In response to a reader query wondering if Rick Santorum’s strong showing in El Paso County in last week’s Colorado Caucus demonstrated a “military problem” for Mitt Romney that could come into play on Super Tuesday, Andrew Gelman points to some research by political scientists Jason Dempsey and Bob Shapiro from several years back showing a bifurcation within the military ranks.

It is true that the upper echelons of the military tilt right. My own research confirmed that about two-thirds of majors and higher-ranking officers identify as conservative, as previous studies found. But that tilt becomes far less pronounced when you expand the pool of respondents. That is because only 32 percent of the Army’s enlisted soldiers consider themselves conservative, while 23 percent identify as liberal and the remaining 45 percent are self-described moderates. These numbers closely mirror the ideological predilections of the civilian population. . . .

The political differences between officers and enlisted personnel can be partly explained by a demographic divide. Whereas officers are predominantly white, have at least a bachelor’s degree, and draw incomes that place them in the middle or upper-middle class, the enlisted ranks have a higher proportion of minorities, make less money than officers, and typically enter service with only a high school diploma. Nevertheless, even when controlling for factors like race and gender, officers are significantly more likely than soldiers to identify as conservative. . . .

In addition to its ideological moderation, the Army is not as partisan as popularly portrayed. Whereas 65 percent of Americans think of themselves as either Republican or Democrat, according to the Annenberg survey, my study shows that only 43 percent of the military identifies with one of the two major political parties. Two out of three officers consider themselves either Republican or Democrat, but only 37 percent of enlisted personnel do so.

Officers tend to be not only more partisan, but also more Republican, with GOP affinity strongest among the highest ranks. While I [Dempsey] was unable to fully parse the reason for this, the evidence strongly suggests the pattern is generational. Today’s senior officers entered the Army during the late 1970s and 1980s, a time when the Republican Party had a strong advantage on issues of national defense and the Democratic Party was seen as antiwar if not anti-military. By contrast, junior officers who joined the Army after 2001 are almost as likely to be Democrats as they are Republicans, foreshadowing a possible shift in officer attitudes.

Joshua Tucker posts a note from Major Jim Golby, a Stanford PhD and West Point instructor.

To my knowledge, there are no current polls about military preferences for the GOPcandidates. There are a few unscientific polls done by a newspaper, The Military Times, that measure military approval of the president, but that is it. They show approval for president Obama within the military at around 25%.

I have done some research in this field, however [paper available here]. One of the main take-aways from my research is that Republican officers in the military and elite veterans are no different, on average, than Republican civilian elites once we control for demographic factors. Although my work focuses on senior officers and veterans, Jason Dempsey’s book,Our Army, and Jeremy Tiegen’s paper support this general claim for soldiers and veterans, respectively.

[...]

[T]here is no evidence suggesting that any GOP nominee would have trouble winning the ‘military vote’ since there really is no such thing. There are not many Democrats in the military and there are even fewer liberals in the ranks; in general, most Democrats in the military are moderate or conservative Democrats (especially in the higher ranks).

In the comments, our own Chris Lawrence observes,

I’d caution against conflating officers and enlisted personnel; officers do tend to be overwhelmingly Republican, but NCOs and lower enlisted are much more mixed in partisanship and ideology, although also much less likely to vote, particularly in the E-1-4 ranks, probably in large part due to age. As Jim suggests probably a large part of the differences between the military and the public at large are due to ethnicity, SES, and region (the officer corps of the Army and Air Force, at least, tend to be substantially more southern than the public at large).

As far as the “military vote” might go, given the relatively small size of the officer corps and their lack of political organization or geographic concentration (military people, including their spouses and other dependents, tend to retain residency in their hometowns rather than registering to vote locally when reassigned, so even “military towns” will have few active-duty military/dependent voters), I doubt it could ever be all that influential even if their turnout was much higher.

There’s a lot to unpack here but the takeaways would seem to be:

1. The military, and especially its senior officers, are more Republican and conservative than the country as a whole. But the extent of this is grossly exaggerated, because the media naturally focuses on the attitudes of the officer corps, particularly more senior officers.

2. These differences are almost entirely explainable by the demographic makeup of the military, which is self-selected.

3. As with the rest of the country, the younger cohorts of the military–including its officer corps–are less Republican and less conservative. See, for example, the enormous swings in attitudes on gays in the military over the last 20 years.

4. The notion that the “military vote” plays a major role in choosing our presidents is vastly overstated. In addition to the issues Lawrence notes, a third of the states essentially disenfranchise military personnel by mailing absentee ballots too late. The caveat is that, because a disproportionate number of military personnel claim Florida as their home of record in order to avoid paying state income taxes, they could potentially serve as a decisive swing vote in an incredibly close contest along the lines of the 2000 election. Those are, of course, quite uncommon.

Later today, the New York Giants, fresh off their victory in Super Bowl XLVI, will become the latest group to parade to New York City’s Canyon of Heroes as the city celebrates. That’s leading some people to wonder where the parade for Iraq War Veterans is:

The New York Giants on Tuesday will be showered with confetti and greeted by throngs as they are feted with the city’s most storied honor: a parade through its Canyon of Heroes.

But all the fanfare — the parade this week is the fourth since 2000 to honor a sports team — has touched off anger and unease among some returned Iraq veterans, who are eagerly awaiting their own recognition.

“Everybody recognizes that the Giants deserve a parade,” said Paul Rieckhoff, founder and executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. But, he added, “If a football team gets a parade, shouldn’t our veterans?”

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has long expressed his regret that the United States did not do a better job honoring veterans of the Vietnam War in the 1970s, has cited advice from the Pentagon in deciding it was not appropriate to hold a parade while American soldiers are still fighting in Afghanistan.

But a growing coalition of veterans, elected officials and other public figures are disagreeing, saying it is time to celebrate the men and women who served in Iraq.

Leslie H. Gelb, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, a former correspondent for The New York Times and a board member of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, called the Pentagon’s position “supercilious sensitivity” and “Washington-think.”

