Trump Is Inviting Strategic Disaster In Central Asia

“Who lost Afghanistan?” could become a painful question for an unpopular president.

Drone Hysteria And Our Defense Of The Realm

Rand Paul probably thinks every confederate casualty at Gettysburg was the victim of an extrajudicial targeted killing. Filibustering the nomination of John Brennan today, Kentucky’s teapublican senator spoke for the Lost Cause, insisting that a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder this week is an unconstitutional slippery slope: “When I asked the president, ‘Can you kill […]

Whale War Drones

Thought: take the crew out. Harden the nose. Aim at ramming speed for the factory ship, and you’d have a motorized trireme. You would also become a real, honest-to-godz pirate. While I certainly agree with the desire to stop whaling fleets from killing the great cetaceans, at times I have questioned the tactics of the whale wars. […]

Confederacy of Dunces

Approached by sea, Fort Sumter is an unimpressive structure. Nearby Isle of Palms has larger houses. When Major Anderson withdrew his undermanned United States Army garrison to this structure in 1861, they found it alarmingly substandard and spent the next several weeks improving it. Their work was rushed at first, until they realized that South […]

Rolling Thunder to Desert Storm

The American war machine exists in a constant state of preparation for the previous war. In 1965, it was just perfecting the instruments of an atomic, primarily European, battlefield when Lyndon Johnson sent it into the cauldron of North Vietnam’s prepared air defenses. Johnson achieved hardly any of his political goals with OP Rolling Thunder, […]