this case elected not to abide by his legal obligations. And that's disheartening and frankly is something that we're taking a very close look at.”
Army Life: The Waiting Never Ends
They say war is long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror – or maybe excitement. Two recent military photos illustrate the point. In one, a lonely soldier awaits attack by the enemy. In the second, …
GOP Silence on the Wars 2.0
We were perplexed following Wednesday’s supposed “foreign policy night” at the Republican convention that scant mention was made of the nation’s wars and those who have fought, and are fighting, them: “It is amazing …
Wars? What Wars?
Wednesday night was supposed to be “foreign policy night” at the Republican convention in Tampa, and it was: the speeches were conventional.
Neither GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney nor his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan …
Training the Afghan Military
Army Major Christopher Miller was in Afghanistan in 2006-2007 helping to train up its security forces. An infantryman, he was there as part of a four-man embedded tactical trainer – ETT – with the 41st Brigade Combat Team, …
N.J.P.
The U.S. military calls it “NJP” – non-judicial punishment. Civilians might liken it to a slap on the wrist, but it generally marks the end of the military career of anyone subject to it.
On Monday, the Pentagon announced …