Michael O’Hanlon is one of those perpetually peripatetic Pentagon punditeers. When he’s not busy commenting from his perch at the Brookings Institution, the former Congressional Budget Office military expert is at Time appearing on Command Post (as he is Tuesday), penning an op-ed for the New York Times (as he did Monday), or …
Military
Photo Op: Welcome Home, Warthog Daddy!
“What Will Iraq Be Like in 2012?”
Thousands of U.S. troops are now heading home from Iraq every week. By New Year’s Eve, the 45,000 who were there on Oct. 21 when President Obama announced their final pullout, will be down to zero. So what does Iraq’s near-term future look like once all the U.S. troops have come home? The Obama Administration has said it had no …
The Tweet Shall Inherit the Earth
A couple of Time colleagues – International editor Jim Frederick, author of the acclaimed Black Hearts, and Nate Rawlings, an up-and-comer at the magazine and an Army vet of the Iraq war – wore our fingertips to the bone on Veterans Day. It was my first chance to try to chat using Twitter; limited to 140 characters per …
How To Save $30 Billion
So who made up the loss in your retirement savings – assuming you have such an account – when the market tanked? Tanked is the right word here, because the answer is no one made you whole – unless you worked for a tank-maker or other defense contractors.
Gretchen Morgenson at the New York Times pulls back the curtain on how …
Navy Yard Sale
As we noted in June, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps now appear on the verge of buying all 74 of Britain’s aging AV-8 Harrier jump jets. Navy Times is reporting that a U.S. rear admiral has confirmed the deal.
How the mighty have fallen. It’s quite a comedown for the U.S. military to procure aircraft from something called the …
USNS Medgar Evers, Ahoy!
The nation honors its heroes by naming gray-hulled Navy ships after them. They sail the globe bearing such names on behalf of a grateful country. That’s why the christening of the fleet’s USNS Medgar Evers over the weekend by his widow seems appropriate. Sure, it happened because Navy Secretary Ray Mabus is a former …
Community Service: Lending a Beautifying Hand to Caretakers of Wounded Soldiers
By Terri Pous
When soldiers are injured in combat, the healing doesn’t stop in the hospital. After they return home, the reality sets in. Whether they suffer physical injuries or the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), their caretakers and loved ones share their struggle.
Fighting Words
Words matter when you are in charge of the world’s biggest military. So I listened closely in the Pentagon briefing room Thursday as Leon Panetta warned of looming disaster if the congressional super-committee fails to strike a grand bargain and the dreaded “sequestration” ax falls. That could double Pentagon cuts over the …
Who is at War?
I arrived in Afghanistan about nine years ago, in the first week of November 2002. It took a couple days to get there. We left Fort Benning and drove to Atlanta. From there we flew commercial to Baltimore and had a seven-hour layover. My wife drove up to the airport and we spent the day together before she dropped me off to catch a …
Veterans Day Salute: Veteran Vet Generator
Happy Veterans Day!
Where the heck do those 22 million U.S. military veterans come from? Well, Ray Moran has done more than his share to bring them in. The retired Army sergeant major has spent decades recruiting soldiers. Having just turned 82, he has earned his nickname Old Soldier en route to getting more than 1,000 young men …
A Thought for Veterans Day: Isolation Kills and Community Heals
By Joseph Bobrow
Founder and President, the Coming Home Project
Let me tell you a story from the book, Outliers: In the 1950’s a physician discovered a small town in eastern Pennsylvania where there was no heart disease under age 65, no suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction, peptic ulcers, and very little crime. People died …
Two Scandals, Two Outcomes
They say war and football are alike in a lot of ways, but deep down we know that’s not true. Perhaps it’s those fundamental differences that explain why two scandals that came to light this week have been handled so differently by their respective overseers.
About 140 miles north of the Pentagon, in the pleasant little college …