Departments

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U.S. Army

  • SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
    11-10-13

    The U.S. Army Discovers Africa

    by Andrew J. Bacevich

    Africa has many needs. Whether it needs the United States bringing to bear a million American soldiers is doubtful.

  • In Praise of Douglas Kinnard

    by William J. Astore

    The general, who died on July 29, told the truth about the Vietnam War in his 1977 book "The War Managers."

  • SOURCE: NYT
    7-21-13

    The Pipe Dream of Easy War

    by H.R. McMaster

     “A GREAT deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep,” the novelist Saul Bellow once wrote. We should keep that in mind when we consider the lessons from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — lessons of supreme importance as we plan the military of the future.

  • SOURCE: ProPublica
    7-16-13

    U.S. Army says war records gap is real

    The U.S. Army has conceded a significant loss of records documenting battlefield action and other operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and has launched a global search to recover and consolidate field records from the wars.In an order to all commands and a separate letter to leaders of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, Secretary of the Army John McHugh said the service also is taking immediate steps to clarify responsibility for wartime recordkeeping....

  • Writing About the Military Will Screw with Your Life

    by Nick Turse

     “Why the officer stopped you is beyond me, but what the officer discovered is something of interest, especially for national security... It’s not every day you see someone traveling with information like this.” 

  • SOURCE: NYT
    5-26-13

    Jamie Malanowski: The U.S. Army Maintains Bases Named After Men Who Killed American Soldiers

    Jamie Malanowski is a contributor to The New York Times’s Disunion series and the author of “And the War Came,” an account of how the Civil War began, at byliner.com.IN the complex and not entirely complete process of reconciliation after the Civil War, honoring the dead with markers, tributes and ceremonies has played a crucial role. Some of these gestures, like Memorial Day, have been very successful. The practice of decorating the graves arose in many towns, north and south, some even before the war had ended. This humble idea quickly spread throughout the country, and the recognition of common loss helped reconcile North and South.But other gestures had a more a political edge. Equivalence of experience was stretched to impute an equivalence of legitimacy. The idea that “now, we are all Americans” served to whitewash the actions of the rebels. The most egregious example of this was the naming of United States Army bases after Confederate generals.

  • SOURCE: NYT
    5-26-13

    Karl W. Eikenberry and David M. Kennedy: Americans and Their Military, Drifting Apart

    Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired Army lieutenant general, was the United States commander in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007 and the ambassador there from 2009 to 2011. He is a fellow at Stanford, where David M. Kennedy is an emeritus professor of history. They are, respectively, a contributor to and the editor of “The Modern American Military.”STANFORD, Calif. — AFTER fighting two wars in nearly 12 years, the United States military is at a turning point. So are the American people. The armed forces must rethink their mission. Though the nation has entered an era of fiscal constraint, and though President Obama last week effectively declared an end to the “global war on terror” that began on Sept. 11, 2001, the military remains determined to increase the gap between its war-fighting capabilities and those of any potential enemies. But the greatest challenge to our military is not from a foreign enemy — it’s the widening gap between the American people and their armed forces.

  • Women in Combat: Not New, but a Milestone Nonetheless

    by Tanya L. Roth

    U.S. Navy Operations Specialist 1st Class Megan Garcia, left, tactical operations watchstander for Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) Farah, provides security at a key leader engagement with the Director of Women's Affairs in Farah City, Jan. 29. Credit: Flickr/U.S. Navy.