Today's New York Times has a long op-ed by retired Air Force Gen. Merrill McPeak arguing for keeping the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy in place, and it's an interesting document. McPeak isn't some Republican war-monger -- he opposed the Iraq War and endorsed Barack Obama during the 2008 primaries. But his argument here shows how hollow the defenses of DADT are growing.

McPeak makes a lot of detailed and not particularly persuasive points about how many gay people have been tossed from the armed services (essentially arguing that it's really not that big a deal in terms of money spent and talent lost), then addresses the comparison to Harry Truman's decision to integrate the armed forces in a way I haven't seen before. "No doubt Truman’s action was a landmark in the civil rights struggle," McPeak writes. "However, the order was not actually sufficient inducement for the armed forces to do the right thing." He goes on to explain that the Army and Navy slow-walked integration, and thus it took some time to take effect. Why this is an argument against getting rid of DADT, it's hard to tell. Then McPeak writes something revealing:

Thus allowing an openly gay presence in ranks will be very difficult until we have committed leadership for it. I certainly had trouble figuring out how to provide such leadership in 1993. While I believed all people are created equal, I did not believe such equality extended to all ideas or all cultures. And since I didn’t know how to advocate the assimilation of this particular form of diversity, I saw no way to prevent it from undermining unit cohesion.

This amounts to, "I find these homosexuals strange and frightening." This is, after all, coming from a 76-year-old man who spent his entire career in the military and retired 15 years ago. I'm reminded of how Justice Lewis Powell, discussing the 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick case which upheld laws against sodomy, remarked to one of his law clerks, "I don't believe I've ever met a homosexual." The clerk was gay, as were some of Powell's previous clerks.

Finally, McPeak says, "We know, or ought to, that warriors are inspired by male bonding, by comradeship, by the knowledge that they survive only through relying on each other. To undermine cohesion is to endanger everyone." And why would "male bonding" be at risk if there were gay people around? Is McPeak concerned that actual gay people might make the frisson of homoeroticism present in so much male bonding a little unsettling?

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

-- Paul Waldman

Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann of the New America Foundation have completed their latest study into the use of drones in Pakistan (with a handy map of the strikes no less). A few of the relevant facts and figures:

Between 830 and 1,210 people have been killed. A third of those have been civilians, two-thirds have been militants.

There were 51 reported strikes in 2009, more than during the entire Bush administration, in which there were 45.

Pakistanis hate the drone attacks. Only 9% of Pakistanis approve of their use.

In the three weeks following the suicide bombings that killed several CIA Agents in Khost, there were 13 drone strikes, which were likely retaliation for the attack.

The bottom line however, seems to be that drones' usefulness is limited:

But the U.S. drone strikes don't seem to have had any great effect on the Taliban's ability to mount operations in Pakistan or Afghanistan or deter potential recruits, and they no longer have the element of surprise.

Still, heavy use of drones is likely to continue, despite strategic concerns about blowback and the possibility that the strikes themselves are illegal -- both because they've been successful at hitting certain high value targets and because it's the only way for the U.S. to target its enemies inside Pakistan.

Joe Lieberman is reportedly proposing a bill next week that would repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" law that prevents gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military. Jamie Kirchick, who interviews Lieberman, comments:

WASHINGTON - Just when you thought Joe Lieberman couldn't frustrate and perplex liberals any further, he is going off to become chief sponsor of the most significant piece of socially progressive legislation that Congress will deal with this year.

-- A. Serwer

Over at Foreign Policy, Israeli scholar Danny Kaplan has an article about Israel's experience since it lifted its ban on gays serving in the military back in 1993. The piece's title -- "They're Here, They're Queer, It's No Big Deal" -- pretty much says it all:

The United States and Turkey are now the only NATO military powers that do not allow gays to serve openly, but Israel and other countries have shown that the participation of gay soldiers in combat units presents no risk for military effectiveness. What's more, acknowledging their presence might even improve unite cohesion.

It is important to understand that even without restrictions, most gay soldiers do not "come out" in combat settings. Only a few of the soldiers I have interviewed confided their sexuality in friends from the unit, and they often did so shortly before leaving their position. Most of them developed strategies to separate between their various personal and social identities. One soldier, a gay activist prior to his enlistment, explained to me: "I don't really see that the army and my identity have anything to do with each other. Just like there is a separation of religion and state, I draw a line between the army and my ‘religion.'" This ability to balance conflicting identities is hardly unusual in the army. Soldiers of various ethnic and religious backgrounds similarly adjust to the melting pot of military culture.

This is why the policy of "don't ask, don't tell" has little relevance to the reality of military life. Despite what military officials want to ask or insist on not asking, and despite what gay activists want soldiers to tell about their sexuality, most straight soldiers are not interested in hearing it, and many gay soldiers are not interested in telling it. They simply are what they are and find ways to function together. Policies restricting the participation of gay soldiers paradoxically make sexuality a more salient issue.

This couldn't help but bring to mind the now-infamous NPR interview with former Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter. When Melissa Block pointed out to him that there are lots of gay people now serving in the military, he replied, "But they aren't open about it, like you just said. It's like if you want to work for NPR, you don't go to work and on the first day say, hey, I want everybody to know that I'm gay." (Hunter also contended that the "special bond" between members of the military will be broken "if you open up the military to transgenders, to hermaphrodites, to gays and lesbians.")

What are supporters of the ban missing that the Israelis understand? It has only been in recent years that the broader public has become aware of the mundane reality of most gay people's lives. Many older people like Hunter (and the Republican membership of the Senate Armed Services Committee, apparently), haven't quite gotten that message. They seem to believe that there are only two states of gayness: closeted, and RuPaul, with nothing in between. They seem to think that existence as a gay person, in the military or elsewhere, is one long gay pride parade, where everyone is required to dance in assless chaps (see the classic article from The Onion, "Gay-Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance of Gays Back 50 Years"). An exit from the closet, whether by a soldier or anyone else, must be performed in hot pants, to the pulsing strains of "It's Raining Men."

If that's what you think, it's only understandable that the prospect of openly gay people serving sounds like a recipe for chaos. But chances are that when it actually happens, things are going to go a lot more smoothly than the ban's proponents fear.

-- Paul Waldman

A key part of the conservative argument for keeping the ban on gay Americans serving in the military is that military leaders supposedly tell us that removing the ban will cause untold chaos. The problem comes when those military leaders begin to change their minds, as John McCain is finding out. His previous position was that "the day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, 'Senator, we ought to change the policy,' then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it." Oh, well. Now that the military leadership has done just that, McCain decided that he has to support the ban because Colin Powell does. Seems that may not be quite the ace in the hole he was hoping for:

During the hearing, McCain told the committee that "the reason why I supported the policy to start with is because Gen. Colin Powell, who was then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is the one that strongly recommended we adopt this policy in the Clinton administration. I have not heard General Powell or any of the other military leaders reverse their position." But today, Powell released a statement doing exactly that. "In the almost 17 years since the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ legislation was passed, attitudes and circumstances have changed. I fully support the new approach presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee this week by Secretary of Defense Gates and Admiral Mullen," his statement read.

Just going out on a limb here, but I'm guessing McCain will come up with yet another justification for his continued support of the ban. Perhaps he could join his good friend Sen. Saxby Chambliss, who warned that repealing the ban could force the military to tolerate "alcohol use, adultery, fraternization and body art." Come to think of it, if the Navy Seals started painting henna on their faces, it would be totally badass.

-- Paul Waldman

You'll be shocked to learn it comes from Bill Kristol. Outraged that President Obama would offer a moral justification for removing the ban on gay Americans serving in the military, Kristol writes this:

Here is contemporary liberalism in a nutshell: No need to consider costs as well as benefits. No acknowledgment of competing goods or coexisting rights. No appreciation of the constraints of public sentiment or the challenges of organizational complexity. No sense that not every part of society can be treated dogmatically according to certain simple propositions. Just the assertion that something must be done because it is in some abstract way "the right thing."

I realize there's an impulse to say about a statement that you disagreed with, "This one statement is the entirety of the opposing ideology! In a nutshell!" I've probably said something similar myself at some point. But let's take this bit of ridiculousness piece by piece.

1. "No need to consider costs as well as benefits." What are the costs of allowing gay Americans to serve? Kristol doesn't actually say. Perhaps he felt no need to consider them! But seriously, what are they, Bill? He might mention the old standby, "unit cohesion," which in practice means that homophobic straight soldiers won't like serving with gay soldiers. I'm sure that's true. But if the prejudices of some were sufficient reason to ban certain groups from serving, then our military probably wouldn't have enough members to function.

2. "No appreciation of the constraints of public sentiment or the challenges of organizational complexity." Public sentiment left Kristol behind a long time ago. Polls today find that between two-thirds and three-quarters of the American public think the ban should be lifted (see my column today for links). As for "the challenges of organizational complexity," Kristol doesn't explain what that means either. But the armed forces deal with the challenges of organizational complexity every day. If someone said, "We can't deliver food to the troops in Iraq -- that presents challenges of organizational complexity!", you'd reply that it would be best to figure out the nature of the challenge, and then accomplish the task. That's what the military does.

3. "No sense that not every part of society can be treated dogmatically according to certain simple propositions." While it's true that the military differs from other sectors of society in many ways, it's hard to see why Kristol sees this kind of discrimination as distinct from the kinds of discrimination he finds unacceptable (as with all of these assertions, he provides no supporting evidence or explanation). If it's "treating the military dogmatically" to say that we won't accept discrimination in the armed forces, would Kristol be opposed to a move to re-segregate the military, or bar black soldiers from attaining a rank higher than, say, captain? If the only reason not to do so is the "simple proposition" that discrimination is wrong, why be so dogmatic?

4. "Just the assertion that something must be done because it is in some abstract way 'the right thing.'" Kristol seems to be under the impression that the only justification anyone in the administration has offered for removing the ban is these three words. But of course, there are lots of reasons, and they aren't abstract at all. There's the resources the military spends on rooting out gay service members and the loss of those service members' talents, for starters. But discrimination isn't just wrong "in some abstract way," any more than freedom is good "in some abstract way" or justice is worthwhile "in some abstract way." Principles are what we build our society on, and they cease being abstract once we apply them. Ask Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach, a highly decorated 18-year veteran of the Air Force, whether discrimination is "abstract" to him as he faces discharge from the military to which he devoted his career and for which he has risked his life.

If this is the best argument in support of DADT that conservative punditry's leading light can come up with, getting rid of it should be a piece of cake. And fortunately, today people like Kristol will have a much harder time hiding behind the military brass than they did in 1993. While there will certainly be officers wanting to keep the ban, one person the ban supporters won't be able to count on is Adm. Mike Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs, who gave some moving testimony today:

"It is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do," Mullen said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

"We have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens. For me, personally, it comes down to integrity — theirs as individuals and ours as institutions," Mullen added.

Those Joint Chiefs, with their impractical liberalism!

-- Paul Waldman

Using the handy historical tables of the budget the White House put out today, I created this graph to show just how radical Barack Obama's agenda to disarm America and surrender to the terrorists really is:

The administration is requesting just under $750 billion for defense for next year, or over $2,400 for every man, woman, and child in America. Though there's plenty of waste in the Pentagon, the reason the defense budget is so large isn't $1,000 ashtrays. It's that we've come to accept that the United States has an obligation to extend its military reach to every corner of the globe, as Matt Yglesias reminds us. Most of this has little to do with "defense" in the real meaning of the term, except in the most tangential way.