“Celebrating the Iraqi vets doesn’t negate a future celebration for the Afghan vets or deny that we’re still at war,” Mr. Gelb said, adding that “if we had to wait to honor our servicemen and women until wars were over, that would take a long time.”

And former Mayor Edward I. Koch, who in 1981 was the host of a “ticker-tape” parade for American hostages released from Iran over the objection of Alexander M. Haig Jr., then secretary of state, said he thought a parade for Iraq veterans was important and timely. Mr. Koch, who also hosted a belated parade for Vietnam War veterans in 1985, said the Pentagon was making “a political decision” that he termed “ridiculous.”

“It’s not premature,” he said. “I believe that a parade is required, is necessary, and New York City is the place to have it.”

At least one large city, St. Louis, has gone ahead with a parade for Iraq veterans, on Jan. 28. And on Monday, the White House announced that President Obama and the first lady, Michelle Obama, would hold a dinner on Feb. 29 to honor troops who had served in Iraq.

But the Defense Department, noting that American soldiers are still fighting in Afghanistan, says it is too soon for a celebration with the recognition and symbolism of a New York City parade.

Col. David Lapan, a spokesman for Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “We simply don’t think a national-level parade is appropriate while we continue to have America’s sons and daughters in harm’s way.”

The Pentagon’s position doesn’t really make sense. Iraq and Afghanistan are, after all, separate conflicts fought in separate countries for very different reasons. While there’s no small degree of overlap between veterans of the two conflicts, it seems somewhat silly to say that veterans from the Iraq War shouldn’t be honored until the conflict in Afghanistan is over, or as long as American troops are “in harm’s way,” which seems pretty darn open ended to me.

That’s certainly not the way we’ve handled these things in the past. When the V-E Day came in May 1945, the nation didn’t wait to celebrate that achievement until V-J Day had come three months later (and few people had reason to know that the end of the war in the Pacific Theater might be that near at the time). In fact, on June 10th, 1945, just a month after the end of the conflict in Europe, New York City held a ticker-tape parade for General Dwight D. Eisenhower while the conflict in the Pacific still raged. It was the first time that type of event had occurred in the city since 1939. A parade honoring “the troops” wasn’t held until 1946 when the 82nd Airborne Division marched down Broadway, but that was likely due to the logistical realities of bringing forces home from Europe and the Pacific in the 1940s. If it was acceptable to celebrate the Supreme Allied Commander Of The Allied Expeditionary Force while men were still in harm’s way in the Pacific, then why can’t we do the same thing for Iraq War Vets, who are pretty much all back in the United States now?

It’s a minor thing, perhaps, but when you realize that it took until ten years for Vietnam War veterans, and nearly forty years for Korean War veterans, to get this same recognition, the Pentagon’s reasoning sounds like very weak tea. The Iraq War was controversial to begin with, and the war in Afghanistan is winding down with American public opinion decidedly against it, but that’s no reason for veterans to have to wait decades to receive some kind of recognition for their service even if it is just a parade.

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 of Wikileaks:

The commander of the Military District of Washington has ordered a court-martial for Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, the former intelligence analyst accused of giving hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

Maj. Gen. Michael S. Linnington made the decision Friday after reviewing testimony and arguments from a preliminary hearing at Fort Meade in December, officials said.

There was no word on whether the as-yet-unscheduled court-martial would also be held at Fort Meade, one of three installations within the military district equipped to host such a proceeding.

Manning, 24, is charged with aiding the enemy and violating the Espionage Act. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison.

Manning is accused of sending raw field reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, diplomatic cables from U.S. embassies around the world and a video of a U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad to be published online.

The U.S. Army Trial Judiciary will now assign a military judge, who will set a date for Manning’s arraignment, motion hearings and trial.

During a preliminary hearing in December, Army prosecutors called computer forensic investigators who testified that materials uploaded to WikiLeaks came from computers on which Manning worked.

Manning’s attorneys sought to portray him as a troubled young man who struggled with gender identity, was isolated from his fellow soldiers and should not have been given access to the classified materials.

Manning, who lived in Potomac and studied at Montgomery College before he enlisted in the Army in 2007, attended the hearing but did not speak. It was his first public appearance since his arrest in Iraq in May 2010.

During his detention, his case became a cause celebre among anti-war activists, who say the footage of the 2007 Apache helicopter attack that he is alleged to have released appears to show evidence of a war crime.

At least one of the charges against Manning, Aiding The Enemy, carries with it a potential death sentence but it appears that military prosecutors will demur from seeking that sentence and instead ask for life in prison. Between that charge and the others than Manning faces it’s fairly certain that, if convicted, he would never see the outside of a military prison again for the rest of his life. Judging from last year’s preliminary hearing, the outcome of the case hardly seems to be in doubt. Manning’s lawyers offered no real defense at that hearing, not that they were required to, but it was rather clear from the arguments they did make that they didn’t really have much to argue on their clients’ behalf beyond questioning and testing the elements of the prosecutions case. The logical thing at this point would be for them to try to cut a deal on Manning’s behalf, but it’s possible that Manning himself doesn’t want to plead guilty.

The other unresolved question in the Manning case, of course, is the status of Julian Assange and others associated with Wikileaks. As I noted while the hearing was ongoing, military prosecutors revealed at the time that they had recovered online communications between Manning and Assange that apparently predated the time when Manning stole the classified material. This material has been turned over to civilian prosecutors who are apparently investigating the matter further. Whether there’s enough there to charge Assange under the Espionage Act or anyone else remains unclear at this time, though. Of course, American prosecutors probably aren’t in a rush when it comes to getting something on Assange, he remains under house arrest in the United Kingdom where he’s fighting an order that he be extradited to Sweden to face rape charges. If we want him, we’re going to know where to find him.

USA Today reports, “A change in federal law to keep experienced officers in uniform allows top generals and admirals to make more in retirement than they did on active duty.” It’s interesting, if not precisely true.

