Archive for June, 2006

Combat fatigue

Vehicle wear and tear in Iraq jeopardizes U.S. Army readiness

In wartime, seemingly small things can have large meanings. So it was with an Army helicopter recently returned to the U.S. from …

Read more ›

Abu Musab al Zarqawi is dead

For once, a tactically insignificant action in Iraq – an airstrike near the town of Hibhib, about 50 miles from Baghdad -will give the United States and its Iraqi allies a strategically …

Read more ›

Somalia, Day Two

If you had any doubts that U.S. strategy for the Middle East and the war on terror hadn’t found a coherent theme, yesterday’s "fall of Mogadishu" – an Islamic group, or several …

Read more ›

Homeland insecurity

Post-9/11 fixes haven’t fixed a thing

Police and firefighters in major U.S. cities still can’t communicate reliably in a crisis. When airline passengers are screened before being allowed to fly, they aren’t …

Read more ›

Rummy & his generals

An AFJ roundtable on the state of American civil-military relations

In early April, a number of retired U.S. general officers stepped forward to call for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. …

Read more ›

The power & limits of jointness

It has been 20 years since Congress passed the Goldwater-Nichols Act, committing the U.S. armed forces to a vision of “joint warfare” wherein the strands of the separate services were to be …

Read more ›

‘Strike and destroy’

The prescription of Clinton-era secretary of defense William Perry and his former assistant, Ashton Carter, if North Korea continues on its apparent plan to test a Taepodong II intercontinental ballistic missile, which …

Read more ›

Conformity needs competition

It has been nearly two decades since the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. That’s a long time, but perhaps more importantly, the legislation punctuated — with …

Read more ›

Air heads

Misperceptions and rivalries obscure air power’s potential

Our society, even our military, is so hyper-aware and wired that the ubiquitous presence of the television screen is no more illustrative of Clinton focus-group …

Read more ›

Oil obsession

Energy appetite fuels Beijing’s plans to protect vital sea lines

The reason for skyrocketing gasoline prices isn’t the greed of oil-company executives — it’s something over which we have even less control: …

Read more ›