Features

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 …

The perks and pitfalls of forward operating bases

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have introduced a large, new vocabulary of acronyms and abbreviations into the American experience of war: GWOT, GSAVE, …

The indefatigable U.S. ambassador to Iraq — and, lest we forget, previously envoy to Afghanistan — for helping engineer a government of “national unity” in Baghdad and the agreement by which Nuri …

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 …

"The man was thrown backward by automatic weapons fire, his eyes blindfolded and his arms tied behind his back, his skull jerked upward at the neck, his fleshless mouth gaping, his two …

A thrilling account of the Afghanistan air war

Why has the U.S. Air Force gotten so bad at studying its own history? In the wake of Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the …

Why Congress complains about, but won’t end, supplemental appropriations

If Reps. Ike Skelton and Neil Abercrombie had their way, or if Sens. Jack Reed and John McCain were writing the 2007 Pentagon …

Great powers, indigenous armies

It wasn’t so long ago that empire was in. For a brief, strange, almost Olympian moment earlier in this decade, it was just about all America’s foreign policy …

As alert readers will recall, we darted Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace last month for his giddy optimism about U.S.-China relations. This month’s Pace Dart goes to …

One of the happier unintended consequences of the global war on — oops, the “long war” for the greater Middle East — has been a flowering of thoughtful writing about war. For …