Shipping Off

The Atlantic Council is sending a delegation of us out to the USS Eisenhower for the next couple of days. Barring unforeseen access to a computer, the Internet, and free time that means no posting from me until Saturday morning.  My OTB colleagues will, however, be slavishly posting away as usual if not at a slightly higher opstempo.

Military Bureaucracy

Two separate reviews of The Fourth Star, a new book by David Cloud and Greg Jaffee, touch on a theme that has fascinated me since I wrote a dissertation on the subject. NYT foreign correspondent Dexter Filkins (via SWJ): “The Fourth Star” paints wonderfully dramatic portraits of the four senior officers highlighted here, but at its heart it’s a story about bureaucracy. ...

BRAC, Ft. Belvoir, and Northern Virginia Traffic

Virginia Congressman Jim Moran argues that the Defense Department ought to step up and pay for the increased traffic BRAC is about to bring to his district: The latest round of BRAC (Base Realignment and Closing) moves is poised to create a daytime nightmare of traffic congestion for Northern Virginia. Over the next two years, the on-base population at Fort Belvoir in ...

Predator vs. Terminator

This xkcd comic is indeed "More Accurate." via Andrew Exum

Military Recruiting Sets Records

Armed forces recruiting is at its highest levels in the all-volunteer era, Ann Scott Tyson reports for WaPo. For the first time in more than 35 years, the U.S. military has met all of its annual recruiting goals, as hundreds of thousands of young people have enlisted despite the near-certainty that they will go to war. The Pentagon, which made the announcement ...

War and Peace Prizes

Continuing the delayed reaction to news that is the permanent fate of columnists in an instant analysis world, both Tom Friedman and David Von Drehle have similar and counterintuitive ideas on who the Nobel Peace Prize should have gone to, instead of a United States president with two weeks in office. The former suggests Obama accept the award "on behalf of ...

Jim Jones, Republican Whipping Boy

Michael Goldfarb wrote a piece for the Weekly Standard blog with the provocative title "Rent-a-General Jim Jones," arguing that the man who spent four decades serving his country as an officer in the Marine Corps, rising to Commandant and then Supreme Allied Commander, is a partisan stooge for the Obama administration. A friend emails to point out that Jones is "finally ...

Obama vs. the Generals

I'm vacationing in Ixtapa, Mexico this week and have been mostly ignoring the news since Friday afternoon. Via memeorandum, I see that the underground fight between General Stanley McChrystal and the Obama administration that I blogged on last week has kicked into high gear and that a new player has joined the fight: General David Petraeus. Alex Spillious of The ...

McChrystal and MacArthur

Speaking at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies, Stanley McChrystal, the general in charge of the NATO mission in Afghanistan, said the Obama administration needs to make up its mind on quickly on a strategy — and rejected the idea of lowering the bar. In my writeup for New Atlanticist, "McChrystal: Biden Afghanistan Plan 'Short-Sighted," I observe that, This isn't exactly Douglas ...

Mark Lippert Leaves NSC for SEALs

Now here's something you don't see every day:  Mark Lippert, chief of staff of the National Security Council and a close friend of President Obama, has decided to leave the administration to return to active duty in the Navy.  George Stephanopoulos reports: When Barack Obama came to the Senate, Mark Lippert -- a veteran Senate aide and newly-minted Naval Reserve officer ...

C6ISR

Kevin Coleman ends an interesting post on the difficulties facing the new Cyber Command with the observation that: As everyone knows C4ISR stands for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance. It appears the time has come to add collaboration and coordination to C4ISR and update it to C6ISR. If that happens, we must make every effort to streamline the ...

The Neuroscience of “Enhanced Interrogation”

Wired reports that studies show that "enhanced interrogation", far from being a reliable source of information, can actually make someone less of an intelligence asset because the stress involved changes the biochemistry of the brain:“There is a vast literature on the effects of extreme stress on motivation, mood and memory, using both animals and humans,” writes Shane O’Mara, a stress ...

Debating Afghanistan

An interesting sidebar to the debate sparked by the leak of General McChrystal's Afghanistan strategy review is the question of how such debates should take place to begin with. Peter Feaver complains that the president has been rushed by leaks.  Pat Lang is irked by the fact that the likely leaker wore a military uniform, possibly even a general's stars. Meanwhile, ...

NYT and the Farrell Rescue

[caption id="attachment_41922" align="alignright" width="400" caption="Corporal John Harrison (left) was killed in the SAS-led operation to rescue British journalist Stephen Farrell (right), which was launched after officials received intelligence that he was about to be moved into Pakistan's tribal areas"][/caption] Tunku Varadarajan argues the New York Times has a moral obligation for getting two people killed by sending Stephen Farrell into ...

‘Free’ Medical Care for Military

Amongst the many stories circulating about the suddenly-famous Rep. Joe Wilson (who once used caffeine!) is that he's opposed to government provided health care for non-citizens in the United States in violation of our immigration laws* yet he and his son shamelessly take it just because they're in the National Guard!  Indeed, this is apparently their "dirty little secret." He's passionate! ...