We are entering the final days of command under Sec Gates. The certification of DADT’s repeal is practically sitting at his desk, and I know more than a few of my brothers in arms who are anxiously waiting for him to sign it. If it doesn’t come before he leaves office on 30 June, I know all of us would appreciate the incoming …
“Ten Years Gone”
That’s the title of a sour but thoughtful piece now up on Small Wars Journal:
As in Vietnam, the war in Afghanistan was lost before it was begun: it is lost because it cannot be won. Again our massive and superior military force is losing a campaign to a tough insurgent force. Again we are spending tens of billions overseas, and
…
“Why I Love Bagram!”
As Washington debates the fate of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the 30,000 troops and others assigned to its main base — Bagram — north of Kabul are tending to more mundane matters. They’re leading the same sort of dreary lives, punctuated by horror and farce, that have defined soldiers’ lives in these parts since Alexander the Great …
Quote of the Day
The President’s decisions are more aggressive and incur more risk than I was originally prepared to accept.
— Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, in his prepared statement to the House Armed Services Committee Thursday morning, on the Afghan troop withdrawal announced by President Obama Wednesday evening
New York Times Reporter Claims the Government Monitored His Calls
New York Times writer James Risen claims in a court affidavit that the government has monitored his phone calls in an effort to identify his confidential sources. “I have learned from an individual who testified before a grand jury in this District that was examining my reporting about the domestic wiretapping program that the Government …
Report Questions Legality of Drone Strikes
Are the use of targeted drone strikes by the CIA and U.S. military legal?
The Myth of Precision Guided Coercion
Note: this is cross posted from an essay in Counterpunch that can be found here … CS
June 22, 2011
From Serbia to Libya
The Myth of Precision-Guided Coercion
By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY, Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/spinney06222011.html
Vieux Port, St Raphael, France
At the end of May the British press was …
Future grand strategists: Russia will someday be forced to outsource its security
Hailing again from Wikistrat’s International Grand Strategy Competition (30 teams of grad students/interns from elite universities and think tanks around the world), where I serve as head judge (and I get paid), I wanted to share the decidedly provocative vision of Russia’s long-term future security paradigm as crafted by the New …
Another Pentagon Bargain…
Folks don’t think a lot about the advances the U.S. military brings to everyday life. For starters, there’s the Internet, via which you’re now reading Battleland (yes, it was the brainchild of the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, not Al Gore). DARPA also played a major role in creating something else we take for …
The Military Outlook in Afghanistan: Betting Against the Odds
The U.S. troop presence has peaked in Afghanistan at 101,000 and from here on out the Afghans will increasingly be on their own, President Obama made clear Wednesday night. The military challenge going forward is easy to describe, but tough to execute: can the fledgling Afghan national security forces — salted with corruption, …
Pentagon, NSA Eye Cyber Attacks on Industry
Epsilon announced April 1 that hackers had snatched customer email information. Citigroup got hit May 10. Hackers hijacked customer data from Sony on April 20. Somebody squirreled into Lockheed Martin’s network on May 21. These are just a few of the dramatically increasing cyber attacks aimed at private companies.
What is the …
Afghanistan: To Carry On, or Carrion?
After a decade of war in Afghanistan, the battle lines — at least among the activists — are clearly drawn. The usual suspects have been rolling out their voice boxes atop soapboxes to explain, in advance of President Obama’s speech Wednesday night, why we must keep fighting, or come home. Few fall in-between.
This is what …
What the Iraqi People Think of Our War Against Their Nation
We always think of “collateral damage” as harm done to individuals by a wayward bomb. But sometimes collateral damage applies to an entire nation. That’s the sense you get from Mark Kukis’ new book, Voices from Iraq, a People’s History, 2003-2009. He delves into the shards of war to see how those most affected — after all, we …