The new pension rules were part of the 2007 Defense Authorization Act to address concerns that the military would lose too many experienced generals and admirals during wartime.

Previously , the maximum annual pension was based on an officer’s pay at 26 years of service. Now, a four-star officer retiring in 2011 with 38 years’ experience would get a yearly pension of about $219,600, a jump of $84,000, or 63% beyond what was once allowed. A three-star officer with 35 years’ experience would get about $169,200 a year, up about $39,000, or 30%.

The highest pension, $272,892, is paid to a retired four-star officer with 43 years of service, according to the Pentagon. Before the law was changed, the typical pension for a retired four-star officer was $134,400. The top pay for an active-duty officer is capped at $179,900; housing and other allowances boost their compensation an additional third.

“These changes cumulatively provide consistent recognition across an individual’s entire career, not just the first 26 years of service,” Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez said. “This recognition also translates into increased readiness through the increased retention of our most experienced leaders.”

Naturally, at a time when we are talking about serious cuts in our defense budget–including drastic pension reform–this will raise some eyebrows. But it’s likely quite true that some significant number of general officers–99 percent of whom could easily walk out the door an quadruple their salaries in the private sector–would have retired at the outset of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq given that their retirement benefits were already capped.

So, how does an officer make more in retirement than on active duty? Well, active pay is capped at $14,975.10 per month ($179,701.20 annually) by statute but the top members of the Joint Chiefs are allowed to make $20,597.80 monthly, or $247,174.60 annually.

Under the system these folks entered under, soldiers are eligible to retire after 20 years of service and receive 50 percent of their base pay for life. For each additional year of service, they added another 2.5 percent, meaning they would receive 75 percent of their base pay for life after 30 years. At 40 years–statutorily unattainable for all but senior generals and admirals–they’d be eligible for 100 percent. Presumably, after 43 years–again, a ridiculously unusual case–uncapping it would allow them to draw 107.5 percent of their base pay.

But note that I keep referring to “base pay.” That’s the amount of guaranteed salary that they pay taxes on. Military personnel can, depending on circumstances, receive substantial additional pay for housing, subsistence (known as “food” in civilian circles), and various specialty pay and hazardous duty pay–all tax exempt. That all goes away upon retirement. And it’s highly unlikely that even 107.5 percent of this officer’s base pay exceeded what he was actually pulling in on active duty.

Via Micah Zenko 

Andrew Exum notes that most analysts who call for military intervention–Syria is the particular case, but I’d argue it’s true in almost all cases–fail to specify the particulars.

I’m reminded of a line from Top Gun in which Goose exclaims, “Come on, Mav, do some of that pilot shit!”

On the one hand, it’s not a particularly useful bit of advice. The pilot is well aware of a need to do some of what it is he does and needs no additional encouragement. The problem is making a choice under the worst kind of  stress–when making the wrong one will get you dead.

On the other hand, it’s a perfectly understandable thing for Goose to say: he’s under stress, too, and perfectly helpless in dealing with the situation.

With respect to bad things happening across the world being shown on Western television screens,Don Snow, my major professor in grad school, coined “the Do-Something Syndrome.” Like Goose, they’re horrified with a situation and want America to do something–anything–to fix it. Naturally, that “something” is often coming to the rescue with our powerful military.

The problem, even aside from niceties like national sovereignty, the rule of law, and regional spillover effects, is that military force is very seldom the ideal tool to deal with the situation at hand. In the particular case of Syria, it’s not at all clear what form intervention would take. We could set up a no-fly zone and take out bad guys shooting at civilians–but we’d probably kill as many civilians as we’d save. We could send in ground forces. But to do what? A regime change? And then what? As we’ve seen recently, taking out a Ba’athist regime doesn’t necessarily mean the end to violence.

Exum adds,

A broader problem here, as I was discussing with both Adam Elkus and Robert Caruso, is that regional specialists rarely understand military capabilities and options well enough to make an argument for or against, and those who understand military capabilities and options rarely understand the regional dynamics well enough to make an argument for or against.

This is indeed problematic. I’m a former Army officer with a PhD specializing in national security policy and some 25 years experience in the field. I’ve got a reasonable clue about the nature of the military problem from both the 10,000 feet and the platoon view. But I’ve got only a tangential understanding of the nature of the opposition forces in Syria or the dynamics likely to play out if all the al-Assads were suddenly terminated.

Following up on the comments that Secretary of Defense Panetta and many Republican politicians made as long ago as November when the so-called “super committee” failed to come up with a workable debt reduction package, a group of Republican Senators is working to stop the automatic cuts to defense spending negotiated last August as part of the debt ceiling deal:

Senate Republicans on Thursday offered a plan to delay for a year more than $1 trillion in mandatory cuts – half of which would come from the Pentagon — by trimming the federal workforce and extending a pay freeze for federal employees imposed by the Obama administration.

At a news conference, the senators appealed to President Barack Obama to negotiate on the proposal, noting that it contained ideas Democrats have previously supported. They quoted Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s dire warning that allowing the cuts to take effect in January would be “shooting ourselves in the head.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), said Panetta “either needs to be fired because he’s so off-base or we need to listen to him and fix the problem … this is now a time for both parties to come together and fix something that has to be fixed.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called the GOP effort to undo sequestration “unfair” and vowed to oppose the legislation.

“I believe that an agreement is an agreement. I believe that a handshake is a handshake. Here we have more than a handshake – we have a law that is in place in our country,” Reid said at a news conference. “They should keep their word. That’s what the American people expect them to do, and that’s what I expect them to do.”

Other Democrats also panned the proposal, sticking to their insistence that increased tax revenues be part of the solution.

“If Republicans are serious about replacing the automatic spending cuts,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said, “then they are going to need to work with Democrats to find an equal amount of balanced deficit reduction that doesn’t simply increase the pain for the middle class.”