It's clear that the administration has no intention of challenging that fundamental idea. I suppose it's possible that in their heart of liberal hearts, they'd love to cut the defense budget in half and spend the money on schools, health care, and other leftist boondoggles. But a Democratic administration is never going to do that, because they're afraid of looking "soft." I suppose it's possible that a future Republican president might make a genuine change in our defense posture, insulated as he or she would be from those charges. But I'm not holding my breath.

In the end, when it comes to defense, we can nibble around the edges -- cut an unneeded airplane here, an outdated weapons system there. But when even a Democratic president talks about freezing "nondefense discretionary spending," as though freezing defense discretionary spending is so absurd it need not even be contemplated, that line is going to continue to go up.

-- Paul Waldman

I think Spencer Ackerman may be missing something when he highlights this complaint from John Boehner on repealing the prohibition on gays and lesbians serving openly in the U.S. military:

Boehner predicted that any action on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would lead to a “divisive debate” and “do nothing more than distract the real debate that should occur here about helping to get our economy going again and getting American people back to work.“

The answer is that most of the country supports repealing DADT, and Republicans aren't eager to get into a fight that public opinion doesn't support them on and that will redefine the GOP as the party of homophobes for another generation. The other day Jonah Goldberg was fretting and doing backflips to avoid stating the obvious, that a debate over DADT would inflame the substantial homophobic presence in the Republican Party:

Obama wants to win back independents. And while I doubt that independents care very much — at least right now — about the issue, they also don't like big fights over gays. Stirring-up social conservatives and eliciting the inevitable harsh soundbites from, say, Pat Robertson would provide the White House with an opportunity to reprise the anti-talk-radio storylines of early last year (remember the whole White House v. Limbaugh fuss?). Whatever the merits of the issues, and fair or not, independents tend to blame conservatives for those sorts of debates.

Unlike marriage equality, the American people seem pretty straightforward on DADT: Not allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly is bigotry. They're uncomfortable with that. And the GOP is uncomfortable with cementing the impression that they are homophobes who aren't simply comfortable "maintaining the traditional definition of marriage" but who really want to exclude the LGBT community from as many aspects of public life as possible.

Goldberg concluded that "Obama and Pelosi aren't actually going to do anything about Don't Ask, Don't Tell for the foreseeable future." Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has barred the discharge of service members "whose sexual orientation is revealed by third parties or jilted partners," and congressional hearings on repealing DADT start tomorrow.

-- A. Serwer

The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), a once-every-four-years report to Congress on the military's defense planning, was leaked over the weekend in advance of its official release this morning.

Congress instituted the QDR in 1996 -- mandating the Department of Defense to regularly review national security threats and military objectives -- after the end of the Cold War left the U.S. without a clear strategic focus in the medium and long terms. The 2000 QDR was notable for being released just before George W.Bush's election, and was essentially rendered obsolete by the September 11 attacks. The 2006 QDR, or “Long War” QDR, was the clearest evocation of the late Bush administration's understanding of the war on terror's military aspect. It goes without saying that defense wonks have much anticipated the 2010 QDR's release.

The exciting bits are as follows:

• The cancellation of the Navy's Next Generation Cruiser program, CG(X). The program's objective was to replace nearly two dozen Ticonderoga class cruisers after 2017.
• The elimination of the “Long War” framework that structured the 2006 QDR. The United States is now involved in “wars,” rather than a “War.” This marks a substantial ideological shift from the Bush interpretation of the relationship between Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terror.
• The formal disposal of the “two war” standard, an oft-misunderstood requirement that specified the need to fight and win (or fight and hold, depending on the edition) two major regional wars simultaneously. The requirement was finessed away and replaced by a set of scenarios all of which involve managing simultaneous, geographically separated crises.

• The greening of the Department of Defense, including efforts to make the military more environmentally friendly, to anticipate and prepare for environmentally driven crises and disasters, and to achieve energy security.
• Reform of the acquisition process, including the hiring of 20,000 civilian acquisitions personnel by 2015. This would rebuild an acquisitions staff gutted by privatization efforts in the Clinton and Bush administrations, which often left development of the military's equipment stock in the hands of private contractors.

What the QDR doesn’t do is lay the groundwork for serious cuts to the U.S. defense budget. Priorities and funding are rearranged, but it’s hard to imagine how the strategic ideas set forth in the QDR will lead to a substantially smaller defense establishment. This is one reason why progressives don’t tend to follow the QDR as closely as conservatives; the changes from edition to edition seem like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Nevertheless, they should.

For additional commentary, see Spencer Ackerman, Galrahn, Erik Loomis and CNAS on the climate change question, and Matthew Yglesias on China.

--Robert Farley

(Flickr/Matt Morgan)

Judging by progress made this week, it looks increasingly like Don't Ask, Don't Tell could be repealed this year as part of the defense authorization bill. On Tuesday, Sam Stein reported that White House officials and Democratic members of Congress are already drumming up support for legislation that would allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. Now, the Pentagon is seriously discussing the repeal in anticipation of a potential Senate hearing on the subject later this month. The simple fact that talks are even happening is encouraging, but there's still some foot-dragging on the Pentagon's behalf:

In the year since Mr. Obama’s inauguration, the Pentagon has moved slowly on the issue and even now internal dissent remains over how fast any change should be instituted. At a meeting last week of Admiral Mullen and the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, the officers debated the timing of any repeal and how much stress it would place on the forces.

A one-page memorandum drafted by staff members as a discussion point for the meeting said that the chiefs could adopt the view that "now is not the time" because of the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and that the military would be better off delaying the start of the repeal process until 2011.

The concern over "appropriate timing" really appears to be the only argument the military has left against DADT, and it's hardly a strong one. It's worth going back to a paper by Col. Om Prakash published this fall in the Pentagon journal Joint Force Quarterly, which determined that "after a careful examination, there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that unit cohesion will be negatively affected if homosexuals serve openly. ... Based on this research, it is not time for the administration to reexamine the issue; rather it is time for the administration to examine how to implement the repeal of the ban." The article, which was reviewed by Mullen, also acknowledged:

If one considers strictly the lost manpower and expense, DADT is a costly failure. Proponents of lifting the ban on homosexuals serving openly can easily appeal to emotion given the large number of people lost and treasure spent—an entire division of soldiers and two F-22s.

Given that troop withdrawal from Afghanistan won't begin for another year and a half (and is hardly guaranteed to be speedy), and that DADT serves no purpose other than to keep capable soldiers from serving, the worry that a repeal would be disruptive seems like little more than another attempt to kick the can down the road. Fortunately, it seems like there's enough momentum in Congress to keep that from happening.

--Alexandra Gutierrez

Back in the 1960s, Canadian media scholar Marshall McLuhan told the world that “the medium is the message,” by which he meant that content was far less meaningful than the form in which that content was delivered. If you’re reading, McLuhan felt, your brain is operating in a specific way, regardless of whether you’re reading Ulysses or the latest Penthouse Forum. If you're watching moving images on your television, your brain is operating in a fundamentally different way. There are profound implications for what you’ll retain and how your mind will work in the future.

Lots of McLuhan's claims were speculative, and the joke about him goes like this: He argued that print was a dying medium. And if you have to suffer through reading his awful prose, you begin to believe it. But I couldn't help but think of McLuhan when I saw Matt Yglesias note that according to a new report from the Center for New American Security, at least part of the intelligence community’s difficulties in Afghanistan come from their reliance on Powerpoint:

The format of intelligence products matters. Commanders who think PowerPoint storyboards and color-coded spreadsheets are adequate for describing the Afghan conflict and its complexities have some soul searching to do. Sufficient knowledge will not come from slides with little more text than a comic strip. Commanders must demand substantive written narratives and analyses from their intel shops and make the time to read them. There are no shortcuts. Microsoft Word, rather than PowerPoint, should be the tool of choice for intelligence professionals in a counterinsurgency.

Although like any piece of software it can be used for good or evil, Powerpoint lends itself particularly well to lousy presentations. And from all accounts, in recent years, Powerpoint presentations have become as common in the military as close-cropped haircuts. What many don't understand is that taking complex information and data and synthesizing it so it will be understood, whether in a bunch of bullet points or in a graph, is both art and science. When you do it poorly, you end up with something like this (which appeared in Tom Ricks' book Fiasco), which was supposed to explain the military's strategy in Iraq:

Imagine you were a captain in the Army, and your commanding officer handed you that to explain what we were trying to accomplish in Iraq, and how we were going to go about it. Looks good, sir, I'll have my men get right on that!

Of course, it's not just the military. Here's a shot of the man who created Powerpoint, standing in front of one of the most ghastly slides ever created:

--Paul Waldman

In what is basically a Sick, Sad World report, Jen DiMascio writes in Politico:

Defense contractors developing the Army’s largest modernization program — the Future Combat System — also were paid $91 million in 2007 to report back to the Pentagon on how well the program was performing, according to a new inspector general report, adding fuel to demands for tougher conflict-of-interest rules.

The Nov. 24 Defense Department inspector general report, reviewed by POLITICO, was sparked by an anonymous tip. The probe found that the $100 billion FCS program contained numerous conflicts that went unreported and that, between 1987 and 2007, the Pentagon increased its reliance on contractors for quality assurance and other tests by 375 percent.

Of course, some contractors can be necessary. But the private sector is mighty good at keeping itself in business and creating reasons, or "new markets," to stay and expand -- not exactly good news for an armed presence trying to convince civilians that an occupation isn't happening. Several contractors accused of abuses of funds by outside commissions continue to operate in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's already pretty egregious to waste taxpayer dollars on legitimate oversight if you're not going to enforce it, but throwing $91 million at a company so they can tell you what a good job they're doing? They might as well drop the cash from fighter jets as they fly over Afghanistan. And I’m sure I can think of a few other budgets where the cash injections would be very much appreciated.

--Laura Dean

As Chris Matthews revealed last night after President Obama's speech, some pieces of Beltway conventional wisdom just won't die:

"It seems like in this case, there isn't a lot of excitement," Matthews said. "I watched the cadets, they were young kids - men and women who were committed to serving their country professionally it must be said, as officers. And, I didn't see much excitement. But among the older people there, I saw, if not resentment, skepticism. I didn't see a lot of warmth in that crowd out there. The president chose to address tonight and I thought it was interesting. He went to maybe the enemy camp tonight to make his case. I mean, that's where Paul Wolfowitz used to write speeches for, back in the old Bush days. That's where he went to rabble rouse the "we're going to democratize the world" campaign back in '02. So, I thought it was a strange venue."

Oddly enough, Kathryn Jean Lopez at the National Review had the best response to this bit of idiocy from Matthews. That said, Tweety isn't alone in thinking that liberals "hate the troops"; Dana Milbank said as much in his column yesterday when he argued that liberals are "uneasy" about Obama's appearances before military audiences. Still, it's incredibly frustrating to see this piece of zombie conventional wisdom shamble through elite discourse, if only because liberals have consciously been pushing against it for years.

