President Obama’s goal at the NATO summit this week is looking increasingly clear: wrap up U.S. troops’ combat role over the coming year, and get the allies to pay more money to enable the Afghan military to fill the gap. All signs are that NATO will agree to the first of those two goals Monday in Chicago.
It’s sad that what should be a day of quiet satisfaction – the anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden, the killer of nearly 3,000 innocents – has degenerated into a political spitball fight. We well remember Jimmy Carter’s failed mission to rescue the U.S. hostages held by Iran’s government in Tehran 30 years aqo. [...]
Marine General John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, was here in Washington two weeks ago saying the U.S. and the Afghan government are making progress in their decade-long battle with the Taliban. “We remain on track to ensure that Afghanistan will no longer be a safe haven for al-Qaida and will no longer [...]
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 Caucus. It’s no doubt driven, in part, by the Air Force’s just-announced plan to trim its transport fleet.
Pentagon officials won’t concede it, but privately defense officials say the spate of “green-on-blue” killings by Afghans of their purported U.S. allies over the past two weeks could lead to major changes in U.S. strategy. If they continue, the U.S. will face a brutal choice: pull out, or double down.
So just how close to the tipping point – that’s the phase heard most over the past several days – is the U.S.-led military mission in Afghanistan? Not close, according to the Obama Administration. Remember, this was the “good war” – justifiable in 9/11′s wake, unlike the invasion of Iraq two years later. So Administration [...]
Leon Panetta first ran afoul of a president when he was a lowly federal staffer more than 40 years ago. The president was Richard Nixon, who didn’t like the way Panetta, then a civil-rights advocate at the old Department of Health, Education and Welfare, pressed the Administration to speed up school integration. Panetta resigned, moved [...]
The Obama Administration came to a fork in the road this year on military spending: given the financial pressures facing the nation, it could have fundamentally set U.S. defense policy on a new path. Or it could have kept pretty much everything and just sucked it in as it tightened its belt. It has elected [...]
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s statement Wednesday that the U.S. plans to hand off all combat missions in Afghanistan sometime in 2013 has triggered howls from hawks who maintain it’s a step down a slippery slope headed to defeat. They may have a point. Nonetheless, the Obama Administration has plainly decided that its goals are better [...]
You may recall Battleland’s advisory last week that it was too early to conclude whether the Obama Administration’s new Pentagon strategy makes sense. That’s because the devil is in the details, and they won’t be known for another month – when the Defense Department unveils its 2013 budget. But when you’re an editorial writer with [...]
