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 [...]
Pentagon
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 [...]
President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta unveiled a new military strategy Thursday: the Pentagon of the future, they made clear, will be doing less with more. “Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow, but the fact of the matter is this: It will still grow, because we have [...]
I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member. The sentiment is usually attributed to Groucho Marx, but as of this week it works for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, too. That’s because when President Obama signed the 2012 defense bill on New Year’s Eve, the [...]
If Michèle Flournoy were a man, no one outside of nerdy defense circles would have noted her announcement Monday that she will be leaving the Pentagon’s No. 3 post – the under secretary of defense for policy – come February. And no one – not even the dweebiest of defense dweebs – would care that [...]
You can always tell the rookie Pentagon reporter. He, or she, is the one who whispers: “They told me they’re planning for war with Iran!” That’s when the vets around the building have to say: “They’ve been doing that for decades. Somewhere along these 17 miles of corridors, they have plans for everything.” At least [...]
Read TIME’s special Twitter discussion about the disconnect between the U.S. military, veterans returning home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the rest of American society.