When it came to opposing the Iraq War, liberals were careful to distinguish between opposing the policy but supporting the troops. In fact, "support the troops by bringing them home" has been and still is a fairly common liberal refrain. What's more, liberals haven't been particularly shy about any of this: In each election cycle since the wars began, liberals have attacked Republicans for being insufficiently supportive of the troops. During the Bush administration, liberals -- and Democratic politicians -- regularly criticized Republicans for their failure to purchase appropriate equipment (body armor, for instance), provide adequate veterans' benefits, or for their reliance on "stop-loss" to maintain troop levels. Indeed, liberals were so desperate to escape the anti-military stigma that they flocked to Gen. Wesley Clark during the 2004 primaries. When it became clear that Clark had neither the will or organization to mount a credible campaign, they joined their moderate and conservative fellow-travelers in anointing a Vietnam veteran, John Kerry, as their standard-bearer against George W. Bush.

This might not seem like a big deal, but it is. As long as Beltway types continue to propagate the myth that Democrats (and liberals in particular) are hostile to the military, and as long as voters respond positively to that myth, it will be necessary for the Democratic Party to embrace the military establishment in any way that it can, regardless of the consequences and regardless of the merits. And when both major political parties are unwilling to break from or criticize the military establishment in any meaningful sense, it makes it incredibly difficult to create even the smallest space for credible disagreement with the "military-industrial-political" complex.

--Jamelle Bouie

Over the weekend, Army Chief of Staff, Gen. George Casey, became the latest "enabler" of Islamic terrorism, warning that the Ft. Hood shooting could cause a backlash within the armed forces and praising the Army's diversity:

“I’ve asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that,” General Casey said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union. “It would be a shame — as great a tragedy as this was — it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well.”

General Casey used almost the same language in an appearance on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” an indication of the Army’s effort to ward off bias against the more than 3,000 Muslims in its ranks.

“A diverse Army gives us strength,” General Casey, who visited Fort Hood Friday, said on “This Week.”

I've argued before that Islamophobia is a threat to our national security and I won't rehash those arguments here. Hopefully those of us who are using the Ft. Hood shootings to suggest that Muslims shouldn't be allowed to serve in the armed forces, or that Muslim servicemen should be treated as potential traitors will heed Casey's warning -- people like Rep. Sue Myrick, Michelle Malkin, Allan West and Brian "pure genes" Kilmeade. Somehow I doubt they will.

In the meantime, investigators seem to have tentatively concluded that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan acted out "under a welter of emotional, ideological and religious pressures," and that the shootings were "not part of a terrorist plot." The Miami shootings that occurred on Friday should have reminded us that there a number of reasons why people snap: The fact that Hasan was a Muslim does not mean that his rampage was an act of terrorism. But even if it was, the notion that all American Muslims should now come under a cloud of suspicion does not follow.

-- A. Serwer

The Washington Post today profiles Lt. Carey Cash, the Navy chaplain serving at Camp David, where President Obama attends services. Cash -- a great nephew of music icon Johnny Cash -- is a conservative Southern Baptist who won't, apparently, give Obama the trouble that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright did.

If Obama is seeking some spiritual guidance as he contemplates troop escalations in Afghanistan, though, I hope to God his admiration for Cash does not lend credence to what Cash has to say about God and war.

According to remarks he made to the National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces in 2003 (h/t to David Brody for the link), Cash believes that faith actually saved Marines from death on the battlefield. He described a brutal battle in Baghdad, on April 10, 2003, after which, "by every assessment, during that nine-hour ordeal, our battalion should have sustained untold casualties and countless dead." Instead, Cash maintained, there was a "miracle":

It cannot be denied. Someone was watching over us. And He was beside us and surrounding us, shielding us and defending us, fighting for us. And it wasn’t luck, or good fortune, or just some cosmic play of chance. … It was the Lord God Himself. You see, according to my religious tradition (and the tradition of many in our battalion) – our God knows something about battle. He fought against Satan in the wilderness and defeated his schemes! He fought against sin at the cross and defeated its power! He fought against death at the tomb, and burst its bonds. And because of this, can He not do all things for you and for me?

As military leaders and strategists reflect back upon our battles in Iraq, there is no doubt that there will be many lessons learned, many conclusions drawn. But the one conclusion that cannot go unspoken or unsung…is that OUR GOD IS ABLE TO DELIVER US! For He is our Rock, our Fortress, and our Deliverer. And the truth is, we all, whether we are in the streets of Baghdad or not, we all need His deliverance. Because we all face enemies. Fear, doubt, worry, discouragement, temptation, despair, the rising power of unbelief…these too are enemies, and they are often just as sinister, just as fierce, and just as unrelenting as evil men lurking in the shadows of Baghdad. But here’s the message: If God can deliver an isolated, cut off battalion of U.S. Marines, surrounded by enemies in the Belly of the Beast … can He not deliver you and
me from the enemies that assail us in our daily lives?

Frequently critics of the military's evangelizing culture, including me, have defined it as a civil-liberties issue for American service personnel, as well as a public diplomacy question, to the extent that proselytization of non-Christian civilians takes place. (Cash also has some things to say on the inadequacies of the Muslim faith.) But reading Cash's speech today raised another, possibly more dire concern: Should military chaplains really be misleading young service members that God will save them from a rocket-propelled grenade if they just believe? Surely their lives are more precious and in need of real protection than such simplistic theology maintains.

--Sarah Posner

In recent articles, a Stars and Stripes reporter has claimed that officials screen reporters before allowing them to interview people in the military or embed with a unit in Iraq or Afghanistan, and that they have been accepting or rejecting journalists’ requests based on whether or not their previous coverage has been favorable to the military.

Defense and military officials acknowledge that they use assessments provided by a private contractor, the Rendon Group, to learn more about a reporter’s background. Finding out about a journalist, and reading their previous work, before they come for an interview is simply doing due diligence, and that is something that journalists expect. Nevertheless, as The Washington Post reports, some people have claimed that the military has turned reporters down because of stories they have written.

Officials, however, deny that “the analysis has been used to exclude journalists from embedding with U.S. military units in combat zones or to bar them from interviewing military personnel.” In fact, officials have told journalists they could not interview certain people in the military – I know, because it happened to me. Last September, I was planning to visit Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and interview people who were learning how to become interrogators, and I spoke with Tanja Linton, a media relations officer in the Fort Huachuca Public Affairs Office, about the visit. I was very much looking forward to it.

Then, not long before I was scheduled to leave Washington, I got an email from Linton: The subject heading said the following: “Visit to Fort Huachuca cancelled.” In her email, dated September 15, 2008, she wrote: “In preparing for your visit to Fort Huachuca, we had the opportunity to do some more research and learned that you authored Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War and edited One of the Guys: Women as Aggressors and Torturers. This raised concerns about how our Soldiers would be portrayed and caused us to take a closer look at your original request.”

I was surprised – and disappointed. I had thought that the fact that I had an understanding of the subject of U.S. interrogations and had written about them in my book Monstering -- which chronicles the Abu Ghraib scandal, received a full-page review on The New York Times Book Review, and was praised by one of the Pentagon’s top public-affairs officials on Amazon -- would have put me in a strong position for the interviews that I had planned on doing. Instead, I was barred. I’m not sure what was said between Linton and the other people at Fort Huachuca about my upcoming visit, but the conversations did not go very well, at least from my point of view, because of the cancellation. I also wondered who was involved in the decision, particularly since Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, who was the top intelligence officer in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib scandal, serves as an intelligence commander at Fort Huachuca.

Ultimately, the decision that the Fort Huachuca officials made to cancel the visit seemed very small-town-official-like: We don’t like something you wrote, and so we won’t talk to you. It also seemed below the Army. Most of the people whom I have worked with in the public-affairs offices have been extraordinarily professional and helpful, and I have learned a great deal about the military from them. My experience with the public-affairs office of Fort Huachuca, however, only confirms the accusations against the military, showing that it attempts to choose only those journalists who will write positive stories about them.

--Tara McKelvey

As Adam mentioned earlier, two New York Times reporters revealed some new information today about the construction of secret prisons for detainees, one of the most controversial aspects of Bush's global war on terrorism. Back then, the U.S. was trying to eradicate terrorism in all parts of the globe. The strategy was misguided, to say the least, given the nature of the enemy, which constantly formed different alliances and cells in various countries. This was all compounded by the fact that even the designation of who was an enemy was steadily shifting, according to whether the U.S. government considered a particular group to be a terrorist organization.

But now the bar may be higher. The global goodness campaign is underway, with American soldiers, particularly those in special operations, trying to make the world a better place -- “Peace Corps workers with guns,” as they are sometimes called. “Our foreseeable future will be one of persistent conflict involving Third World countries, insurgencies and terrorist organizations. It will be fueled by poverty, illiteracy, injustice, expanding Islamic extremism, and competition for energy, food, water and other resources,” wrote Brigadier General Bennet Sacolick in Special Warfare magazine, explaining that “our soldiers, our warrior diplomats” are out in the field and developing relationships with people in countries around the world. These soldiers are highly professional and prepared for almost any mission, as I learned while watching a group of them train this week in the forests near Fort Bragg, North Carolina. And, as Sacolick wrote, “It is the ability to understand the balance between the two opposite notions of diplomacy and force that makes our Soldiers so remarkably valuable.”

The soldiers are an impressive bunch. But, on a broader scale, the military may have stepped too far into the field of diplomacy. Matt Armstrong, an adjunct staffer at RAND, wrote about the Defense Department’s “mission creep,” describing the controversy about the department's role. There was a time, of course, when U.S. diplomats handled diplomacy. Under Bush, however, special operations in the military were expanded, as well as other aspects of the Defense Department, and the State Department was sidelined.

In a somewhat different way, this approach to the bureaucracy has continued under Obama. Today, the military is the leading force in the new counterinsurgency campaigns, providing the bulk of its personnel, and represents a new form of global engagement that seems honorable and is based on good intentions but is no less ambitious or sweeping than the former war against terrorism. As in the past, it is difficult to measure progress in these efforts, let alone victory.

--Tara McKelvey

The body of Navy Captain Michael Scott Speicher has been discovered in a grave in a remote part of Anbar province, the area where his jet went down in January 1991 at the onset of the Persian Gulf War. The story of his disappearance and the nearly two-decades long search for him captures the enduring myth of conspiracy and cover-up in this country, keeping false hope alive about his fate and -- in this case -- apparently serving the interest of a military eager to stoke enthusiasm for the second Iraq war.

In late 2002, military officials announced that Speicher, who had been listed as a fatality in 1991, was actually “missing / captured.”

”Some speculated that it was part of a broader campaign inside the Pentagon to drum up support for the war,” wrote Greg Jaffe in The Washington Post.

When I was in college, I wrote for a Washington City Paper editor named Jack Shafer, who is now a Slate columnist, and he told me that the world could use more conspiracy theories. Years later, he said that I had been taking him too seriously, but I think what he meant back then was that the world should be more skeptical. The problem with conspiracy theories is that they are founded on faith, not skepticism, and rely on a deep-seated belief that what the government says is wrong, no matter what the facts are. The notion of conspiracy theory and cover-up is so ingrained in the public that journalists may not write stories unless there is one.

During the Vietnam era, as Deborah Nelson reported in her book The War Behind Me
, military officials would conduct an investigation into an alleged criminal act as a way to keep journalists away. Once an investigation was announced, it was no longer a so-called cover-up, and the journalists dropped the story. There are plenty of things hidden in the government, and 2.4 million officials now have security clearances that allow them access to classified information, as Secrecy News reports, but nevertheless it is awfully hard to keep a secret in the Army, an institution filled with tens of thousands of paranoid men and women.

