When my father, and later I, was stationed at Keesler Air Force Base, C-130s sang me to sleep at night from the runway across from our house (and, later, my dorm).
A new report says it’s “The Best Military Aircraft Ever.” (Warning: PDF)
Which is probably true: It’s a highly versatile aircraft — performing duties as […]

I like McBlogger, but, unfortunately, it’s made itself into one of the many jackasses that have felt it necessary to comment on something it has no knowledge about.
Opinions are one thing. Actually paying close attention and then voicing an opinion is another. Stick to state politics, Mickey B.

I completely agree with Abu Muqawama:
Abu Muqawama has always been a big fan of the late French intellectual Raymond Aron. Aron, writing in his newspaper column for Le Figaro, believed it was the responsibility of the public intellectual to make a careful study of the issues at hand — economics, military strategy, etc. — before […]

Great article from The Australian about David Kilcullen, an expert in counterinsurgency and adviser to General Petraeus in Iraq:
. . . [W]hen the invasion of Iraq was being planned, Kilcullen was one of a handful of senior military advisers in the coalition of the willing to voice a dissenting view. “I was one of a […]

My little brother just sent over these pictures he took of the POW/MIA Memorial at Hanscom Air Force Base, Massachusetts.
Lest we forget . . .

Talk of a draft has come and gone — probably largely thanks to Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), who keeps introducing legislation that would establish conscription for 18-year olds — since the beginning of the Iraq war. I’ve never taken it seriously, and still don’t. But it does become a little more interesting when some official […]

I have to pass this along from The Torch:
“They look at us like dimwits,” he said. “I don’t want to be looked at like that. … I’ve once had a woman tell me, ‘If there weren’t people like you, there wouldn’t be any wars.’ That’s angering.” - Private Francis Archambault
It may be angering, but it’s […]

Two more notes before I end the night:
An “escort” is advertising online her services to private military contractors in Baghdad’s Green Zone. Sorry, no active-duty troops need call.
Also, for those who aren’t aware: “The Texas Constitution, by the way, has been amended more than 400 times since it was enacted in 1876.”

Great column by John Noonan at The Daily Standard:
FOR NEARLY 200 years, cadets at the United States Military Academy have been guided by the “Thayer System,” a rigid structure of unyielding regulation, austere discipline, fierce loyalty, and strong emphasis on math, science, and engineering. The method is calculated to produce Army officers of the highest […]

Samantha Power, of “A Problem from Hell:” America and the Age of Genocide fame, an insightful book studying America’s indifference to various genocides throughout the 20th Century, had a great book review in last Sunday’s The New York Times.
While I started reading her review just because I respected her and wanted to read her thoughts […]