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TOKYO – The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may be winding down, but news reporters still go out daily to cover US troops risking their lives in combat zones — stories that can serve the purposes of both news organizations and the military alike.
The Institute for Defense …
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 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. …
Hard to believe, but five years ago there was a chorus of calls for the U.S. to pull out of Iraq because American efforts there seemed doomed. That was before Army General David Petraeus led the “surge” of 30,000 troops into Iraq that – combined with the so-called Sunni “awakening” — led to a restive calm across the country. …
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 …
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 …
The GOP has been demonstrably hawkish for decades. Part of this is philosophical, but acting tough has also been reliable currency in the Republican Party for years.
It’s interesting what 10 years of war will do.
Politicians know which way the wind blows, and America is war-weary — ten-years-of-war weary. They are sick of the …
So plans are floating around the Pentagon — with the apparent blessing of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta — that call for a U.S. military force of only between 3,000 and 4,000 troops in Iraq starting next year. Under the existing deal with the Iraqi government — the one we helped install — all U.S. troops must be out by New Year’s …
The 10th anniversary of 9/11 closes in on us this week. Try as you might, you will not be able to avoid it. Amid the pathos and bathos, it’s time to take a knee and conduct a map check.
Just to cut to the chase: you can’t argue with success, and on 9/12 most Americans were petrified a second wave of attacks was likely. It hasn’t …
Greg Jaffe had a spot-on piece in the Washington Post‘s Labor Day edition discussing the U.S. government’s notion that permanent war is now the American way of life. He captures the all-but-paranoid notion that foreign enemies are forever plotting ways to end the American way of life, as we know it.
But while that is the view of …
There is a flood of 9/11 books now coming onto the market, but Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda by Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker of the New York Times should be atop the list of anyone curious about how the U.S. government has grappled with the challenges posed by al Qaeda.
Both authors …
Fascinating piece in Miller-McCune, a new and valued journal that asks tough questions, even if it can’t always come up with the answers. In Beyond PTSD: Soldiers Have Injured Souls, writer Diane Silver peers into soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder and suggests something else may be amiss:
What sometimes happens in war may
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Check out that big, fat zero for the month just ended: August 2011.
It’s the first month since the U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003 that there hasn’t been a single U.S. death in Iraq.
Just glance at the monthly tolls for 2006 and 2007 to see when two or three U.S. troops were KIA every day.
Sweet.