One of the biggest cover-ups in recent years -- the death of Pat Tillman, which was first described in a heroic manner and then revealed to be a case of friendly fire -- was exposed within weeks. The idea that the Army could hide something for months or years is a powerful one, though, and fuels rumor and reporting. Meanwhile, actual crimes have been committed at U.S.-run detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the ensuing military investigations have resulted in only a handful of prosecutions, but have ensured that journalists do little to pursue the stories or shed light on the truth of what is happening in the military.

--Tara McKelvey

We know that drones kill, but we don’t really know if they kill the right people, or at least we don’t know how often.

The Pentagon has been stingy with information on the accuracy of the drones. Counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen and Center for a New American Security fellow Andrew Exum called for a reduction in these attacks, explaining in a New York Times op-ed that they are not nearly as good at killing high-level al-Qaeda leaders as military experts claim, but Defense Department officials still have not provided much more information on why we should continue to use them at the current levels.

Now, however, military officials are talking about ramping up the use of drones and expanding their capacities, as the Times reports. It is all very exotic, particularly the drones that may someday swarm through the air, darkening the skies “like locusts.” It's also potentially lucrative. Wired’s Danger Room describes one of the cooler drones, a brand-new “Excalibur aircraft, a 13 foot-long, 10 foot-span, half-scale test model” and shows the same kind of techno-fascination that is shared by people in the Pentagon – and celebrated by military contractors who see drones, as the Times reports, as a “prime growth area.”

--Tara McKelvey

A news photographer told me that when he was covering the war in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, he discovered that the Army color-coded photographs that appeared in newspapers and magazines: Green meant that they liked the picture and that it reflected well on the troops; yellow meant that they had mixed feelings about the picture; and red meant that the photograph showed the troops in a bad light. The people who were guilty of taking too many red-coded photographs found it harder to get access to soldiers. That was back when Donald Rumsfeld was in charge -- a man who was, of course, hostile toward the media and tried to guilt-trip them into presenting a positive picture of U.S. forces in Iraq. When he left office, those days were supposed to be over.

Except that they are not over -- not by a long shot. An article in today’s Stars and Stripes, a publication that receives federal funding but is editorially independent from the Pentagon, said that one of their reporters, Heath Druzin, was told that he would not be allowed to embed “with a unit of the 1st Cavalry Division that is attempting to secure the violent city of Mosul.” Why not? Because his newspaper has “’refused to highlight’ good news in Iraq.” Specifically, Druzin had written -- surprise, surprise -- that “many Iraqi residents of Mosul would like the American soldiers to leave.”

People who work in the public-affairs offices at the Pentagon can be helpful and professional, and some of them are a pleasure to speak with, but they can also be petty and controlling, behaving like small-town officials denying reporters access to documents and interviews. They have, for example, Googled my name and then canceled interviews that I had scheduled at military installations in the United States, because they did not like some of the articles I've written. Whether public-affairs officials are color-coding war photographs, determining the good-news level of the image, or banning a reporter access to troops, they are antagonizing the people who report on their activities -- not, it would seem, a good way of getting the kind of positive coverage they are after.

--Tara McKelvey

During a panel discussion of the Center for a New American Security's latest report on Afghanistan, Boston University Professor Andrew Bacevich was brought in to question the assumptions underpinning that strategy and the one proposed by the Obama administration.

Bacevich raises the question, not uncommon among those skeptical about the War in Afghanistan, of whether or not the country represents an actual national security interest to the United States. He pointed out that, whatever the nature of the safe haven Afghanistan provided to al-Qaeda, the real failures that led to the 9/11 attacks were found in the intelligence and law enforcement agencies that didn't prevent terrorists from traveling into the United States where they could prepare for and carry out their mission. In terms of national security interests, Bacevich observes, Mexico is much more important to the United States and much nearer, but has developed serious problems of violence and government legitimacy. Yet no one would suggest sending 30,000, or 60,000, American troops to the country to solve these problems. (Here's an op-ed where Bacevich argues against involvement in Afghanistan).

It's an oversimplification, to be sure. Afghanistan and Pakistan are both much closer to failing as states than Mexico, and Pakistan's nuclear arsenal adds a deep complication to an already difficult calculus. Further, and this isn't a concern for realists but should be for liberals, the anti-democratic, anti-human rights Taliban, alone or as part of a coalition, could end up returning to power in Afghanistan and destabilizing Pakistan in the event of international departure from the region. That, alongside the problems created between Afghanistan, Pakistan and India after the U.S. government more-or-less abandoned the region in the late 1980s and early 1990s, should give us pause.

Colonel Christopher Cavoli, who also spoke on the panel and will be returning to Afghanistan for another tour as a combat commander in the near future, offered a sobering prediction about the new strategy in that conflict: "We would know it worked because fighting will increase dramatically." He explained that effective counterinsurgency would separate the population from insurgents, forcing the latter group to violently confront American troops already seeking to engage them.

It doesn't bode well for the success of the president's campaign in Afghanistan: Already on a short lease from congressional leaders and public opinion, this sign of success will also be perceived domestically as a sign of failure. Cavoli did observe, though, that the levels of violence in Afghanistan and Iraq today are roughly similar -- that is, despite their objective equivalence, in Iraq we see success and Afghanistan we see failure because of the relative trends of instability in Afghanistan and stability in Iraq. These converging indicators suggest that the ambiguity of this conflict -- both on the ground and strategically -- will confound American policy-makers for a long time to come.

-- Tim Fernholz

If true, this is hilarious. Reportedly, Venezuela and Russia were close to a deal on purchasing several ultra-quiet KILO diesel submarines. Last November's visit to Venezuela by the Russian nuclear battlecruiser Peter the Great was intended to enhance the status of both nations and to help seal the submarine deal. Unfortunately, a dispute broke out:

[Dave Sherlaw of Seawaves] pointed out that the KILOs (the subs) destined for Vietnam were originally to be purchased by Venezuela but that deal collapsed after a fistfight on board the Russian cruiser “Peter the Great” when it and other warships were visiting Venezuela.

Venezuela’s leader Chavez was in the process of visiting the Russian flotilla but his bodyguards were prevented from boarding. A fistfight then broke out between the Russian sailors and the bodyguards. The nose of one Russian was broken.

That ended the sub purchase.

Evidence against: Sailors get in fights all the time, although admittedly not with the bodyguard of the president in the presence of the president. To the extent that the fight mattered, it may simply have given Chavez and excuse to cancel a deal that he was already reconsidering.

As noted, the Russian naval visit to Venezuela was intended to enhance the prestige of both countries. The Russians could demonstrate a capability to operate on distant shores (the battlecruiser is currently operating off Somalia), and the Venezuelans could demonstrate the friendship of a powerful state. Since the planning of the expedition, however, world oil prices have crashed, along with the rest of the global economy. Whether or not this incident in particular had a role in quashing tighter cooperation between Venezuela and Russia, the specter of a Moscow-Caracas-Havana axis, such that it could have been, will not haunt the United States for some time.

Via Galrahn.

--Robert Farley

Yesterday's sudden news that the Obama administration is replacing the current commander in Afghanistan, the more conventionally trained Gen. David McKiernan, with the special forces and counterinsugrency focused Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, provides some serious insight into the president's approach to this conflict and his relationship with the DoD and the military in general. The somewhat unprecedented switch certainly reflects a sense of anxiety about the mission in Afghanistan and willingness to make something of an abrupt shift to get the wheels rolling again there; Spencer notes that counterinsurgents respect McChrystal and offers some insight into how he got his post and what he has planned.

But what impresses most are the continuing dividends of keeping Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his post for the new administration. Gates has shown a serious willingness to shift the ball on policy, whether realigning DoD budget priorities, supporting the administration's withdrawal plan, or now taking steps to demand accountability from senior military leadership (as he has in the past with other mistakes).

It seems that the decision to replace McKiernan came from Gates, but you can certainly imagine an alternate scenario where a different SecDefense wouldn't have come up with the idea or, even having concerns about the commander in Afghanistan, wouldn't have felt the decision politically tenable. One quote that has always stuck with me about our recent conflict is Lt. Col Paul Yingling's complaint that "as matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war." Those days may be coming to an end.

But the arrival of a new and possibly better-suited commander changes nothing about the deep intractability of the Afghanistan conflict; only time will tell if the new approach he brings with him will be effective. There's also the issue of his involvement with the misinformation surrounding the death of Pat Tillman, although my impression is that he caught that problem for being at the top of the wrong chain of command, and more worryingly, his past connections to torture. Hopefully someone has made it clear to him that those practices aren't acceptible anymore.

-- Tim Fernholz

It seems that the United States military is about to fire a servicemember, and one who speaks Arabic, for being gay. During his campaign, President Barack Obama promised to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the law that prevents gays and lesbians in the military from serving openly, but has yet to take action on the issue while in office, fearing a domestic political backlash but, more likely in my view, fearing a souring of relations with senior military commanders.

Aaron Belkin argues that the president doesn't even need to go through Congress to end the practice; I don't know one way or another, but Belkin's argument makes me wonder if there is a smart middle ground here -- much as I'd hope Obama would simply take a bold step here, it's pretty clear that isn't going to happen. But what if, instead of striking the law down immediately, he put a moratorium on its enforcement while announcing a "policy review." Say that he signed an executive order halting all investigations and prosceutions of soldiers for their sexual orientation over a six-month period while -- you know Washington would love this -- a blue ribbon commission looked into the effects of the policy. Given that all evidence indicates that no harm and great benefit comes from allowing gays and lesbians to serve, and that public opinion is on the side of this measure, it's not hard to predict what the outcome would be. But a symbolic delay would help defuse the politics of the situation while preventing further discharges.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell is a rank injustice and detrimental to our national security policy. LGBTQ citizens shouldn't have to wait on politics to serve anymore than they should to wait to marry their partners, and the delay must be excruciating. But a incremental proposal like this one might be the best way to set the stage for reversing DADT succesfully, or at least convincing the overburdened pragmatists in the administration that this is the best way to reverse the law succesfully. This is one of those clear, hard choices that the president promised to tackle. It would be a shame if he passed the buck.

-- Tim Fernholz

A quick update to the piece of this week's FundamentaList on the Al Jazeera story which showed a top military chaplain, Lt. Colonel Gary Hensley, urging military personnel at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan to "hunt people for Jesus." The Pentagon is denying that proselytizing or anything improper took place. It further claims that the Bibles written in Dari and Pashto for distribution to Afghans were not distributed but rather were destroyed.

But Al Jazeera has released unedited video showing Captain Emmit Furner telling personnel how to evade military rules prohibiting proselytizing: "Share the word of God, but be smart about it."

For more, don't miss Mikey Weinstein's and Jeff Sharlet's appearance on Democracy Now today. Sharlet calls the video "the tip of the iceberg" but adds that President Obama is taking a "hands off" approach to the problem.

The newly appointed head of the Air Force Academy (ground zero for Weinstein's battle against evangelism in the military), Gen. Mike Gould, is a devotee of Obama's friend Rick Warren. Sharlet writes in his piece in Harper's that "the general was so impressed by a presentation Pastor Rick Warren gave to senior officers that he sent an email to his 104 subordinates in which he advised them to read and live by Warren’s book The Purpose-Driven Life."

