Air Force
Don't Give Up on Ground Troops
With budget cuts looming, the Pentagon should focus on adaptability—not just technolgy
Adaptability, not technology, will win the wars of the future.
Military grumblers vs. Clinton
Why Scott Gration really resigned.
"Some people had to go to some real shit holes to escape him."
Updated at 3:03 p.m. When U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Scott Gration resigned his position early this morning, he said in an emailed statement, “differences with Washington regarding my leadership style and certain priorities lead me to believe that it's now time to leave." That's putting it gently. A former State Department official with a long service record in the Africa bureau and a former ambassador told me that Gration’s tenure in Kenya was marked by constant friction with his superiors and a refusal to abide by State Department protocol and security measures.
Romney's Airplane Jitters
I've been offline most of the day on a cross-country flight (fittingly enough), so apologies if the point has already been made. But this detail from this weekend's Times profile of Romney's body-man, Garrett Jackson, struck me as not-at-all flattering to the presumed nominee. I'm frankly shocked that Jackson confirmed it: Mr. Jackson, a University of Mississippi graduate and a licensed pilot, was applying to the Air Force’s officer training school when he took the job with Mr. Romney. Mr. Jackson once acted as co-pilot for a flight Mr.
Fevers
“The list of controversies grows weekly,” Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner, filing from Jerusalem, write in The New York Times.
The Permanent Candidate
Thomson on Films: Cliff Robertson and the Sordid Ways of Old Hollywood
Cliff Robertson died the other day. He was 88, and I suppose he was what is called an establishment figure. Long ago he had won an Oscar for his performance in Charly (1968) about a retarded man who is given an experimental drug that lets him find genius (and his doctor, Claire Bloom) but then slips back to being a fool, and he was perfectly OK in the film if you can manage to sit through it now, in which case you may surmise that nearly any actor in that begging role might have won the Oscar.
Mission Creep
Moments after signing the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in December of last year, President Obama looked up to a cheering crowd, smiled, and announced, “This is done.” But last week’s news that the Air Force had discharged an airman in April on the basis of his sexuality indicates that the abhorrent policy lives on. In the face of the resulting media firestorm, the Pentagon quickly released a statement implying that its hands were tied: The airman had voluntarily outed himself, and then asked that his discharge be expedited.
Waste Land
This year, the United States will spend at least $700 billion on defense and security. Adjusting for inflation, that’s more than America has spent on defense in any year since World War II—more than during the Korean war, the Vietnam war, or the Reagan military buildup. Much of that enormous sum results from spending increases under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Since 2001, military and security expenditures have soared by 119 percent. For most of that time, of course, the United States has been fighting two wars. Yet that’s not the cause of the defense-spending explosion.
