Serwer does the necessary business to this idiotic David Brooks column:We've been hearing some version of the "is Obama tough enough" argument since he started running for president, and as always, it's really less about Obama's individual tenacity than whether or not he possesses the...
afghanistan
Via Chet, this is kind of eery/scary.
BruceR, responding to a question about Afghan army training from Matt Yglesias:Building anew is harder than renovating. In Afghanistan as in Iraq we really are doing our best to junk.
Seth Jones and I talked about his book Graveyard of Empires last week on Bloggingheads:...sadly, I forgot my hat in Cincinnati. Hopefully I'll have an appropriate substitute by the next Bloggingheads.
Ralph Peters is a lunatic, even by the standards of Fox News.
It appears that the UK MoD rejected several opportunities to shore up its helicopter fleet:Defence ministers spurned three separate deals to buy American Black Hawk helicopters which would have helped.
I'm sure that everyone has seen this, but that doesn't make it less awesome:Gates:Any soldier who goes into battle against the Taliban in pink boxers and flip-flops has a special kind of courage.
It's hard to disagree with David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum on the drone issue:Governments typically make several mistakes when attempting to separate violent extremists from populations in which they hide..
Enough civilian body parts to fill two tractor-trailers remained after an incident in Farah province of Afghanistan Monday, according to the NY Times today. Afghan civilians blame US airstrikes for.
Karzai seems to be backing a law containing a number of spectactularly egregious violations of women's rights.
Alex Harrowell has a couple of interesting posts on the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, one at Fistful of Euros and the other at Yorkshire Ranter. The point is essentially this;.
So, lot's of interesting defense news; read Spencer on the Afghanistan buildup and David Axe on the F-22. If you read the latter, please compare and contrast Axe's case for.