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 …
Army
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 …
Evaluating Army Officers, Top to Bottom
For years there has been debate inside the Army about the optimum way to assess the performance of its officers. In an institution with more than a half-million people in uniform, what yardsticks work best to promote the good officers while weeding out the bad? Plainly the service needs some help: a recent study found than more than …
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 …
Firsthand Experience of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’
A repeal of the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy takes effect on Tuesday, officially allowing gay and lesbian troops to serve openly for the first time in U.S. history. In the 18 years under the policy, nearly 14,000 gay and lesbian service members were discharged. A new book, Our Time: Breaking the Silence of …
Post-“Don’t Ask” Stress, v. 2.0
Recently I caught wind of an independent study being conducted by the University of Maryland Baltimore County about the effects of DADT on the mental health of those who have been directly affected by the policy. After contacting the man responsible for the project directly, I was able to learn a thing or two about this ground-breaking …
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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September 11, 2011: Good Morning, Afghanistan
“How Did the U.S. Military Retool Itself Post-9/11?”
In the decade after 9/11, just how much did the U.S. military have to recalibrate to fight the wars it found itself launching in Afghanistan and, 18 months later, in Iraq? This week, on Command Post, we discuss the retooling of the American armed forces with Eric Schmitt of the New York Times — co-author of Counterstrike: The Untold …
A Decade of War
The past decade has generated a wealth of stories for anyone lucky enough to be covering national security since 9/11. It’s sort of the third chapter in my career. My first, which ran from 1979 to 1991, involved the Cold War and the possibility of superpower conflict with the Soviet Union. When it collapsed, I wondered what we’d …
Back to the 1980s: Over-Priced Pentagon Spare Parts
It’s not the $7,600 coffee pot or the $640 toilet seat — those 1980s-era examples of Pentagon over-spending that even normal taxpayers like us could understand — but it’s close. On Thursday the Pentagon issued a summary of an investigation into Sikorsky helicopter parts bought by the Army and found:
The Army “did not effectively …
Writing the Book on Military Mental Health
The literature of war can be literature — think Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage (Civil War), Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (World War I), or Neil Sheehan’s A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. And sometimes it’s less lit and more textbook. That’s surely the case with the …
Kind of Makes You Wonder What It Takes to Win the Highest Award
The Air Force brass has nominated Staff Sergeant Robert Gutierrez for the Air Force Cross, its second-highest award for bravery. He was the lone Air Force targeteer assigned to an Army special-forces team in Afghanistan nearly two years ago. The unit’s night-time missi0n: capture a top Taliban leader in the western part of the …