Tech Central Station December 9, 2005 One of the lessons of Vietnam taught to American officer cadets is that successful prosecution of a long-term war requires support from the people, the government, and the military. It is considered axiomatic that, if any leg of Clausewitz’ Remarkable Trinity[1] falters, a war effort is doomed. This dictum came…
Category: Military Affairs
Tech Central Station December 5, 2005 Some Iraq war critics have lately argued that the American military is not very adept at counterinsurgency. But the reality is a little more complicated than they suggest. Reacting to an article in The New Republic about President Bush’s strategy for defeating insurgents in Iraq by Lawrence Kaplan, The American Propect‘s Matthew Yglesias, observed…
Phillip Carter and James Joyner Legal Affairs April 18, 2005 “America has a choice,” write Phillip Carter and Paul Glastris in The Washington Monthly. “It can be the world’s superpower, or it can maintain the current all-volunteer military, but it probably can’t do both.” Their solution is a revival of the draft. Glastris and Carter propose that…
Tech Central Station March 7, 2005 Friday’s shooting incident during which Giuliana Sgrena, a writer for Italy’s communist newspaper Il Manifesto, was wounded and her bodyguard killed by American soldiers has raised serious questions about the way U.S. checkpoints in Iraq are handled. Christian Science Monitor reporter Annia Ciezadlo, in a story published after but written before the incident, describes her own experiences with the checkpoints: It’s…
Tech Central Station March 3, 2005 Phil Carter and Paul Glastris make “The Case for the Draft” in the current Washington Monthly. “America’s all-volunteer military simply cannot deploy and sustain enough troops to succeed in places like Iraq while still deterring threats elsewhere in the world. Simply adding more soldiers to the active duty force, as some in Washington are…
Tech Central Station January 11, 2005 Bradley Graham reports in the Washington Post that Army leaders are pushing to make last year’s increase of 30,000 troops in the active-duty force permanent and to change the law to allow longer and more frequent call-ups of some reservists in order to meet the obligations of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.…
Tech Central Station December 14, 2004 Army National Guard Specialist David Qualls and seven of his comrades filed suit against the Defense Department over what they charge is the unfair extension of their active duty obligation beyond the term they agreed to. Qualls signed up with the Arkansas National Guard under the “Try-One” enlistment option which, according…
Tech Central Station December 1, 2004 The writer Matthew Yglesias makes a bold assertion in The American Prospect magazine: For months now, skeptics of George W. Bush’s Iraq policy have been warning that the present path could lead to bloody civil war. More recently, proponents of continued U.S. military presence have been warning that bloody civil war would be…
Tech Central Station August 10, 2004 The pseudonymous blogger N.Z. Bear issues a bold proclamation: “I’m going to go on record and predict that the Swift Boat Veterans kerfuffle won’t just be a major negative for Kerry: it will be a campaign-killer.” His rationale is that, if any of these charges stick, it will cement the image…
Tech Central Station August 2, 2004 For the decade after the Cold War, the United States military strategy was built around a scenario involving two nearly simultaneous major regional conflicts with Iraq and North Korea. Much derided by analysts throughout that period, the doctrine was formally abandoned with the September 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review. Ironically, the…