The Republican proposal apparently centers around using attrition to reduce the size of the Federal workforce, and keeping the Federal Pay Freeze in effect, although that by itself doesn’t amount to nearly enough money to make up the amount of the defense cuts. Of course, it may not matter at all because President Obama has said that he would veto any attempt to rollback the sequestration cuts agreed to in August unless it was accompanied by a replacement package of cuts and tax increases that would decrease the deficit by at least as much as the sequestration cuts. Before it even got to President Obama, though, it would have to get through the Senate and, based on the reaction of Senate Democrats, it really doesn’t seem like this package is going to go anywhere at all.

Of course, that isn’t going to stop Republicans and commentators on the right from assertion that these cuts are going to “gut” the military. We started seeing that argument being made before the ink was even dry on the debt ceiling deal, and it’s been repeated many times since then.  As usually is the case in Washington, though, what we’re talking about here aren’t spending cuts, but cuts in the rate of growth of spending and, in the end, the Pentagon won’t end up much worse off under the current law than it would have under the budget that was under consideration last August before the deal was made:

Rather than cutting $400 billion in defense spending through 2023, as President Barack Obama had proposed in April, the current debt proposal trims $350 billion through 2024, effectively giving the Pentagon $50 billion more than it had been expecting over the next decade.

With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down, experts said, the overall change in defense spending practices could be minimal: Instead of cuts, the Pentagon merely could face slower growth.

“This is a good deal for defense when you probe under the numbers,” said Lawrence Korb, a defense expert at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning research center. “It’s better than what the Defense Department was expecting.”

Moreover, it’s no small point that, in real terms, we are spending more on defense now than we have at any time since the end of World War II:

Adjusted for inflation, the United States spent at most $580 billion a year on defense at the height of the Cold War. In the 2011 fiscal year, the Pentagon’s baseline budget is $549 billion, with another $159 billion allotted for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for a total of $708 billion. That total figure drops slightly to $670 billion in the 2012 budget proposal.

The total amount of the sequestration cuts amount to about $50 billion less in projected spending every year for ten years. As I noted back in November, if we can’t afford to cut that, then we’re doing something wrong:

If we cannot afford to cut $50 billion a year from the defense budget then we will never get a handle on the exploding Federal Budget deficit, and the idea that the cuts that would have to be implemented would endanger America is the same kind of fearmongering we  hear every time one weapons system or another gets questioned.  You can be sure, for example, that the defense industry lobby has been whispering in the ears of Republicans all over Capitol Hill, because their chief concern isn’t what’s best for the United States, but what’s best for the defense industry.

There’s another part to this equation, of course. Many of the Senators who have signed on to this effort to reverse the sequestration cuts and replace them with a gimmick that may or may not reduce spending are among the most supposedly fiscally conservative members of the upper chamber. Instead of coming up with a credible comprehensive package of spending cuts, they’re working to eliminate a mechanism that, although far from perfect, does impose some degree of fiscal discipline on the Federal Budget. It’s not perfect, but it was a start. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the Kamikaze Caucus in the House that didn’t want to raise the debt ceiling at all and the insane GOP insistence that taxes are never on the table when the budget is discussed, it’s probable that we could have gotten a much better deal in August than we actually did. That’s water under the bridge, of course, but when it’s combined with this obvious effort to undo a package of actual cuts in the growth of spending, one has to wonder just how committed these Senators actually are.

No, you really don’t have to wonder. Just as Democrats will never allow real entitlement cuts, Republicans (except those of the Ron and Rand Paul variety) will never allow real defense cuts. And our problems will just continue to get worse.

Graphic via The Fiscal Times

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 mid-2013, more than a year before all American troops are scheduled to come home.

Mr. Panetta cast the decision as an orderly step in a withdrawal process long planned by the United States and its allies, but his comments were the first time that the United States had put a date on stepping back from its central role in the war. The defense secretary’s words reflected the Obama administration’s eagerness to bring to a close the second of two grinding ground wars it inherited from the Bush administration.

Promising the end of the American combat mission in Afghanistan next year would also give Mr. Obama a certain applause line in his re-election stump speech this fall.

Mr. Panetta said no decisions had been made about the number of American troops to be withdrawn in 2013, and he made clear that substantial fighting lies ahead. “It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to be combat-ready; we will be, because we always have to be in order to defend ourselves,” he told reporters on his plane on his way to a NATO meeting in Brussels, where Afghanistan is to be a central focus.

The United States has some 90,000 troops in Afghanistan, but 22,000 of them are due home by this fall. There has been no schedule set for the pace of the withdrawal of the 68,000 American troops who will remain, only that all are to be out by the end of 2014.

Mr. Panetta offered no details of what stepping back from combat would mean, saying only that the troops would move into an “advise-and-assist” role to Afghanistan’s security forces. Such definitions are typically murky, particularly in a country like Afghanistan, where American forces are spread widely among small bases across the desert, farmland and mountains, and where the native security forces have a mixed record of success at best.

The defense secretary offered the withdrawal of the United States from Iraq as a model. American troops there eventually pulled back to large bases and left the bulk of the fighting to the Iraqis.

This isn’t necessarily a surprise, of course. The President had previously announced that American forces would be out of the country by 2014, and there has been pressure from other participants in the NATO mission such as France to bring the mission to an end as soon as possible. Moreover, the war itself remains as unpopular here at home as it has been for a long time. Add into this the increasing tensions with Pakistan ever since the raid that got Osama bin Laden and last year’s mistaken drone strike that killed Pakistani soldiers, and this is probably the wisest decision at this point.

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

When Marine Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich was handed a suspended sentence of three months on Wednesday for his role as squad leader of a group that massacred 24 unarmed Iraqis in Haditha six years ago, it naturally sparked an outrage. To many here in the U.S., in Iraq, and in the Muslim world writ large, this will likely be seen as the U.S. military excusing a heinous crime. But we should instead look at this, even if it is difficult to do so, as the price we pay for a justice system that prioritizes the rights of the accused over a desire to punish criminals.

[...]