--Sarah Posner

The People's Liberation Army Navy carried out its 60th anniversary fleet review last week, with the United States Navy, the Russian Navy, and others in attendance. The review showcased growing Chinese naval power and served as a platform for speculation about China's plans for building aircraft carriers.

While the Chinese navy currently has numerous destroyers and submarines, its only aircraft carrier is an aging former Russian hulk purportedly called Shi Lang. Although this ship is unlikely ever to serve in a combat capacity, it could be used as a training platform for a larger carrier fleet. The problem is that there is no solid indication as of yet when such a fleet will appear. Articles about Chinese aircraft-carrier construction invariably contain sentences like "may be planning," and "up to six," neither of which tell us very much about China's actual shipbuilding plans. Aircraft carriers are an extremely expensive and time-intensive investment, and it takes quite a while to learn how to operate one.

There are some good reasons to think that China may be pursuing carriers, including a deal with Russia for the purchase of carrier-borne aircraft and the aforementioned refurbishment of Shi Lang. What we don't have, however, is any solid evidence that construction has begun or even that the Chinese have made a clear cut and irreversible commitment to push forward with carrier aviation. Absent that, I remain pretty happy with my assertion that the United States Navy will not face a serious peer competitor for a generation or longer. When you consider that Chinese naval growth has already produced balancing behavior on the part of U.S. Pacific allies, I'm really not convinced that alarm is in order.

--Robert Farley

In an earlier discussion of the defense budget, I mentioned that the Marine Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle had been exempted from the cuts. This was curious, because the EFV is over-budget and effectiveness-challenged. The motivating concept of the EFV is that the Marine Corps needs an armored vehicle that can move fast on land and in the water, all while carrying a gun and a squad of Marines. The idea is that the EFV can be deployed from an offshore amphibious assault ship, move across water at about 30mph, then move on land at about 45mph. The Marines believe that the EFV is key to being able to carry out amphibious invasions.

Via Armchair Generalist, it appears that Robert Gates is targeting the EFV, in spite of the fact that it wasn't mentioned in his budget memo:

I have also directed the QDR team to be realistic about the scenarios where direct U.S. military action would be needed – so we can better gauge our requirements. One of those that will be examined closely is the need for a new capability to get large numbers of troops from ship to shore – in other words, the capability provided by the Marine Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. No doubt, it was a real strategic asset during the first Gulf War to have a flotilla of Marines waiting off Kuwait City – forcing Saddam’s army to keep one eye on the Saudi border, and one eye on the coast. But we have to take a hard look at where it would be necessary or sensible to launch another major amphibious action again. In the 21st century, how much amphibious capability do we need?

--Robert Farley

After foolishly setting up the hostage situation with Somali pirates as a test of Obama's mettle, the right has been really desperate to convince themselves that President Obama could not possibly have authorized the use of force to take out the pirates in the event that Captain Phillips' life was in danger. As such, they've all latched onto this post from Uncle Jimbo at BLACKFIVE contending that the on-scene commander already had the authority to use force under the rules of engagement, and therefore all the reports saying Obama issued that authority are incorrect.

He did affirm the military's authorization to use force if the captain's life was in danger, but they already would have had that authorization as part of their standard rules of engagement. If there are innocents about to be slaughtered the same reasoning that authorizes self defense also covers an imminent execution unless the ROE specifically forbid it.The AP is making it sound like there was an active rescue ordered by the President. It was not, there was an imminent threat and the local commander gave the order to fire. Good on Obama for ensuring their authorization was clear, but let's also be clear that he did not authorize or order an active rescue attempt.

I'm no soldier, but like everyone else I can sign up for transcripts of the DoD press briefings like the one with Vice Admiral Gortney on Sunday. Gortney's statement was clear: "our authorities came directly from the president." Just to clarify, he added in response to a later question: "[T]hat was a standing authority from the president. He wasn't on the phone with the skipper of the Bainbridge saying, oh, yeah, go ahead and at that time shot."

But in case Jimbo was correct, I emailed the DoD and asked if authority was granted by the standard rules of engagement in this case or if presidential authority was required. Bryan Whitman from the Office of the Secretary of Defense told me that "The Secretary of Defense requested the required authorities which were approved by the President to conduct this military operation." Whitman adds that "In this particular circumstance, it was a matter of providing authority to the folks on-scene to immediately react to a very fluid situation.  Not really unusual." 

The high profile nature and visibility of this event may have meant that the White House wanted to be more directly involved. I'd say in general though, it's probably a mistake to assign a great deal of credit to the President either way--I think it's clear that those who carried out the operation deserve the plaudits.

-- A. Serwer

Much analysis remains, but Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has struck a staggering blow to a number of defense programs. The exciting details:

1. No more F-22s.
2. Replacement Air Force bomber delayed indefinitely.
3. Ballistic missile defense funding leans toward the Navy.
4. Aircraft carrier acquisition slowed, with the fleet eventually dropping to 10 carriers.
5. Next generation cruiser (CGX) delayed indefinitely.
6. VH-71 Presidential helicopter dead.
7. No more than three DDG-1000, and maybe only one.
8. Future Combat Systems funding slashed.

--Robert Farley

North Korea tested a Taepodong-2 ballistic missile over the weekend, and the results were not positive. In addition to incurring further world condemnation, the North Koreans managed to deploy the payload (a small satellite) into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The failed test gave John Bolton the opportunity to spew nonsense ("So far, therefore, the missile launch is an unambiguous win for North Korea.") and Newt Gingrich the opportunity to further make a fool of himself solidify his position as the "ideas" guy in the Republican Party.

Newt, who suggested the proper answer to the North Korean missile test was preventive war, may have been heartened by this Rasmussen poll, which asked:

If North Korea launches a long-range missile, should the United States take military action to eliminate North Korea’s ability to launch missiles?

An additional survey question further piqued my curiosity:

How closely have you followed news reports about North Korea’s plans to test launch a long-range missile?

40% Very closely
35% Somewhat closely
18% Not very closely
6% Not at all
1% Not sure

--Robert Farley

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made clear that the United States Navy would not take steps to shoot down any North Korean ballistic missiles launched over the next week. North Korea is carrying out clear preparations for such a launch, under the argument that it is deploying a satellite. Japan, which also has sea-based ballistic missile defense capability, also appears unlikely to destroy the North Korean vehicle, unless the missile malfunctions and heads toward Japan. To back up naval capabilities, Patriot air defense batteries have been deployed on Okinawa and around Tokyo.

Gates is dealing with this in an altogether sensible fashion. The North Korean missile launch is legally tricky, and a plausible argument could be developed that would provide cause for the US or Japan to shoot the missile down. However, simply because legal arguments can be marshaled doesn't mean that they should be. The test is fairly harmless in and of itself, and shooting down the missile would significantly heighten tensions with North Korea. Finally, tests can themselves have substantial political effects. If Japan or the US attempted to shoot down the North Korean missile and failed, embarrassment would ensue along with the increased tensions.

In other missile defense news, Feng at Information Dissemination has a good post about evidence of development in China's Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile program. Instead of targeting a city, an ASBM targets an aircraft carrier. The main problems are accuracy, terminal guidance (the aircraft carrier can move five miles or so between the time when a ballistic missile is fired and when it reaches its target), and surveillance of the target area. According to recent reports, the Chinese may have solved all of these problems. Or maybe not -- military organizations have strong incentives to misrepresent their capabilities.

--Robert Farley

Word came out a few weeks ago that the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force was building a contingency plan to shoot down any North Korean ballistic missiles that might threaten Japanese territory. Japanese destroyers have the same anti-ballistic missile (ABM) capabilities as U.S. destroyers, and the North Korean satellite launch would provide an almost unique opportunity to test the system in real-life conditions. Simply promising to shoot the missile down also gave Japan the opportunity to flex its military muscle in the region. The North Korean reaction to this news was predictably hostile, both to the prospect of outside interference with the launch, and to the notion that the missile would accidentally land in Japan. Noah Shachtman now notes that the U.S. has deployed one anti-ballistic missile capable destroyer to the region, perhaps indicating that we'd like to get in on the game.

The success or failure of the ship-borne anti-ballistic missile system could have wide-ranging implications. Josh Keating opines:

It would be a lot harder for the Obama administration to continue to use the "effectiveness dodge" -- the argument that missile-defense systems should not be deployed because they cannot be proven effective -- if the Japanese are able to successfully shoot down a North Korean missile. On the other had, if the interceptors were to miss and Japan was embarrassed, it would actually make Obama's grand bargain a lot easier to pull off.

Hopefully, however, we won't find any of this out; if the Japanese do end up shooting down the North Korean missile, things could get very dicey in northeast Asia.

--Robert Farley

The Pentagon announced yesterday that it would be phasing out its controversial "stop-loss" program, which forces soldiers to serve even after their enlistments end. Army Reserve and National Guard troops will be mobilized without stop loss beginning in August and September 2009, and the regular Army will deploy its first units without stop-loss in early 2010. There are about 13,000 soldiers being kept past their enlistments.

In the meantime, soldiers serving under stop-loss will be receiving a monthly payment of 500 dollars.

It seems pretty far away now that the war in Iraq is coming to an end, but stop-loss was once a very political issue because of the stress it puts on service members and families, and the notion that part of the reason the war in Iraq had gone so badly was that the Bush administration didn't use enough troops. Many people felt that stop-loss compounded the sacrifice already focused on the select few who had chosen to serve.

-- A. Serwer

Remarkably interesting post this morning from Hans Kristensen on nuclear ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) patrols; last year the United States Navy conducted 31 deterrent patrols, as compared to a combined total of 22 by Russia, France, and the United Kingdom. Although China possesses three SSBNs, the PLAN has yet to perform any deterrent patrols. A deterrent patrol amounts, essentially, to an extended effort on the part of the submarine to hide underwater, while aiming its missiles at a potential opponent; USN patrols last three months of so. The thirty-one patrols (by 14 SSBNs) is the lowest number of patrols since 1962, in part due to a different operational tempo (fewer, longer patrols), but mostly because the number of SSBNs in the fleet has declined substantially since the early 1990s.

I'm of two minds on the SSBN patrols. As Hans notes:

In short, the nuclear powers seem to be recommitting themselves to an era of deploying large numbers of nuclear weapons in the oceans. Most people tend to view sea-based nuclear weapons as the most legitimate leg of the Triad. Yet of all strategic nuclear weapons, sea-based ballistic missiles are the most difficult to track, the most problematic to communicate with in a crisis, the hardest to verify in an arms control agreement, and the only ones that can sneak up on an adversary in a surprise attack.

Absent multilateral nuclear disarmament, however, I think that SSBNs are probably the safest place for the world's nuclear powers to keep their weapons. The other legs of the nuclear triad (bomber aircraft and land-based missiles) have their own issues, and SSBNs go a long way toward ensuring secure second strike. If both Pakistan and India possessed SSBNs, the nuclear balance between them would be more stable, rather than less. Hans is correct, I think, to suggest that the United States could do with rather less than 14 SSBNs, as the British and the French manage with only four. The Russians have twelve, with seven in reserve and three under construction; some energetic arms-control activity might serve to further reduce both the U.S. and Russian SSBN fleets.

