If nearly doubling the Pentagon budget over the past decade (not counting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) isn’t sufficient, GOP front-runner Mitt Romney has a solution: lock in defense spending at 4% of gross domestic product. That way, within a decade, we’ll have our first $1 trillion annual defense budget as we spend 42% more …
Politics
Caucus Belli
When the defense budget begins tightening, nervous lawmakers don’t circle the wagons – they set up a caucus. That’s what happened earlier this week as about a dozen lawmakers created the Congressional Mobility Air Forces …
Making Things Kristol Klear
This is a new documentary about how President Obama hasn’t been allied sufficiently with Israel, going so far, it notes, to discourage Israel from attacking Iran. It’s from an outfit calling itself the Emergency Committee for Israel, which Battleland hadn’t heard of before Monday morning.
We learned of it on the …
More on Ship-Naming Controversies: About the USS Gabrielle Giffords
The next Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) will be named for Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), who recently resigned from Congress so she can concentrate on healing after an assassination attempt last year. This news was …
BRAC Counter-Attack
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta testified before the House Armed Services on Wednesday, and it’s funny to see how many times lawmakers questioned him on the Pentagon’s proposal to shutter military bases. Panetta has been there. He watched Ford Ord — “which represented 25% of my local economy” — shut down in his own California …
President Obama’s Defense Budget Falling Flat on Capitol Hill
Thursday morning, the Defending Defense coalition—The American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation, and the Foreign Policy Initiative—will host members of Congress discussing the negative consequences of the Obama …
Newt Sure Moves Fast!
Alas, this weekend headline from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper had nothing to do with GOP presidential candidate New Gingrich’s pledge to establish a U.S. colony on the moon by 2020. Instead, in an increasingly familiar refrain, it’s a story about local lawmakers fighting an Air Force plan to close the 911th (gotta love that …
Death By a Thousand Threats
It’s like snowballs and snowflakes: if you take enough flakes and press them together, you might end up with a snowball. At least that’s what Battleland thought as it checked out the opening statement of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee Tuesday:
What Makes Insurgents Tick?
It’s not – surprise! – what you think:
…We see insurgency as a form of collective, goal-focused activity that comes about when nefarious people exploit the weaknesses of a political system…And since insurgency is
…
Defense-Budget Primer…For Normal Folks
The debate over defense spending will light its afterburner Thursday afternoon, when SecDef Leon Panetta and Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, invite us into the Pentagon kitchen and show us how they plan …
Talk is Cheap in Washington When It Comes to Politicians and the U.S. Military
Last night, President Obama opened his State of the Union address by referencing the sacrifices and courage of America’s military personnel as they return home from combat. The President’s rhetoric was moving, but unfortunately, words are simply words and have not been fully backed up with action that supports America’s heroes.
“Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example”
Happy 10th Birthday, Guantanamo Bay
Guantanamo Bay remains the persistent headache that pretty much all Americans would like to go away. Wednesday marks its 10th birthday as home to alleged terrorists scooped up by the U.S. following the 9/11 terror …