Even though we now have a pretty good idea what happened that day, it’s incredibly hard to prove it in court without the active cooperation of reliable witnesses. Alas, as the Associated Press reports, “The prosecution was also hampered by squad mates who acknowledged they had lied to investigators initially and later testified in exchange for having their cases dropped, bringing into question their credibility.” And the few Iraqi survivors declined to testify, fearing for their safety.

[...]

Awis Fahmi Hussein, who survived the attacks, lamented, “I was expecting that the American judiciary would sentence this person to life in prison and that he would appear and confess in front of the whole world that he committed this crime, so that America could show itself as democratic and fair.”

Unsatisfying as it seems, a democratic outcome is exactly what we got. In an authoritarian society — probably even in today’s post-Saddam Iraq — governments will happily sentence citizens to jail to slake the public thirst for justice. In a liberal democracy, however, we put a very high burden on the state in taking away the liberty of a citizen accused of a crime.

Much more detail at the link–the piece is over 1300 words–but that’s the gist.

One of the most powerful moments of President Obama’s speech last night came when President Obama evoked the memory of SEAL Team Six, the unit that hunted down Osama bin Laden and, as we learned this morning, rescued two civilians from Somali pirates at nearly the same time that official Washington was gathering in the Capitol Building for the President’s speech. It framed both the beginning and the end of the speech, actually. Unusually for a State Of The Union, the President started with foreign policy:

We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world.  (Applause.)  For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq.  (Applause.)  For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country.  (Applause.)  Most of al Qaeda’s top lieutenants have been defeated.  The Taliban’s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.

These achievements are a testament to the courage, selflessness and teamwork of America’s Armed Forces.  At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations.  They’re not consumed with personal ambition.  They don’t obsess over their differences.  They focus on the mission at hand.  They work together.

Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example.

And then, at the close of the speech more than an hour later, Obama said:

Which brings me back to where I began.  Those of us who’ve been sent here to serve can learn a thing or two from the service of our troops.  When you put on that uniform, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white; Asian, Latino, Native American; conservative, liberal; rich, poor; gay, straight.  When you’re marching into battle, you look out for the person next to you, or the mission fails.  When you’re in the thick of the fight, you rise or fall as one unit, serving one nation, leaving no one behind.

One of my proudest possessions is the flag that the SEAL Team took with them on the mission to get bin Laden.  On it are each of their names.  Some may be Democrats.  Some may be Republicans.  But that doesn’t matter.  Just like it didn’t matter that day in the Situation Room, when I sat next to Bob Gates — a man who was George Bush’s defense secretary — and Hillary Clinton — a woman who ran against me for president.

All that mattered that day was the mission.  No one thought about politics.  No one thought about themselves.  One of the young men involved in the raid later told me that he didn’t deserve credit for the mission.  It only succeeded, he said, because every single member of that unit did their job — the pilot who landed the helicopter that spun out of control; the translator who kept others from entering the compound; the troops who separated the women and children from the fight; the SEALs who charged up the stairs.  More than that, the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other — because you can’t charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there’s somebody behind you, watching your back.

So it is with America.  Each time I look at that flag, I’m reminded that our destiny is stitched together like those 50 stars and those 13 stripes.  No one built this country on their own.  This nation is great because we built it together.  This nation is great because we worked as a team.  This nation is great because we get each other’s backs.  And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great; no mission too hard.  As long as we are joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, and our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong.

As James Joyner noted in his SOTU Post Mortem this morning, this is fine rhetoric and great speechcraft but it’s unclear what it actually means in the real world. At some point in their Presidency, every President has made this kind of an appeal to national unity and called on Americans to put aside partisanship for one purpose or another. Then, they fly out of Washington the next day giving a serious of stump speeches to sell their SOTU message during which they take as many shots at the opposition as they can. Obama is doing that himself starting today with a speech in Iowa that starts off a three-day, five state (all of them swing states of course) tour of the country to sell his message. This is not to mention the fact that it is more than a little amusing to kick off a Presidential election year with a speech that derides partisanship. Good luck with that one, Mr. President.

More broadly, though, Max Boot expresses concern over the use of analogies to military service in arguments about domestic politics as well as the President’s Tom Brokaw-like nostalgia for the post World War II era in American history:

[N]ostalgia should not mask the fact that the “Mad Men” world is not one most of us would like to live in today. It was, after all, a world where big institutions-whether big government, big media, big business or big unions-had far more power than they do today. The downside of this arrangement was captured in numerous contemporary critiques such as “The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit” and “The Organization Man” and “The Lonely Crowd” that were a touchstone for Baby Boomers rebelling against the conformism of the 1950s.

From our standpoint today, there are some good aspects of the 1950s-the hard work, the sense of common purpose-but also much that we would reject, especially the pervasive racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, homophobia, and other social attitudes-not to mention the pervasive drinking, smoking, and other bad habits. America today is far more individualistic and far more meritocratic with far less tolerance for rank prejudice and far less willingness to blindly follow the orders of rigid bureaucracies.

(…)

Make no mistake: the military works well. But that’s because it’s comprised of volunteers with a mission-defending America. Members of the armed forces are willing to accept privations and hardships, and respond unquestioningly to orders, in a way that civilians will not and should not. Let’s temper our admiration of the military: For all its virtues, it is not a model for the rest of society.

Boot’s first point is self-evident I think. Notwithstanding the praise that the World War II generation has deservedly received thanks largely in part to Tom Brokaw’s books, it’s worth remembering that the 1950s weren’t necessarily the nirvana that they are sometimes portrayed as, especially if you were a member of a minority group. It was odd to hear a Democratic invoking this kind of nostalgia only because it’s usually something you expect to hear from a socially conservative Republican who bemoans the breakdown in “the family” that has supposedly occurred since the halcyon days of Leave It To Beaver. In either case, though, it’s a rather myopic view of the era that papers over the many flaws that Boot points out. In most ways that matter, America is a better place than it was in the 1950s, and that’s partly because we don’t have the kind of mindless “unity” that a culture of conformity creates.