--Robert Farley

An Argentine magistrate has ruled that military officers who ordered torture against their own soldiers in the 1982 Falklands War can be prosecuted for war crimes. This is part of an ongoing coming-to-terms with Argentina's military dictatorship past, something that many nations in Latin America and elsewhere have had to deal with.  What's different about this particular ruling is that officers can now be prosecuted not just for the sort of general human rights violations that are a matter of course in dictatorships, but rather for abuse of their own soldiers in wartime.  Mr. Trend notes:

An Argentine court ruled that the torture officers inflicted upon their soldiers during the Malvinas/Falklands War constitutes a "war crime" and a "crime against humanity." The ruling opens the way for prosecution of officers, many still active and fairly high in the military chain of command, who tortured their soldiers before sending them off to the 1982 war with [the United Kingdom]. The accusations number over 70, alleging incidents of staking soldiers to the ground with a mask over their faces, being forced to stand in holes filled with water up to their wastes for hours on end, food- and water-deprivation, and "direct physical torture."

--Robert Farley

I sat down with Raymond Pritchett of Information Dissemination and the United States Naval Institute blog for a Bloggingheads session last week. Here's our discussion of the choice to retain Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, and also of the Navy under Obama:

We also talk about piracy, and the rise of Chinese seapower. Check it out.

--Robert Farley

Thomas Ricks has a bit more on academic freedom at the Army War College. Ricks quotes Mark Perry:

It's worse than you think. They have curtailed the curriculum so that their students are not exposed to radical Islam. Akin to denying students access to Marx during the Cold War....

I was a part of a three day seminar for military public affairs experts. All of them wondered why they were having difficulty "telling the good story of what we are doing in Iraq." It was a tension filled three days. I was one of seven "SMEs" -- subject matter experts. I was brought in as an expert on Hamas and Hezbollah. My role was to review why the Israeli public affairs people had had problems "selling" the August 2006 war against Hezbollah to the world community. I remember during the plenary session I was one of several "interventions" (as they are called) and told them: "You can't sell an Edsel." It was clear immediately that there were people in uniform present who were very upset that I was invited. And after the three days it was also clear that (at least for some few senior ranking officers) that my expertise was not welcome -- and not wanted. I concluded that it was not simply faculty independence that was and is a problem, but freedom of expression.

--Robert Farley

Ezra highlights Tom Ricks' post on trouble at the Army War College. The Army War College, like its Navy counterpart, employs primarily civilian academics to produce research and to furnish senior officers with a strategic perspective. The Naval War College, for example, was an important cog in the project to produce the Cooperative Maritime Strategy. The Strategic Studies Institute at the Army War College, has provided space for excellent scholars such as Steven Metz, Stephen Biddle, and Jeffrey Record. Record in particular has produced work bitterly critical of the Bush administration, including its misuse of the Munich Analogy.

In response to critical coverage of the Iraq War, Metz apparently warned his colleagues at SSI against speaking with Ricks. Metz was apparently motivated by genuine concern for the future of SSI, after "several members of SSI had been verbally flogged" for giving interviews. I do sympathize with Metz; he wanted to save the Institute, and it's fair to say that Rumsfeld and his allies have never taken concerns about academic freedom seriously. As Ezra notes, it's not a question of tenure; the entire institution was at risk. Nevertheless, the story is deeply disconcerting.

--Robert Farley

Matt and Spencer greet the news that China will contribute to anti-piracy efforts with a bit of faux surprise; the motivating concept behind the most recent Maritime Strategy and its predecessor, the 1000 Ship Navy, holds that naval power isn't zero-sum. Galrahn has a good discussion here considering piracy as the quintessential test of the 1000 Ship Navy concept. Of course, the Maritime Strategy includes a component on the deterrence of peer competitors, but part of that deterrence involves the integration of such competitors (Russia, China) into multilateral arrangements so that the potential competitors have a stake in international society. Incidents like this, in which thirty Chinese crewmen were rescued from pirates by multinational forces, are hoped to reinforce great power commitment to multilateral norms.

The Maritime Strategy is high liberal internationalism; it's founded on the concept of cooperation in an arena traditionally reserved for competition, and spreading the costs (and benefits) of hegemony as widely as possible. The rescue operations following the 2004 tsunami represent another manifestation of the Strategy.

On the issue of piracy more generally, see this interview with a pirate, this discussion of the effectiveness of assaults on pirate bases, and this discussion of the role played by Kenya in Somali piracy.

--Robert Farley

Another Air Force nuclear missile site has failed inspection:

The Air Force has indeed blown a third test of its nuclear handling capabilities, as Danger Room first reported over the weekend. In a memo, the Air Force confirmed that the 90th Missile Wing at F.E. Warren Air Force Base “rated unsatisfactory” on its nuclear surety inspection. Testers found fault with the missile unit’s “management and administration,” as well as its “tools, tests, tie-down and handling equipment.”

This marks roughly the umpteenth nuclear failure on the part of the Air Force in the last couple of years, beginning with the unauthorized flight of six nuclear warheads cross-country on a B-52. Nuclear sloppiness was the announced reason for the firing of the Air Force chiefs earlier this year.

Broadly speaking, the problem is that nuclear expertise is no longer seen as a way to get ahead in the Air Force. Young officers like to specialize in areas that are exciting, intellectually engaging, have a future, and will lead to a promising promotion path. Right now, nuclear weapons are not perceived as such an area, because the nuclear deterrent is no longer viewed as the most critical part of the Air Force’s job. Accordingly, the best officers look elsewhere, and those who do find themselves on the nuclear track quickly try to find their way out. The result is that the branch becomes a backwater, which would be less of a problem if its primary job wasn’t the management of nuclear weapons. The same thing happened with counter-insurgency during and shortly after the Vietnam War; it was well understood that the Army did not prioritize counter-insurgency, meaning that young officers had no incentive to develop an expertise in it. The larger problem is that the Air Force still lacks a plausible post-Cold War mission, but that’s an issue for another day.

—Robert Farley

Is the F-22 Raptor too big to fail in these tough economic times?

Without further spending for the F-22, companies that supply critical components for it would begin shutting down soon. The chairmen and ranking Republicans on both the House and Senate defense appropriations subcommittees recently wrote to Mr. Gates to voice their support for the F-22, cautioning that “the last thing our nation needs is to terminate jobs in this time of such economic uncertainty.”

Like many big weapons systems, the plane, which relies on 1,000 parts suppliers in 44 states, has strong support in Congress, which recently provided up to $140 million in bridge financing for some of the suppliers.

--Robert Farley

I can't recommend highly enough the BBC Radio program "The Human Button," which explores the human element of the British nuclear deterrent. The program interviews a number of former government officials and military officers, from Secretary of State for Defence Denis Healey to bomber pilots and submarine commanders. The most interesting parts involve the "inherently incredible threat" critique of deterrence theory, which questions whether or not decision-makers up and down the chain of command would ever actually push the button, even in the case of a nuclear attack. Fascinating bits include:

• An interview with Lord Denis Healey, who indicated that he would not have ordered nuclear retaliation against the Soviet Union, even if a Soviet attack had destroyed the UK. He had to keep this secret during exercises, in order to keep his job.


• An old interview with Prime Minister James Callaghan, who indicated that he would have retaliated, even if the UK had already been destroyed.


• A discussion of the "Letters of Last Resort" which are handwritten by each Prime Minister upon ascension to office. Kept in a safe in each of the Royal Navy's four ballistic missile submarines, the letters were to be opened and read if the UK was destroyed by nuclear attack before the PM could give an order to the nuclear forces. The letters (which of course would have been written prior to whatever crisis precipitated the attack), advised the submarine commander to undertake one of four actions; retaliate, not retaliate, use his own judgment, or turn over his command to Australian or American authorities.
  

Like, the ONE time that Germany is fighting on our side in a war, they have to go and get all incompetent:

Breaking with a military tradition of keeping silent about policy, a top German general has branded his country's efforts in Afghanistan a failure, singling out its poor record in training the Afghan police and allocating development aid. The comments came from General Hans-Christoph Ammon, head of the army's elite special commando unit, whose officers are in Afghanistan fighting alongside US forces against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Germany was responsible for training the Afghan police, but the German Interior Ministry, led by the conservative Wolfgang Schauble, has faced criticism from the United States and other NATO allies for providing too few experts and inappropriate training. The training operation was "a miserable failure," Ammon told DPA, the German press agency, after describing the German record in Afghanistan to a gathering last week of a reservists' association. The government has provided $15 million for training the Afghan Army and police, while the United States has given more than $1 billion, he said.

Via AG.

--Robert Farley

Spencer takes a look at five sub-cabinet positions that will exercise important influence on the Obama administration's foreign policy. From the assistant secretary of defense for special operations, low-intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities to the director for the Middle East on the National Security Council, these are the people who will have great behind-the-scenes influences on foreign policy decision making. Consider the position of ambassador to Iraq, the on-the-ground manager for the political process that will underlie the president-elect's plan to withdraw from Iraq:

[T]here isn’t a stable national or sectarian consensus about the composition of the Iraqi government. Crucial -- even existential -- questions remain about how much power should be concentrated in Baghdad; whether and how the Shiite-led government could absorb tens of thousands of the mostly-Sunni militiamen known as the Sons of Iraq, and who will govern large areas in northern Iraq claimed by both Arabs and Kurds. If that isn’t enough, the so-called Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the U.S. and Iraqi governments demands that the U.S. military withdraw from cities and large towns by mid-2009 and gives the Iraqi government wide latitude over U.S. military operations.

All of which means that whomever succeeds Amb. Ryan Crocker at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad will have a task unlike any of his or her predecessors. The next ambassador has to “assess the situation accurately to let withdrawal proceed as expeditiously as possible without causing more problems than it solves,” said Daniel Serwer, a former State Dept. official who is now a scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Thanks to the SOFA, the U.S.’s strategic mission in Iraq has been recast from victory to extrication. Managing withdrawal in all its dimensions -- coordination with the military, with the Iraqi government, with the region and with the White House -- has to be job No. 1.

“There are so many different directions this person need be superb in,” Serwer said. “Handling the military, assessing the situation in Iraq and developing good rapport with the Iraqis, see[ing] around the next corner if things are going off the rails. It’s a tremendous challenge.”

That’s especially true if the Obama administration tries to broker a pan-sectarian compact for a post-U.S. Iraq. If that’s the case, the next ambassador might look like an imperial viceroy — even as the U.S. exits the country.

Go read the whole thing.

-- Tim Fernholz

P.S. Daniel Serwer? Where have I heard that last name before ...

The Supreme Court rules for the Navy in a dispute over the use of sonar:

Courts must be wary of second-guessing the military’s considered judgments, the Supreme Court said Wednesday in lifting judicial restrictions on submarine training exercises off the coast of Southern California that may harm marine mammals.

In balancing military preparedness against environmental concerns, the majority came down solidly on the side of national security.

“The lower courts failed properly to defer to senior Navy officers’ specific, predictive judgments,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., joined by four other justices, wrote for the court in the first decision of the term.

For the environmental groups that sought to limit the exercises, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “the most serious possible injury would be harm to an unknown number of marine mammals that they study and observe.” By contrast, he continued, “forcing the Navy to deploy an inadequately trained antisubmarine force jeopardizes the safety of the fleet.”

