Students of the military art have long been familiar with the Iron Law of the Inverse. This great truth holds, among other things, that a service’s leadership effectiveness is inversely proportional to the number of generals available to lead; that combat ferocity is inversely proportional to the quantity of medals awarded; and that a service’s budgetary discipline is inversely proportional Read More ›
So, in the military budget wars, the Army wants to cut the National Guard. what else is new? The Army and the Guard–or, more broadly, the full-tie professionals and the part-time citizen-soldiers–have been squabbling for at least as long as such categories have existed. The professionals, understandably, tend to resent and /or demean the “weekend warriors” who, for their part, Read More ›
Less than a decade after the great victories of the Cold War and Desert Storm, the U.S. military faces a very different kind of crisis–indeed, a crisis unique in all of military experience. Numerous factors have contributed: a complex, volatile world situation; the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD); the military technological revolution; deep budget cuts; and the ill-advised Read More ›
Introduction From its inception Darwinism posed a challenge to Christian theology. Darwinism threatened to undo the Church’s understanding of creation, and therewith her understanding of the origin of human life. Nor did the challenge of Darwinism stop here. With human beings the result of a brutal, competitive process that systematically rooted out the weak and favored only the strong (we Read More ›
One of the great curiosities of the Cold War was its ability to spawn entire industries dedicated to excoriating America’s role in it. Literally tens of thousands of academics, pundits, and activists made entire careers Blaming America First. And one of the most vibrant sectors of that enterprise involved beating on the Military-Industrial Complex that was allegedly destroying America’s economy, Read More ›
The fracas was inevitable. Several weeks ago, the National Guard’s senior leadership concluded that they hadn’t been given a fair chance to make their case before the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). They also concluded that the Army was systematically lying to them about the extent of the Guard reductions they wanted. So they requested a meeting with defense secretary William Read More ›
The “Monkey Bill” now before the Tennessee Legislature is a bad means to a good end. The good end is to teach students the fascinating process by which scientific theories come to be established as “facts.” Scientific theories in general and Darwin’s in particular are human interpretations of nature which come to be accepted because they are persuasive. The public Read More ›
The concept is simple. Its implications are not. And a lot of people at the Pentagon, especially along the Army corridors, just wish it would go away. Here’s the non-technical version, drawn in part from an Air Force briefing that’s been attracting attention within the Building and On the Road. Americans believe – or like to believe, at any rate Read More ›
Were history honest, the 1990s would already be known as the era of the Dr. Seuss Defense Debate. It was Mostly MRCs — a Pentagon acronym standing for Major Regional Conflict and pronounced, “Murk.” The debate centered on how many it might be nice to fight at the same time, one or two, and on how to go about it. The Read More ›