It’s Boot’s second point, though, that I think is most important. Barack Obama isn’t the first President to invoke the qualities that we all admire about the military, the qualities that allow it to get its job done, and argue that the civilian population should emulate it in some respects. For one thing, in the military orders are strictly followed and dissent is unheard of, is this really a model we want for society? Well, maybe if you’re a politician in Washington frustrated by the fact that the messiness of domestic politics makes it difficult to get your agenda enacted you might see the advantages in that, but it’s hardly the kind of society a free individual should want to live in. It would be much more convenient if dissent would just be quiet and everyone would just “work together” to achieve all those important “national objectives, ” wouldn’t it? Perhaps, but that’s not the kind of political system we have, nor is it one we should aspire to.

Of course, much of this is just flowery rhetoric, just as the vast majority of any State Of The Union Address is largely flowery rhetoric. Perhaps it shouldn’t be taken quite as seriously as Boot does. Nonetheless, as I’ve noted before, the prevalence of militaristic rhetoric in American politics is something that helps reenforces the imperialistic view of the Presidency that has come to dominate American politics, and that alone is reason to be concerned about it.

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 had been holding them captive for months.

The American soldiers swooped in by helicopter, killed nine pirates and captured several others, before spiriting away the hostages, who were not harmed, Western officials said.

It appeared that President Obama was fully aware of the raid as he was about to give his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, which would have been early Wednesday in Somalia.

According to NBC News, as the president stepped into the House chambers, he pointed to Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta standing in the crowd and said, “Leon. Good job tonight. Good job tonight.” The president made no mention of the rescue in Somalia, but he did refer to the killing of Osama bin Laden last May in a similar operation conducted by Navy Seals.

In a statement Wednesday from the White House, the president said he authorized the operation on Monday. “Thanks to the extraordinary courage and capabilities of our Special Operations forces, yesterday Jessica Buchanan was rescued and she is on her way home. As commander in chief, I could not be prouder of the troops who carried out this mission, and the dedicated professionals who supported their efforts.”

The statement continued: “Last night I spoke with Jessica Buchanan’s father and told him that all Americans have Jessica in our thoughts and prayers, and give thanks that she will soon be reunited with her family. The United States will not tolerate the abduction of our people, and will spare no effort to secure the safety of our citizens and to bring their captors to justice. This is yet another message to the world that the United States of America will stand strongly against any threats to our people.”

Somalia is considered one of the most dangerous places in the world, infested by pirate gangs and countless militant groups, a lawless space that has languished for 21 years without a functioning government. Several Westerners have recently been kidnapped, typically for ransom, and it seems that as Somalia’s pirates have a harder time hijacking ships on the high seas, because of the beefed up naval efforts, they are increasingly turning to snatching foreigners on land.

On Oct. 25, Jessica Buchanan, an American, and Poul Hagen Thisted, a Dane, were kidnapped by two truckloads of gunmen as they headed to the airport in Galkaiyo, a central Somalia town on the edge of pirate territory. The two were working for the Danish Demining Group, one of the few Western organizations that was still operating in that area.

Nicely done, gentlemen.

Last night, amid a question regarding what the appropriate response might be to aggressive Iranian action in the Straits of Hormuz, Mitt Romney made this claim:

Under this president and under prior presidents, we keep on shrinking our Navy. Our Navy is now smaller than any time since 1917. And — and — and the president is building roughly nine ships a year. We ought to raise that to 15 ships a year, not because we want to go to war with anyone, but because we don’t want anyone to take the — the — the hazard of going against us. We want them to see that we’re so strong they couldn’t possibly defeat us.

It’s a comment I’ve heard Romney make before, most recently at the January 16th debate in South Carolina in the middle of a response to a question about the National Defense Authorization Act:

ROMNEY: I’ve still got time. So as long as I still have time I just want to go back and agree with what Governor Perry said, the most extraordinary thing that’s happened with this military authorization is the president is planning on cutting $1 trillion out of military spending. Our Navy is smaller than it’s been since 1917. Our Air Force is smaller and older than any time since 1947.

We are cutting our number of troops. We are not giving the veterans the care they deserve. We simply cannot continue to cut our Department of Defense budget if we are going to remain the hope of the Earth. And I will fight to make sure America retains military superiority.

As Jason Linkins notes, neither the moderator nor the questioners at the January 16th debate followed up with Romney about what sounds like a rather extraordinary and alarming claim about the state of our defense, and Brian Williams similarly failed to follow-up on Romney’s claim regarding Naval readiness last night. (So much for that liberal media, huh?) It would have been helpful if they did, though, because it turns out that Romney’s claim is, at the best, only half true and not very relevant to an honest assessment of the readiness of the American military.

Politifact took a look at Romney’s claims about the Navy after the January 16th debate and pointed out that merely focusing on the number of ships in active service isn’t really an accurate measure of the strength of the Navy:

Counting the number of ships or aircraft is not a good measurement of defense strength because their capabilities have increased dramatically in recent decades. Romney’s comparison “doesn’t pass ‘the giggle test,’ ” said William W. Stueck, a historian at the University of Georgia.

Consider what types of naval ships were used in 1916 and 2011. The types of ships active in both years, such as cruisers and destroyers, are outfitted today with far more advanced technology than what was available during World War I. More importantly, the U.S. Navy has 11 aircraft carriers (plus the jets to launch from them), 31 amphibious ships, 14 submarines capable of launching nuclear ballistic missiles and four specialized submarines for launching Cruise missiles — all categories of vessels that didn’t exist in 1916.

As for the Air Force, many U.S. planes may be old, but they “have been modernized with amazing sensors and munitions even when the airframes themselves haven’t been,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a scholar at the Brookings Institution. Human factors matter, too. “The vast superiority of the U.S. Air Force has little to do with number of planes, but with vastly superior training, in-flight coordination and control, as well as precision targeting and superior missiles,” said Charles Knight, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives at the Massachusetts-based Commonwealth Institute.

