Military

Friday

Paul Wood

How America squandered its moral authority in Iraq

Day by day, you could almost see America’s moral authority draining away in Iraq. The weapons of mass destruction that the US had invaded the country to find didn’t exist. And it sometimes seemed as if a monstrous trick had been played on American troops: they were promised a welcome with ‘flowers and sweets’; they got roadside bombs and suicide attacks. In 2004, a year after the invasion, a 19-year-old Marine — outside the US for the first time in his life — looked up at a minaret sounding the call to prayer and asked me: ‘What are they saying? “Kill Americans?

iraq

Monday

Andrew Cockburn

Putin’s secret weapon? The F-35

This week's Nato summit communiqué was predictably replete with bombast about the ever growing threat of Russian aggression — along with tentative references to the 'challenges' of China's 'growing influence’. More cheerfully, it greeted the news that '24 allies are spending over 20 percent of their defense expenditures on major equipment’, with confident hopes that newcomers would join this exclusive club in the near future. Given that for seven European Nato members the principal item of ‘major equipment’ in question is Lockheed's F-35 fighter, this is good news for the Lockheed Corporation, but not such glad tidings for countries contracted to buy the plane, who find their armed forces steadily reduced to a state of emasculated beggary as a result.

f-35 fail
military
Jacob Heilbrunn

How much does Trump’s rift with military brass matter?

Donald Trump needs to ramp it up. After he almost bobbled a glass of water and carefully descended a ramp at West Point, Trump tried to go on the attack against his detractors, claiming that his performance was fine and dandy. But Trump, a master of stagecraft for much of his presidency, is increasingly losing the optics battle, particularly as he engages with the military brass.Or so goes the conventional wisdom. But what Trump’s critics are overlooking is that this is just the first stage in his struggle to corral the recalcitrant military leadership. Like his hero Douglas MacArthur, Trump is likely vowing, ‘I shall return!’ He knows that the military rank and file largely support him. Trump’s showered largesse on the troops and his bully-boy act goes over well.

Monday

Mary Kate Skehan

Is the truth about burn pits too toxic?

In June 2020, while COVID raged and cities rioted, my older brother Pat was promoted to major in the Marine Corps and diagnosed with thyroid cancer. I went down to the base at Quantico, Virginia on a Monday to see Captain-now-Major Pat get ceremonially ‘pinned on’ with the golden oak leaf before a formation of Marines. On Wednesday, Pat ran eight consecutive six-minute miles and went in for minor surgery to remove a suspicious growth on his thyroid. I’d packed my bags for a week to help out with my two- and four-year-old nephews while my sister-in-law drove back and forth to Walter Reed.

burn pits

Wednesday

Andrew Bacevich

How to end endless wars

This article is in The Spectator’s January 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. ‘Great nations do not fight endless wars,’ President Donald Trump declared in his 2019 State of the Union address. Simultaneously benign and radically subversive, this simple statement may well qualify as an important moment in the Trump era. Here was a notably dishonest president calling attention to a truth that the political establishment appears intent on ignoring. Any objective look at the record of US military actions since 9/11 would reach similar conclusions. The politicians ordaining our wars have been reckless and incompetent. The soldiers sent to fight are brave but badly misused. And the people in whose name these wars are waged are oblivious to what has occurred.

endless

Saturday

Gil Barndollar

Trump and the troops

This article is in The Spectator’s January 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. Thanksgiving Day, the most American of holidays, found President Trump performing one of the nation’s few remaining civic rites: supporting the troops. When the President secretly flew to Afghanistan to feed and thank servicemen at Bagram Air Base, he got a cheering hangar full of airmen in return. Those turkey-stuffed troops were a captive audience, of course. Still, enthusiasm for Trump among American servicemen, both active-duty and veteran, seems to be one of the more genuine things about this surreal phase of American politics. In polls, support for the president among veterans far outpaces that among Americans at large.

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