The popular notion that the United States military is monolithically Republican is mistaken.

Via the AP:  US Marines posed with Nazi symbol in Afghanistan The Marine Corps on Thursday once again did damage control after a photograph surfaced of a sniper team in Afghanistan posing in front of a flag with a logo resembling that of the notorious Nazi SS — a special unit that murdered millions of [...]

Sometimes there was no sugar or Splenda for coffee. On chicken wing night, wings were rationed at six per person.

As they did four years, ago the New York Giants will get a parade in New York City today. Some are wondering when Iraq War vets will get theirs.

I speculated last week that, notwithstanding the American public’s rather obvious war wariness,  making the public case for military action against Iran wouldn’t be all that difficult given the three decades of antipathy between the United States and the Islamic Republic that started with the Iranian Hostage Crisis. A new poll from The Hill would [...]

Not surprisingly, the Commander of the Military District of Washington has chosen to accept the findings of a preliminary hearing held last year, and ordered that Pfc. Bradley Manning face a General Court Martial for the charges that he stole hundreds of thousands of pages of classified documents which eventually ended up in the hands [...]

Mitt Romney’s statements about the planned early draw down in Afghanistan make no sense whatsoever.

A change in the law will radically increase retirement pay for generals and admirals.

Andrew Exum notes that most analysts who call for military intervention fail to specify the particulars.

We need to have opinions on a subject as serious as war with Iran.

Not surprisingly, Republicans are trying to reverse the automatic cuts to defense spending agreed to in August.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced this afternoon that the timetable for U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is being accelerated: BRUSSELS — In a major milestone toward ending a decade of war in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said on Wednesday that American forces would step back from a combat role there as early as [...]

The BBC is reporting on a leaked NATO report claiming that elements of Pakistani intelligence are directly aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan even as the U.S.-led NATO forces are fighting them: The Taliban in Afghanistan are being directly assisted by Pakistani security services, according to a secret Nato report seen by the BBC. The leaked [...]

My latest for The Atlantic explains, “Why We Should Be Glad the Haditha Massacre Marine Got No Jail Time.”

Last night’s State Of The Union Address contained another unfortunate example of the prevalence of militaristic rhetoric in domestic politics.

Last night as he walked into the House Chamber to deliver the State of the Union, President Obama singled out Secretary of Defense Panetta, now we know why: KHARTOUM, Sudan — American commandos raced into Somalia on Wednesday morning and rescued two aid workers, including an American woman, after a shootout with Somali pirates who [...]

Mitt Romney is making claims about Naval readiness that are, at best, misleading.

The US Army is returning to a peacetime mindset, which means promotions will cease to be automatic for anyone willing to endure service.

It isn’t often when a Presidential primary debate causes an international incident, but Rick Perry managed to do it last night when he asserted that Turkey was now ruled by “Islamic terrorists” and that it should be kicked out of NATO: BAIR: Governor Perry, since the Islamist-oriented party took over in Turkey, the murder rate [...]

Once again, Ron Paul showed last night why he could never win the Republican nomination.

Allen West, the Florida Congressman whose military career came to an ignominious end when he was relieved from command and investigated for attempted murder over an incident involving the questioning of an Iraqi police officer, has decided to weigh in on the controversy that has erupted over the Marines who were recorded on video urinating [...]

Not surprisingly, it looks like Pfc. Bradley Manning is headed for a court martial related to the allegations that he improperly accessed, copied and transferred classified information that later ended up in the hands of Wikileaks: WASHINGTON — The military officer who presided over an evidentiary hearing on charges against Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused of [...]

The United States is sending a warning to Iran not to play games with the Straits Of Hormuz: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is relying on a secret channel of communication to warn Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that closing the Strait of Hormuz is a “red line” that would provoke an American response, [...]

Apparently, people who work for the government are surfing the World Wide Web.

Understanding the outrageous.

A new story out of Afghanistan is causing embarressment for the United States, and the Marine Corps:  The U.S. Marine Corps is investigating a video that surfaced online today in which several Marines appear to urinate on the corpses of suspected Taliban fighters. The video, which is less than a minute long, appears to show [...]

A Washington Post fact check calls this “true but false.”

Michael Hastings has yet another credulous story attempting to smear the United States military.

The US intelligence community has more information at its disposal than ever. Unfortunately, it can’t efficiently process it and make the necessary connections.

We got another indication of how far out of step some of the Republican candidates for President are when it comes to public opinion during Saturday night’s debate when Rick Perry said he’d send troops back to Iraq: Rick Perry said he would send U.S. troops back to Iraq at a Republican presidential debate in [...]

Given the increasing tensions between the United States and Iran in the Straits of Hormuz, this is good to see: (CNN) — U.S. sailors from a carrier strike group whose recent presence in the Persian Gulf drew the ire of Iranian military officials have rescued 13 of the Middle Eastern country’s sailors from a hijacked [...]

Sarah Kiff makes an important point about one of the primary motivations behind the force restructuring that President Obama announced earlier this week at the Pentagon, basically we are nearing the point where the largest item in the military budget will be health care costs: About 9.6 million Americans are eligible for military health care [...]

President Obama’s Pentagon is planning for an unlikely war with China rather than the small wars America will inevitably fight.

Rick Santorum’s foreign policy positions are troubling in many respects.

If you watched Ron Paul’s victory speech last night, you likely caught the sight of Corporal Jesse Thorsen speaking on behalf of Paul, at Paul’s invitation. That invitation came about, apparently, because Thorsen’s interview on CNN earlier in the night, also in uniform, had been cut short for some reason. Here’s the video of Thorsen’s [...]

Despite the opposition of the SECDEF and Joint Chiefs, the latter expanded yesterday.

To Republicans, even thinking about engaging in diplomacy is enough to accuse the President of appeasement.

Many people seem to have a rather inappropriate view of their relationship to the President of the United States.

The first in the Navy’s new class of supercarriers is likely to end up costing a lot more than anticipated: The U.S. Navy has estimated a worst-case cost overrun of as much as $1.1 billion for the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, the service’s most expensive warship. The carrier is being built by Huntington [...]

For years, analysts have worried that Iraq’s tenuous hold on stability would collapse upon the withdrawal of US forces. We’re now watching it happen.

A smoking gun?

It didn’t take very long after the removal of American troops, for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki to begin trying to consolidate power: BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq’s Sunni vice president denied charges he ran a hit squad that killed government officials during the nation’s wave of sectarian bloodletting, accusing the Shiite-led government Tuesday of waging [...]

How can we know what happens next in North Korea when we didn’t even know Kim Jong-il had died?

82nd Airborne solider David Hickman was the 4474th American serviceman killed in Iraq. He should be the last.

Sometime around 5:00am Eastern time this morning, the final convoy of American troops crossed the border from Iraq to Kuwait: BAGHDAD — The last convoy of American troops to leave Iraq drove into Kuwait on Sunday morning, marking the end of the nearly nine-year war. The convoy’s departure, which included about 110 vehicles and 500 [...]

The Christian Science Monitor is out with a story that Iranian engineers are claiming that they were actually able to electronically take control of the RQ-170 drone captured last week: Iran guided the CIA’s “lost” stealth drone to an intact landing inside hostile territory by exploiting a navigational weakness long-known to the US military, according [...]

After 3,193 days and more than 4,000 lives, the American war in Iraq is officially at an end.

America’s greatest statesmen fear America’s political paralysis endangers our ability to lead the world.

Air Force personnel charged with transporting the bodies of American soldiers killed in action apparently finds dead American warriors funny.

Yesterday’s encounter between Jon Huntsman and Newt Gingrich was less than it could have been.