Ruehrmund and Bowie write in their report that “although the overall force level is lower, the capabilities of the current force in almost all respects far exceed that of the huge Air Force of the 1950s. Today’s Air Force can maintain surveillance of the planet with space and air-breathing systems; strike with precision any point on the globe within hours; deploy air power and joint forces with unprecedented speed and agility; and provide high-bandwidth secure communications and navigation assistance to the entire joint force.”

Increasingly crucial today are pilotless aerial vehicles, some of which are more commonly known as drones.

“The Air Force now buys more unmanned than manned aircraft every year, and that trend is not going to change,” said Lance Janda, a historian at Cameron University. “Within our lifetime, I think you’ll see an end to manned combat aircraft, because unmanned planes are more capable and a lot cheaper.”

For a sense of comparison, in 1947, “it took dozens of planes and literally hundreds of bombs to destroy a single target because they were so inaccurate,” said Todd Harrison, a fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “But thanks to smart bombs and stealthy aircraft, today it only takes a single plane and often a single bomb to destroy a target.”

Or as John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, puts it: “Would anyone care to trade today’s Navy or Air Force for either service at any point in the 20th century?”

It strikes me that the answer to that question is rather obvious. The kind of mass aerial bombardments that we saw in World War II and, to a lesser extent, Korea and Vietnam, simply aren’t necessary any more because we can accomplish far more with cruise missiles, or a much smaller amount of Stealth bombers. The same goes for the United States Navy. We simply aren’t likely to ever see the kind of multi-ship battles that were a crucial part of World War II’s Pacific component. Today, our Naval resources are more about force projection to far corners of the world and protecting one corner of the nuclear triad. More importantly, even with recent Chinese advances there simply isn’t a Navy on the planet that can match our force today (and there barely was even with the Soviet Union still existed). When it comes to numbers, Romney seems to be correct to a large degree but, as Politifact notes, it’s the kind of fact that doesn’t really mean much of anything, and certainly not what Romney wants it to mean:

This is a great example of a politician using more or less accurate statistics to make a meaningless claim. Judging by the numbers alone, Romney was close to accurate. In recent years, the number of Navy and Air Force assets has sunk to levels not seen in decades, although the number of ships has risen slightly under Obama.

However, a wide range of experts told us it’s wrong to assume that a decline in the number of ships or aircraft automatically means a weaker military. Quite the contrary: The United States is the world’s unquestioned military leader today, not just because of the number of ships and aircraft in its arsenal but also because each is stocked with top-of-the-line technology and highly trained personnel.

Thanks to the development of everything from nuclear weapons to drones, comparing today’s military to that of 60 to 100 years ago presents an egregious comparison of apples and oranges. Today’s military and political leaders face real challenges in determining the right mix of assets to deal with current and future threats, but Romney’s glib suggestion that today’s military posture is in any way similar to that of its predecessors in 1917 or 1947 is preposterous.

Romney may as well be saying that the Army has fewer horses than it did in 1874. It’s true, but it means nothing.

It’s worth noting that one of the experts consulted by Politifact disagreed somewhat with their “Pants On Fire” rating for Romney’s claims (preferring to call it “Half True), and makes this observation of the context of the numbers themselves:

As for the issue of context, it cuts both ways. Certainly the Navy had to deal with rivals of varying strength and compositions throughout the era from 1917 to now, much as the Air Force was dealing with a peer competitor in the Soviet Union for most of its history. Likewise, newer technologies for the Navy and Air Force are probably more lethal, both absolutely and relative to most competitors, than they were in the past. So, given the geopolitical situation and the state of technology, it seems that the Navy and Air Force can stand to be smaller than they have been in the past. But there is a key contextual difference. Because the forces are so reliant on a small number of expensive and highly sophisticated ships and aircraft to to the job of large numbers of less sophisticated technologies in the past, the current technologies are more valuable and the overall system is more fragile.

If the Navy loses one carrier to enemy action, for any reason, that loss would be catastrophic in a way such a loss would not have been in the past. Likewise, the Air Force cannot afford to lose even small numbers of the highly sophisticated airframes of today. An additional contextual difference is that the U.S. military used to prepare during peacetime to mass produce weapons and material in the event of war. That is not the case today. For better or worse, the military is stuck with what it has for a long time once war begins, and regardless of losses (e.g.: the delay in producing up-armored Humvees and MRAPS for Iraq). In that sense, the small but sophisticated military is also risky.

This is a fair point, and it’s also worth noting that if a military disaster on the scale of Pearl Harbor occurred today, it would be a lot harder for the United States to rebuild a functioning Navy in the manner it did starting almost immediately after the smoke from December 7, 1941 cleared. The hull for the super-carrier USS Gerald Ford was laid in 2009 and construction isn’t expected to be completed until 2015. Replacing a ship like that wouldn’t be an easy or inexpensive task. Furthermore, there are fairly good arguments in favor of enhanced future Naval construction. Nonetheless, both of those are completely different issue from the one Romney is raising, which is a blatant claim that the President’s policies have weakened the U.S. Navy’s ability to protect American interest. That, quite clearly, is simply false.

Army Times (“Army scaling back officer promotion rates“):

Officer promotion rates are headed for a sharp downturn after a decade of record-high selection levels, according to Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond T. Odierno.

In a recent memo to senior leaders, Odierno said the Army is preparing to return to the selection opportunity levels that were in place before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those were 90 percent selection opportunity for promotion to captain, 80 percent for major, 70 percent for lieutenant colonel and 50 percent for colonel.

“In some instances, we may see promotion rates below these targets to correctly size and shape year groups,” Odierno said. “This will be a departure from the very high promotion rates of the past decade.”

Selection opportunity is calculated by dividing the number of primary-zone candidates by the total number of above-zone, primary-zone and below-zone officers selected by a board.

From 2001 through 2010, selection opportunity for advancement to colonel in the Army Competitive Category averaged 64 percent, while the select rate for officers in the primary zone averaged 54 percent. During the same period, selection opportunity averaged 100 percent for lieutenant colonel and 108 percent for major. Primary-zone select rates averaged 84 percent for lieutenant colonel and 94 percent for major.

