Defense policy
January 28, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Mackubin Thomas Owens served as an infantry platoon leader in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart. Mac now teaches on the faculty of the Naval War College as Professor of National Security Affairs. He is also a senior fellow at the Program on National Security of the Foreign Policy Research Institute while serving as editor of its journal, Orbis. He is a long-time student of
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January 9, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
David Brooks argues that President Obama selected Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense because he wants Hagel to supervise the beginning of a generation-long process of defense cutbacks. The theory is that such cutbacks will go down better with a Republican, and a war hero, at the Pentagon to provide political cover. Brooks may be right, but I doubt it. During Hagel’s “trial balloon” period, it became clear that
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October 24, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Barack Obama made a fool of himself in the final presidential debate when he exposed his ignorance of naval strategy, not to mention bayonets–military policy in general, actually. Michael Ramirez sums it up beautifully: I wish we could have one more debate, this one between cartoonists: Ramirez would demolish anyone the liberals could come up with. No, wait–let’s add a second debate, too, this one between comedians. We get Dennis
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October 24, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday I rounded up some pertinent commentary providing factual background belying Barack Obama’s patronizing gibe at Mitt Romney in Monday night’s foreign policy debate: I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our
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October 23, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Bob Woodward, who wrote a book about the sequestration, blows the whistle on President Obama’s claim during last night’s debate that the idea of using deep, automatic, across-the-board domestic and defense spending cuts to force Congress to address the nation’s burgeoning federal deficit originated in Congress, not in the White House. “What the president said is not correct,” Woodward told Politico. In his book, The Price of Politics, Woodward reported
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October 23, 2012 — Scott Johnson
I thought one statement by Barack Obama was the highlight of last night’s debate. Seeking to land a knockout blow against Mitt Romney’s advocacy of preserving our military spending in the face of the planned sequester, Obama asserted in his patented style: I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than
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September 18, 2012 — Steven Hayward
The American media continues to neglect or deflect the Obama Administration’s negligence in the Middle East, at least the New York Times saw fit to put on page 1 yesterday the news of the latest successful Taliban attack in Afghanistan. Like the Benghazi consulate attack, it seems to have involved a serious security breach. (Hat tip to my old drinking pal and loyal Power Line reader JB in Texas for
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August 20, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Even in the face of a plea from Nancy Pelosi, President Obama insisted on subordinating the defense needs of the United States to his reelection efforts. This is an under-reported lesson from Glenn Thrush’s new e-book, Obama’s Last Stand. According to Thrush: In mid-2012, the House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, requested a sit-down to ask Obama to reconsider the billions of defense cuts that would kick in automatically as part
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June 6, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Max Boot wonders why the Pentagon isn’t planning for sequestration – the draconian, automatic cuts in defense spending that will begin to take effect in January unless Congress can agree to significantly reduce overall federal pursuant to an actual plan. It is hard to believe that the Pentagon isn’t making contingency plans, but Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has publicly stated that it is not. Carter’s explanation is that
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June 3, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Dakota Wood is a retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1985, he served in the Marines for 20 years. Following his retirement from the Marines, Wood provided support to the Department of Homeland Security, serving as Operations Officer for the National Biosurveillance Integration System, an initiative intended to provide warning of a potential biological threat to the country. He then served as a Senior
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