Contrary to Stan McChrystal’s SEAL-hiring spree, there aren’t many businesses run like the famed special-forces team that killed Osama bin Laden last month. This piece from the Harvard Business Review explains why. “Most organizations can’t grow the professionalism of elite special forces units because they are constantly shifting …
National Security
Documents Like This…
…make you wonder just what the heck it is we are doing in Afghanistan. It’s a new, 33-page Army contract solicitation seeking Facebook and Twitter experts who can sell the U.S. message to the locals. Makes one wonder why we are investing our blood and treasure in a fight that has to be sold to the people whose lives we are supposedly …
Secret War in Yemen Goes into Overdrive, Along with Risks for Obama
The news that the Obama administration is stepping up the secret war in Yemen says a lot about the White House. The Obama administration, it is said, has a bit of an infatuation with special operations. According to some sources, Obama has unleashed the military’s special operations command even more aggressively than the Bush …
Panetta’s Challenge
CIA chief Leon Panetta goes before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday like one of those guys on the old Ed Sullivan show trying to keep all those plates spinning atop wooden poles, running from one to another to keep them from falling to the floor and smashing to bits.
These are his goals:
Progress: Women and Men Show Equal Mental Resilience in War Zones
Apparently war is an equal-opportunity destroyer, screwing up female troops’ minds as much — pretty much no more, no less — than those belonging to their male comrades. That’s the bottom line in a new study trying to contrast the mental wounds of war in both genders.
“Study findings suggest that both exposure to combat-related …
Post-`Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Stress
Recently there has been a lot of buzz in BattleLand about Post-Traumatic Stress (PTS), like this first-hand account by Ron Capps, or any of Mark Thompson’s posts. Currently a huge campaign is going on in the United States urging those affected to seek assistance, complete with billboards, TV ads, and self-help …
Delta Allegedly Bags Soldiers
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_borufk9RTc&feature=player_embedded]
So 34 troops flying home from Afghanistan via Delta on Tuesday say they were forced to fork over $2,800 of their own money because the airline said they were carrying too many bags home from combat. Made a nifty little video about it mid-flight, complete with …
Can’t Buy Me Peace
The Senate Democrats on the foreign relations committee have just issued as report saying that the $18.8 billion — so far — U.S. effort to rebuild Afghanistan has had limited success and may not survive a U.S. troop pullout. U.S. development money — now some $10 million a day — is sucking Afghan workers into jobs with contractors …
Booted Army Gen. Stan McChrystal Has Lessons to Teach
Rolling Stoned and former Army General Stan McChrystal is now leading the McChrystal Group, and has replaced defeating the Taliban with a new assignment: “McChrystal Group’s mission is to bring world-class leadership solutions to public and private organizations to help them solve problems, manage risk and be more effective,” …
The future of Fifth Generation Warfare: Follow the food!
Everybody thinks that the future is going to see fights over energy, when it’s far more likely to be primarily over food. Think about it: The 19th century is the century of chemistry and that gets us chemical weapons in World War I. The 20th century is the century of physics and that gets us nuclear weapons in World War II. But the …
Afghan Sitrep: A Grunt from the Front Sounds Off
(La Ciotat, France) — Inside Versailles on the Potomac, pressure is building on President Obama to reduce his promised withdrawal of combat troops in Afghanistan to a cosmetic level, and perhaps more to the point, to protect the defense budget from efforts to reduce the deficit. The two — i.e., perpetual war and the defense budget — …
Some Wars Never End
News from the Pentagon Tuesday afternoon:
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a serviceman, missing in action from the Vietnam War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors. Air Force Capt. Darrell J. Spinler of Browns
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Chinese Water Torture…
Spinning off Mark Benjamin’s Chinese posting: a couple of days after celebrating U.S. naval prowess in 1942’s Battle of Midway — widely seen as the turning point in World War II’s Pacific war between the U.S. and Japan — the guided missile destroyer USS Chung-Hoon is continuing further east as tensions rise between China and its …