Galrahn has much more detail.

--Robert Farley

Galrahn has some thoughts on what Obama's Navy might look like:

Will Barack Obama walk in with his own preconceived notions based heavily on the opinions of advisers to guide him? Repeating George Bush mistakes doesn't seem to be the Obama template. There is barely anything written from a liberal think tank regarding naval power, and yet, in many ways I find myself thinking that much of the strategic thinking coming from the Navy today would fit very well into a liberal core view of how naval forces should be postured, deployed, and operated. Ultimately, the progressive political view regarding the nation's seapower will have to be developed.

--Robert Farley

Brian Katulis and Nancy Soderberg think that President Obama should strongly consider keeping Robert Gates on as Secretary of Defense:

Gates understands that all three aspects are crucial, that for all our core national security problems — finishing the jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan, stabilizing Pakistan, defeating al-Qaeda, confronting a resurgent Russia and advancing the Middle East peace process — the secret to success will be improving the basic security of people in the area and giving them more comfortable, hopeful lives. If McCain and Obama understand this as well, they’ll ask Gates to stay put. He has served his country well, but his country isn’t done with him yet.

I concur that Gates has done a very credible job as Secretary of Defense, particularly considering what he’s been given to work with. I’ve been especially pleased by his willingness to tangle with the Air Force. The next Secretary of Defense is going to have a remarkably difficult job, including fighting the war in Afghanistan, winding down the conflict in Iraq, and substantially downsizing what has become a bloated Defense Department. I can see the temptation to stick with the demonstrably competent guy who’s already there.

However, I still don’t love the idea, largely for the reasons that Matt Yglesias laid out here:

It’s desperately important for the Democratic Party’s leaders to avoid re-enforcing the idea that Democrats can’t run national security. If you find a moderate Republican with sound views on key environmental issues and make him or her head of the EPA, that says “climate change is an important issue and there’s bipartisan support for taking action.” If you put a Republican in charge of the Pentagon it says “Obama likes diplomacy, but even he knows that when the going gets tough you need to call in the GOP.”

I also think that the idea of Gates working in the Obama administration sounds better in theory than it would work out in practice. I think it’s fair to say that there’s going to be a lot of muck for the new administration to clear away in its first several months, and some of that muck is inevitably going to stick to Gates. Moreover, whatever expertise Gates can offer can probably be bought for a price lower than a cabinet position.

—Robert Farley

Check out this great New York Times article from yesterday on the curious case of Michael Cantrell, an engineer who bilked the government out of millions of dollars in missile defense money. Much of the money went to a useless alternative missile defense project, while the rest went into the pockets of Cantrell and an accomplice. Cantrell took advantage of loopholes, connections, and poorly structured lines of authority to lobby Congress for a missile defense side project that the military was largely uninterested in. By pushing the project, Cantrell was able to generate kickbacks from various defense contractors. When the military tried to quash the project, Cantrell used his political connections to stop the inquiry.

It's not quite right to say that such a scam could only happen to the missile defense project, because there are other cases of military contractors bilking the government. But certainly scams like this are easier when they're conducted inside projects with ill-defined goals, poorly understood parameters, and deeply politicized motivation. Missile defense is intended to pay off in the distant future; as such, it's difficult to evaluate progress. Proponents can legitimately say that even unsuccessful tests represent steps in the right direction. In such an environment, projects that don't really go anywhere cannot go anywhere for a very long time before anyone notices. Moreover, because missile defense is so distinct from most of the tasks performed by the military, both civilians and military officers can fall victim to confident-sounding charlatans.

This problem is magnified when the project itself is basically a scam. The primary justification for missile defense has never been the actual defense of the United States from ballistic missiles, but rather a combination of political entrepreneurship on the part of the Republican Party (Democrats go along, but Republicans have always been the motivators) and a desire on the part of contractors and Congressmen to acquire as much pork as possible. Since a successful missile defense isn't really the goal in the first place, it's hard to differentiate the extreme fraud from the everyday fraud, and difficult to explain to Ted Stevens why he shouldn't get his piece of the action.

I suspect that this will not be the last incidence of severe corruption in the National Missile Defense project. Such small-scale scams, however, shouldn't make us forget that the project is, itself, a big-scale scam.

--Robert Farley

Army Times is interested in finding out whether John McCain has renounced his longtime position that the Future Combat Systems should be scrapped. Last week he criticized Obama for wanting to slow down the program to pay for an expansion of the Armed Forces, but reporters covering his speech used the term generically, as though Obama wanted to slow military development in general. Army Times, provides an actual quote from McCain saying he wanted the whole project scrapped last July. (Last week, Mark Schmitt pointed out that ending FCS was part of McCain's plan for balancing the budget.)

The McCain campaign didn't respond to Army Times' request for a clarification. Loren Thompson, from the  Lexington Institute, a military research group, called McCain's actions "deceitful."

“McCain’s interpretation of Obama’s position is typical of the way in which the Republicans have twisted Democratic views in order to undercut their opponents and at the same time obscure the past positions of the Republicans,” Thompson said. “Future Combat Systems is the centerpiece of Army modernization. However, McCain has been more critical of it than anyone else in the chamber. Obama has been much more detailed and thoughtful in his comments about future military investment than McCain’s very superficial statements.”

Once again, I'm not familiar enough with the merits of the FCS program to argue whether or not it should be scrapped. But both candidates felt the program was wasting money, until McCain wanted to accuse Obama of being a secret radical who wants to dismantle the military. The context of McCain's quote is relevant here.

“Of course, now he wants to increase it,” McCain told an audience in Lee’s Summit, Missouri Monday. “But during the primary he told a liberal advocacy group that he’d cut defense spending by tens of billions of dollars. He promised them he would, quote, ‘slow our development of future combat systems.’”

By "it" McCain is referring to Obama's promise to increase the size of the military, which he puts in conflict with Obama's position that funding for FCS should be cut. But those two things are only in conflict if you don't know what FCS is and you think the term "Future Combat Systems" refers to general military development. What is plainly odd is the use of a quotation there, if McCain wanted to say "Obama wants to slow FCS," he could have said that. But instead he uses the quote in a manner as to make the term ambiguous, and given the lack of capitalization in the CNN report he was successful.

The easiest way to find out what McCain meant is to ask him whether he still thinks FCS should be cut and, if so, why he was criticizing his rival for holding a similar position. Given that they fumbled the original story, you'd think CNN would be interested in doing that.

--A. Serwer

Defense News:

The unanswered questions, the Navy’s sudden switch away from support for the ship and new hints that structural problems might make construction even more of a problem are adding up, some say, to mean that no ships might come out of the decade long effort.

The newest problem is that components of the ship’s superstructure don’t seem to be fitting together properly, which has left the Navy scurrying for new contractors. This comes on the heels of the Navy’s determination that the DDG-1000 cannot feasibly use weapons necessary to defend itself from the newest missiles in the Chinese arsenal. Since the beginning of the summer, the Navy has cut its request of DDG-1000s from seven to two; a compromise with Congressional supporters of the ship then raised that number to three. If no ships are eventually built (and the Navy now, frankly, seems to hate the ship) then this will go down as one of the biggest wastes of money in the history of US military expenditure.

—Robert Farley

The Southern Poverty Law Center has picked up my friend Matt Kennard's Columbia J-School graduate thesis, an investigative report on racist extremists infiltrating the Armed Forces and the absence of any real effort to prevent them from joining. Two years ago, members of Congress urged former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to do more to prevent such people from gaining access to military training, but according to the SPLC, neither he nor replacement Robert Gates has given much attention to the matter. Kennard notes that extremist groups have been taking advantage of relaxed recruiting standards to gain the kind of training they believe they need to bring about a "race war."

The National Socialist Movement (NSM) is explicitly interested in using the military to gain training. “We do encourage them to sign up for the military,” says Lt. Charles Wilson, spokesman for the NSM. “We can use the training to secure the resistance to our government.”

Lt. Wilson says the party has 190 members currently serving in the military. “Every one of them takes a pact of secrecy,” he says. “Our military doesn’t agree with our political beliefs, they are not supposed to be in the military, but they’re there, in ever greater numbers.”

The frightening thing is that it isn't being an extremist that disqualifies one from serving in the military but rather "public display[s] of allegiance" that are barred, such as tattoos. And extremists should be excluded, not out of political correctness, but because they have in the past used military training to devastating effect. As David Holthouse of the SPLC points out, years ago Alabama Republican Senator Richard Shelby noted in an open letter to Rumsfeld that “[w]e witnessed with Timothy McVeigh that today’s racist extremist may become tomorrow’s domestic terrorist.”

--A. Serwer

My friend Justin Elliott has an extraordinary story in Mother Jones. It tells the tale of a 2002 report commissioned from Booz Allen Hamilton by the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, a sort of in-house military think tank. The report, called "Military Advantage in History," is a survey of the world's empires with an eye toward how the United States can emulate their success. Its writing is akin to "undergraduate-level work," one military historian tells Mother Jones, saying the report displays "an intense, myopic habit of wanting to make the ancient world fit into modern stereotypes."

It's fascinating that although Roman history can be read as a cautionary anti-imperial tale, the ONA report lauds Rome as the foremost example for an American empire, without even nodding toward Rome's failures or fall. But it's not too surprising that a history report written by military contractors -- not historians -- lacks complexity and was drafted to fit the pro-war preconceptions of its intended readers. One thing I hope we can look forward to under the next administration is, of course, a return of real, credentialed experts to their rightful place as government advisers.

In any case, you should read Justin's whole story.

--Dana Goldstein

Yesterday, on the 60th anniversary of the integration of the military, the House Armed Services Committee held a the first hearing to review President Bill Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

One of the opponents to gays serving in the military that testified was Elaine Donnelly, the president of the Center for Military Readiness. Donnelly seemed more than obsessed with the "sex" part of "homosexuals," as she always made sure to say. She claimed that by allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, there would be an increase of "inappropriate passive aggressive sexual behavior common in the homosexual community."

Her definition of "passive aggressive" behavior is sexual conduct that "stops short" of sexual assault. She kept referring to the "close living quarters" military lived in and the "power of sexuality." In other words, Donnelly seems to think that gays and lesbians are unable to control their sexual conduct. She also seemed to think that by placing gays and straights in the same unit was some kind of undue hardship.

Congressman Chris Shays, a Republican from Connecticut who has called for the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" the acceptance of openly gay men and women in the military, sharply responded to Donnelly. He pointed out that there are already codes in place to penalize sexual misconduct in the military, so those who simply identify with a different orientation shouldn't be discharged. "Their conduct is what matters in the service," Shays said at the hearing.

Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) had introduced legislation that would repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military. She compared the integration of openly gay men and women in the military to the integration of blacks into the military 60 years ago. It seems clear this legislation won't go anywhere before Bush leaves office, but perhaps the next administration will stop penalizing gays and lesbians for their identity.

--Kay Steiger

The term "Chair Farce" is typically used in a derogatory way by non-Air Force members of the uniformed military. It appears, however, that Air Force brass is trying to give the term some more substance:

The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules' carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents...

Air Force officials say the government needs the new capsules to ensure that leaders can talk, work and rest comfortably in the air. But the top brass's preoccupation with creating new luxury in wartime has alienated lower-ranking Air Force officers familiar with the effort, as well as congressional staff members and a nonprofit group that calls the program a waste of money.