For those in my cohort, Year Group 1988, which along with groups on either side of us bore the brunt of the post-Cold War drawdown, it was quite literally harder to make captain than it was to make bird colonel. Promotion was all but automatic for those who refrained from committing criminal acts. On the other hand, most of those officers have a chest full of medals befitting a Latin American field marshal because they spent more time deployed to global hotspots than with their families.
via Jeremiah Cushman

More so than he has in the past, Ron Paul took a drubbing in last night’s debate far worse than anything he’s seen to date, and it happened because of his foreign policy positions:

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — The rivals who largely ignored Ron Paul for much of the campaign gave him a drubbing Monday night.

The Fox News/Wall Street Journal debate pile-on began after Paul answered a question about whether the U.S. government had the authority to kill Osama bin Laden. Booed by the boisterous audience, Paul compared bin Laden’s capture in Pakistan to a Chinese dissident hiding in the U.S. and said the U.S. government wouldn’t want China to “bomb us and do whatever.” He also advocated attempting to capture and question top terrorist leaders instead of kill them.

“I mean, if you think about Saddam Hussein, you know, we did that,” Paul said. “We captured him, and we tried him — I mean, the government tried him — and he hung — got hung. What’s, what’s so terrible about this? This whole idea that you can’t capture … what’s this whole idea that you can’t capture people?”

Paul added: “Just think, [Nazi leader] Adolf Eichmann was captured. He was given a trial. What’s wrong with capturing people? Why didn’t we try to get some information from them? You know, we’re, we’re accustomed to asking people questions, but all of a sudden — gone. You know, that’s it.”

Newt Gingrich quickly jumped on the Texas lawmaker, calling the comparison of bin Laden to a Chinese dissident “utterly irrational.” Romney moved to second the former speaker, adding the right solution for bin Laden was the “bullet in the head that he received.”

The video of the whole exchange, including the crowd reaction, is worth watching and quite telling in terms of just how badly things went for Paul:

That wasn’t the only odd part of the night for Paul. Shortly after this exchange, Paul tried to explain how his arguments in favor of cutting back on military commitments abroad wouldn’t impact defense spending at home:

Speaking in a part of the state heaviest on retired military, Paul defended his pledge to cut military spending by arguing that he wouldn’t reduce domestic defense expenditures.

“I want to cut military money. I don’t want to cut defense money,” he said. “I want to bring the troops home. I’d probably have more bases here at home. We were closing them down in the 1990s and building them overseas. That’s how we got into trouble. So we would save a lot more money and have a stronger national defense, and that’s what we should do,” he contended.

He added, in a line that drew big applause — some of his only of the night: “You don’t understand there’s a difference between military spending and defense spending. Just because you spend — spend a billion dollars on an embassy in Baghdad bigger than the Vatican — you consider that defense spending. I consider that waste.”

It’s an odd position for Paul to take, given that he’s talked repeatedly about cutting $1 Trillion from the Federal Budget in a single year. How he thinks he could do that without significantly cutting the military budget on the domestic side as well as the foreign side is beyond me. Moreover, I’m not entirely sure what Paul is thinking of here. Is he suggesting that we bring the troops home, put them in bases and just keep them there? If we really are reducing our foreign commitments, then there’s no need for the same sized military we have today. Of course, telling people in a very pro-military state that probably wouldn’t go over very well, so Paul prevaricated.

It’s the bin Laden response that I think is going to hurt Paul the most, though. He could have just said “I voted for the AUMF after the September 11th attacks, and this action was taken in compliance with that resolution.”Instead, as seems to always be the case with him, he went off on some bizarre tangent that at least made it seems likes he thinks it was a bad thing that we killed Osama bin Laden. I’m largely skeptical of interventionist foreign policies to begin with so I’m sometimes sympathetic with what Paul says, but I have absolutely no problem with the operation that resulted in bin Laden’s death, and I don’t see how any reasonable person could. Moreover, every single account of the mission makes it rather clear that Paul’s fantasy of capturing bin Laden and putting him on trial was just that, a fantasy. Neither bin Laden nor the men with him were going to let him be taken alive, and if SEAL Team Six could help the man live out his death wish then that’s just fine with me. I don’t see how this helps Paul in South Carolina, or Florida for that matter. His core group of supporters will love it, obviously, but this is just going to make him a target.

It hardly matters, of course, Paul isn’t going to be the nominee. But if you needed a lesson in why that is the case, last night was a perfect example.

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 on the corpses of Taliban dead:

“I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah.

“All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq?

“The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.

“As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.”

In other words, West’s attitude is that unless you have actually been in combat you have no right to criticize these Marines. Sorry, but that isn’t how it works. We live in a country where people are allowed to speak their mind regardless of their life experiences and, when it comes something this outrageous telling people to “Shut up” is little more than the kind of juvenile twaddle I’d expect from a drunken frat boy, not a Member of Congress and former officer in the United States military. Of course, this is the same Allen West who once suggested that an anti-war Congressman should get shot a few times, sent out an offensive email regarding a fellow Member of Congress in a manner that he knew would become public, and said that anyone with an Obama bumper sticker is a threat to the gene pool.

Perhaps West is concerned that his newly revised district won’t send him back to Congress in November so he’s auditioning for a talk radio spot, because he’d fit right in along side the Limbaugh’s, Hannity’s, and Levin’s of the world. As a Member Of Congress, though, he needs to develop a lot more maturity.

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 leaking hundreds of thousands of confidential government documents to WikiLeaks, recommended on Friday that Private Manning face court martial.

The officer, Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, who heard a series of witnesses last month at Fort Meade, Md., concluded that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that Private Manning committed the crimes he is accused of, including aiding the enemy, theft of public records and computer fraud.

Given the Manning’s defense team barely put up a defense at the evidentiary hearing, and totally abandoned the defense that had been asserted in opening statements alleging that Manning’s sexuality was somehow a justification for what he did, this isn’t a surprise. The decision to take Manning to trial is up to senior officials but it seems quite likely that it will go forward, as it should.