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So Mitt Romney complains that the US Navy has fewer ships than it did in 1917 — true, but utterly irrelevant and deceptive. Did you know that we have a weaker cavalry than we did in 1917, too? I’m shocked.
Archive for the ‘Defense and national security’ Category
January 24th, 2012
March 21st, 2011
Foreign policy analysis will get a lot better when we stop using flatulent phrases like “strategic”, “reactive,” “leadership” or “realistic.”
March 21st, 2011
Even if Libya turns into a quagmire, here are three reasons why a Qaddafist insurgency would pale in comparison to Iraq.
November 12th, 2010
Category: Conservatism, Defense and national security, Economics, Financial crises, Foreign Policy, Republican Party
The double legacyof Bush Republicanism ain hastening American decline.
September 19th, 2010
Category: Crime Control, Defense and national security
The WaPo has a chilling story from Afghanistan about a platoon that decided to engage in a little bit of recreational murder and trophy-hunting.
August 31st, 2009
Category: Defense and national security, Foreign Policy, Permanent campaign, Terrorism and its control
George Will is going to call for a ground troop pullout from Afghanistan. Is he right?
June 6th, 2009
Pakistan diverted American counter-terrorism assistance to buy weapons to use against India. The Bush Administration knew about it, and did nothing. And that might have been the right course.
May 30th, 2009
Category: Defense and national security
Buried in this story is a paragraph that made me blink: The CIA recently reported that a small fraction of its overall workforce — about 13 percent — is fluent in a second language. Among officers of the agency’s National Clandestine Service, to which most foreign-deployed officers are assigned, the figure is about 30 percent. [...]
April 27th, 2009
Category: Defense and national security, Torture
I think Amy Zegart goes beyond the evidence about the current value of the CIA, even though I would not favor abolishing it per se. I would favor making it prove the value of its functions in the context of national security resource allocation, and let certain functions wither away if they cannot be demonstrated to be valuable. I would also create multiple competing centers within the intelligence community, opening up the system to innovation.
