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DeM Banter: Cant help but harken back to Thinking in Time by May and Neustadt... history is extremely useful when...decision-makers separate what is known about the situation from what is unclear and from what is merely presumed; to study the history of the issue, thereby putting it in perspective; to beware of easy historical analogies when current …
Continue reading "Exploding The Myths About Vietnam By Lien-Hang Nguyen"
SmallWarsJournal.com August 10, 2012 This Week At War In my Foreign Policy column, I explain why the U.S. should intervene in Syria. Hint: the reason is not about Syria. In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joseph Lieberman argued for stepped-up U.S. intervention in Syria's civil war. They called for providing …
View Original / A year has passed since Congress passed and President Obama signed into law the Budget Control Act-the legislation mandating sequestration. Funding cuts that once seemed politically remote now loom large for leaders increasingly anxious about the impact $1.2 trillion in automatic budget reductions will have upon their respective districts and states. An estimated two …
TheDailyBeast.com August 4, 2012 President Obama's strategy in Libya helped depose Qaddafi in short order. But P.J. Crowley says the same tactics won't work in Syria--and the crisis will only get worse. The resignation of Kofi Annan, the U.N. and Arab League special envoy for Syria, made official what was long ago apparent. His six-point …
Continue reading "Syrian Crisis Won’t Be Resolved With The Tactics Used In Libya by P.J. Crowley"
ForeignPolicy.com DeM Banter: And why do we have these issues? Would be very interested in any thoughts... August 2, 2012 Thought Cloud One of the biggest misunderstandings about the civilian-military gap is that it is cultural -- the national security version of the red state-blue state divide. But the distance between those in and out …
Continue reading "The real problem with the civilian-military gaps : By Rosa Brooks"
DeM Banter: Always interesting and still pondering what this will looking like in 5 to 10 years. If the architecture gets exploited...think of the investment lost? Where will technology take these aircraft? What about the continuing moral implications? London Times August 2, 2012 Pg. 27 'PlayStation pilots' are taking over from the Top Guns as …
wired.com / view original DeM Banter: Really? We can't help ourselves can we? For the first time in over a decade, the Pentagon’s budget has to shrink, thanks to a deal to cut the deficit that Congress and President Obama struck last year. Yet a key Senate panel voted on Thursday to fund big-ticket hardware — ships, …
Continue reading "Senate Panel Funds Ships, Drones Military Doesn’t Want by Spencer Ackerman"
view original / globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School. He also teaches Afghan history to deploying U.S. Army units. The views expressed are solely those of the author. More than a decade into the conflict, the Afghan war isn’t going well. Politically, Afghanistan …
Continue reading "America’s 7 mistakes in Afghanistan by Michael Rubin"
DeM Banter: Sounds like there are many assumptions here that may indeed prove false...how many times in the past century and a half have we correctly predicted the next conflict? Planning is important however...there is a fine line between planning, funding, and execution. Eisenhower is famous for saying..."Plans are nothing; planning is everything." Washington Post …
DeM Banter: It took a CSIS Study? New York Times August 1, 2012 WASHINGTON — An independent review assessing the Obama administration’s plans to move national security resources toward Asia and away from the Atlantic has criticized the Pentagon, saying it insufficiently explained how it would shift military forces to the region and how the …
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