Although the program's estimated $20 million cost is nearly equivalent to what the Pentagon spends in about 20 minutes, the e-mails show that small details have so far received the attention of many high-ranking officers, including [Gen. Robert H.] McMahon; Gen. Arthur J. Lichte, the current Air Mobility commander; and Brig. Gen. Kenneth D. Merchant, the mobility command's logistics director.

--Robert Farley

Apparently, one of the sticking points between SecDef Gates and the Air Force leadership involved a dispute over whether to deploy the F-22 to Iraq:

The Air Force wanted to send the F-22 to the Middle East and Defense Secretary Robert Gates nixed the plans, citing the strategic danger from the deployment if it were misread by Iran, among other factors. This comes from a single usually reliable source with knowledge of Air Force policy and operations....

The Air Force wanted the F-22 deployed for the same sort of reasons that drove the service’s decision to send B-2 bombers to Kosovo, to prove its effectiveness and demonstrate overwhelming US air superiority. A successful deployment — complete with videos of successful strikes and quotes from jubilant air crews — might have led Congress and the public to support a substantial increase in the number of F-22s purchased.

--Robert Farley

Jon Soltz, who served in Iraq and is now the Chairman of VoteVets.org, has been a key voice on military and veterans issues in the Democratic party and a critic of the Iraq war. Lately he's been getting shouted at on TV for his defense of General Wesley Clark, so I called him for a brief interview yesterday afternoon to discuss his views on that issue and conservatives who predict that Barack Obama will change his position on withdrawal.

Why does it seem like you are the only one defending Wes Clark on TV?

Okay, I think first off there have been a lot of people defending him. [James] Carville did, Donna Brazile, Admiral Joe Sestak, who is a big supporter, so there are people that are supporting him. This is the media bias to John McCain more than anything else. … I think the larger question is, why aren't we getting more of that pick-up? It's media insecurity about doing a real analysis on military issues. The fact of the matter is that we have a right to take on John McCain on National Security. General Clark thinks he's a hero, I think he's a hero. But he supports a policy that could cost us to lose the war in Afghanistan. That's a question that we have a right to ask him. The question is, why is the media unwilling to ask the hard natural security questions of John McCain?

Are we going to be able to have a reasonable conversation about these issues?

How many people in journalism have served in the military, that truly understand it? That truly understand what's an acceptable statement and what's not? There's plenty of stuff that's out of bounds, that General Clark and I know is out of bounds. If we had said that his service was something other than what it was, it would be unacceptable. General Clark and I wrote an op-ed together in the LA Times when John McCain wouldn't support the GI bill, saying we honor his service in Vietnam and that he's a hero, let 's move past that and talk about the issues. I think the media is really insecure to talk about that; I don't think a lot producers in the media and writers in the media have any military experience.

The surge has had some success in lowering violence in Iraq, and there have been pundits suggesting that Senator Obama and others are going to have to change their positions on withdrawal….

This is a joke … I was the first to say, so was General Clark, if you put five of the best combat brigades in the Army in downtown Baghdad, they're going to kick ass and take names. No one has ever argued that point. The question was, does that get us closer to … what? We don't even know what the end-state is. So why are you going to put five brigades on the ground in Baghdad for a temporary period of time, just to pull them out? So, those five brigades did what they were supposed to do. There is a better sense of security in Baghdad. But basically you're left with, so what? Those brigades have now come home.

Now let's look at Afghanistan. Our NATO allies are pulling out of Afghanistan because the domestic popularity of this president and our country in Europe is at an all time low because of our Iraq policy. So we've actually sent more American troops to Afghanistan just to make up for what we don't have in our NATO partners. A lot of those NATO countries won't even go out on combat ops. Casualties, KIAs in Afghanistan are at an all time high since 2001; KIAs in Afghanistan and casualties are higher than they are in Iraq.

The surge brigades are now home for Iraq, so that's basically mission complete. … If we didn't win the war with those surge brigades, their entire argument is over. Now you have a situation where, if you'd taken those five brigades and put them in Afghanistan, you'd have doubled the amount of combat brigades on the ground for a year in Afghanistan, at a critical moment in that conflict. It's basically a policy of retreat for McCain and Bush. Why don't they want to take the fight to the enemy? Because they have this obsession with Iraq. They're trying to declare victory on the surge, it's a political spin, it's not real and it doesn't exist. What's the point if there are lower casualties in Iraq? Good, all the more reason to bring the troops back, then. That's the point. We have less violence; let's get the guys out of Iraq. I think that's a bogus argument.

--Tim Fernholz

I have to agree with Noah; the evidence for inter-service tension between the Army and the Air Force in this article is largely inferential. Shanker relates some anecdotes about Army frustration with the performance of the Air Force, notes that the Army is developing a UAV force, and concludes that the former must have brought about the latter. But of course the Army doesn't need to be frustrated with the Air Force to seek to augment its own capabilities; the dynamics are complicated, but it's hardly unusual for organizations to try to seize new turf and pursue greater autonomy, even absent bureaucratic tension. Moreover, Noah correctly notes that Odin (the Army UAV project) has been in the open for quite some time, in contrast to the picture that Shanker tries to paint.

As everyone is aware, I'm all for augmenting the tactical capabilities of the Army at the expense of the Air Force. However, I suspect that Shanker is inferring something that isn't there. It's possible that people on the inside are telling him something that he's not relating to us, but we need to see that evidence before jumping to conclusions.

See also Peter.

--Robert Farley

As Abby writes, President Bush has nominated Ann Dunwoody to be the nation's first female four-start general. But it's important to view women's place in the Bush era military within a larger context. As our friend Spencer Ackerman points out today at his new blog home, a disproportionate number of women were the victims of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" last year. While women make up just 14 percent of the armed services, they were 46 percent of those discharged under the rule, which prevents openly gay Americans from serving in the military. A total of 627 people were discharged under DADT in 2007.

The conduct of the Iraq war has also ill-treated many thousands of American servicewomen. Today an American female soldier is more likely to be raped by a fellow-American service member than killed by enemy fire. Veterans hospitals are reporting that as many as 40 percent of their female patients were sexually assaulted during their service. And here at home, more than 100 high school-aged women were sexually assaulted or raped by male military recruiters since Sept. 11, 2001. It's a record of shame.

On a lighter note, do visit Spencer at firedoglake. He's got the best tag line ever: National Security. Iraq. Punk Rock. Real Talk.

--Dana Goldstein

Noah at Danger Room has an excellent summary of the Air Force brass firing. In particular:

The Air Force's leadership has been on the brink of open conflict for months with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England. That's because in the halls of the Air Force's chiefs, the talk has been largely about the threats posed by China and a resurgent Russia. Gates wanted the service to actually focus on the wars at hand, in Iraq and Afghanistan. "For much of the past year I’ve been trying to concentrate the minds and energies of the defense establishment on the current needs and current conflicts," he told the Heritage Foundation. "In short, to ensure that all parts of the Defense Department are, in fact, at war."

Rumors are swirling of more top-level Air Force officers getting the axe. Stay tuned.

I will repeat, for the third time, my sense that the Air Force has an organizational problem that is not amenable to remedy by firing people.

I should add that the Air Force is considering some organizational remedies. But the real question is “above the paygrade” the Air Force and, even, the Secretary of Defense. The “lack of focus” that SECDEF described reflects the reality that these weapons are largely irrelevant to the day-to-day mission of the Air Force. That we have nuclear weapons we do not need is evident in the day-to-day neglect by those who handle them.

--Robert Farley

Last week, the USS Kitty Hawk departed Japan for the last time, after a ten year deployment. For much of this period, Kitty Hawk was the only conventionally-powered aircraft carrier left in the US arsenal. She was kept in service because of Japanese anti-nuclear sensibilities; it was easier to keep a conventional carrier around than to deal with the public relations problems that deploying a nuclear carrier to Japan would present. The decision on which carrier would replace Kitty Hawk was quite difficult, as there were several options that simply wouldn't do. We have one aircraft carrier (Nimitz) named after the architect of US Pacific strategy in World War II. Another (Eisenhower) is named after the premier American General of the war. The Enterprise is named after the most famous American aircraft carrier of the Pacific theater. The Harry Truman is just a non-starter. Carl Vinson and John C. Stennis are virtually unknown in Japan, and their obscurity was viewed as a potential insult to the hosts.

That left Ronald Reagan, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. It was eventually decided that the most politic choice would be the USS George Washington; a ship named after the father of our country conferred the greatest possible amount of dignity upon its Japanese hosts. However, the George Washington is a nuclear powered carrier, and the anti-nuclear sensibility remained. In preparation for the George Washington's arrival, the Navy has apparently prepared a 200 page graphic novel.

It'll be interesting to see how this works out. Via ID.

--Robert Farley

Noah Shachtman notes that the Army has some interesting ideas about global warming:

The Army is weighing in on the global warming debate, claiming that climate change is not man-made. Instead, Dr. Bruce West, with the Army Research Office, argues that "changes in the earth’s average surface temperature are directly linked to ... the short-term statistical fluctuations in the Sun’s irradiance and the longer-term solar cycles.

In an advisory to bloggers entitled "Global Warming: Fact of Fiction [sic]," an Army public affairs official promoted a conference call with West about "the causes of global warming, and how it may not be caused by the common indicates [sic] some scientists and the media are indicating."

There are a couple interesting points for discussion. First, it's not all that surprising that the Army has found someone who thinks man-made global warming is a hoax; the people who think such things are almost invariably found on the right, and the officer corps of the United States military remains solidly on the right. I'm curious, though, about why the Army cares about whether global warming is natural or caused by human factors. When I participated (briefly) in the development of the Navy's new maritime strategy a couple of years ago, climate change was simply treated as an assumption. Rather than attempt to determine cause, the Navy treated global warming as a problem that would have to be dealt with. This neatly avoided the scientific-political problem of assessing causation, which allowed everyone to think about pragmatic response.

Why would the Army treat the question differently than the Navy? For the Navy, the threat of global warming presents a very clear challenge; rising sea levels threaten to change the maritime landscape, and major disaster in the littoral (such as Katrina or the 2004 tsunami) require a naval response, regardless of how they come about. For the Army, global warming may present a less clear pragmatic challenge, allowing political thinking to prevail over the need for planning. This is my guess, but I really don't know for sure.

--Robert Farley

Blackwater is buying fixed-wing counter-insurgency aircraft:

A subsidiary of U.S. military security contractor Blackwater Worldwide has purchased a fighter plane from the Brazilian aviation company Embraer, a Brazilian newspaper reported June 1.

The 314-B1 Super Tucano propeller-driven fighter - the same used by the Brazilian military - was bought for $4.5 million and delivered to EP Aviation at the end of February, according to the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper.

Blackwater already has helicopters, and the Super Tucano isn't exactly an air superiority aircraft, so this represents a change in degree rather than a change in kind. Still, it results in an increase in Blackwater's capabilities, and could open new doors for Blackwater in terms of training; the company does quite a lot of training of foreign military organizations, and the possession of fixed wing aircraft could allow penetration of a wider market. In other words, the Super Tucano may be intended more for Blackwater's training business than for its actual counter-insurgency operations. In any case, we appear to be entering a new golden age for the private military professional...

--Robert Farley