The U.S. military and American society are drifting apart. It’s tough inside the civilian world to discern the drift. But troops in all the military services sense it, smell it — and talk about it. So do their superiors. We have a professional military of volunteers that has been stoically at war for more than a decade. But as the …
Iraq
War Graffiti Coming Home
Combat is often seconds of terror surrounded by months of boredom. So troops play video games, visit the gym – and paint graffiti. OK. So it’s not what we think of when we think of graffiti. It’s more informational graphics, depicting unit insignias and other stuff that helps weld units together. The U.S. military is currently …
Iraq: “Was That Lack of Immunity for U.S. Troops Simply an Excuse to Pull Out?”
The Obama Administration has said it had no choice but to pull out of Iraq by year’s end after the Iraqi parliament made it clear it would not grant U.S. troops immunity from Iraqi law for any alleged wrongdoing. Was that a reason — or an excuse — to come home? John Nagl, of the Center for a New American Security, and I debate the …
The Pathbreaker: A Conversation with Major General Marcia Anderson
Audiences attending the Opportunity Nation Summit on the campus of Columbia University will hear from some of the leading experts in government, international affairs and the media. They will also get a testimony on public service by one of the Army’s pathbreaking leaders, Maj. Gen. Marcia Anderson.
Anderson, who completed ROTC at …
For All You Iran-Is-Winning Types, The Sad Truth
You get two variants of this logic: 1) if the US leaves Iraq, Iran wins automatically (or it’s won already because the Shiite majority actually rules); and 2) even more than al-Qaeda, Iran is the real beneficiary of the Arab Spring.
Both judgments are wrong in the way that America’s capacity for frantic self-doubt and self-blame …
“Is It Smart to Pull All U.S. Troops Out of Iraq by Year’s End?”
It’s one of the biggest – and potentially, most consequential – decisions President Obama has made (not that he had much choice, according to some). He has announced that the 45,000 U.S. troops still Iraq will all be home for the holidays. Critics have said Iraq is too fragile for the U.S. to pull out – after eight bloody …
Baghdad’s Gone Missing…
The debate over Iraq’s future – hopeful, according to the Obama Administration, hopeless, according to its critics – has begun in earnest. It was kicked off by the Administration’s recent decision that all U.S. troops will be home for the holidays. The White House blames Iraq’s parliament, which has refused to grant U.S. troops …
Why Are Today’s Anti-War Protests So Muted?
For folks of a certain age, the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations bring back memories of Chicago (“The whole world is watching”) 1968, and the anti-war protest I covered in Boston. How come there is scant protest about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars now?
Is it because they have been waged so brilliantly and economically that …
Winding Down the War: A Cynical Look Ahead
It appears that we are finally withdrawing from Iraq after eight years there. It is about time. We went in with the stated objective of finding and destroying nuclear weapons and Iraq’s other weapons of mass destruction. We also decided to topple the Saddam Hussein regime with the stated objective of bringing democracy (and …
Iraqi IEDs? Iranian IEDs? How About U.S.-Iranian IEDs…
Improvised explosive devices are the leading killer of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Tuesday morning comes word from the U.S. Department of Justice of a plot that “caused thousands of radio frequency modules to be illegally exported from the United States to Iran, at least 16 of which were later found in unexploded improvised …
About That U.S. Troop Withdrawal from Iraq…
President Obama’s celebratory announcement Friday that the 45,000 U.S. troops still in Iraq “will definitely be home for the holidays” is generating some blowback. Sure, it’s predictable that the GOP candidates who want his job would denounce it, as Mitt Romney did:
“President Obama’s astonishing failure to secure an orderly
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Iraq: Tanks for the Memories
The U.S. military invaded Iraq in 2003 without permission. But now that it no longer has approval from Baghdad’s post-Saddam government to stay beyond 2011, all U.S. forces will be pulling out by year’s end, President Obama said Friday. “After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over,” Obama said at the White House. …
“You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Vet”
The Department of Veterans Affairs released a study Friday into how to care for veterans…of 1991’s Gulf War, notorious for a spate of ailments lumped together as Gulf War syndrome. It notes:
Of the 529,034 Servicemembers who served in Operation Desert Shield (of whom approximately 6.8 percent were women), 152,126 Veterans filed
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