W.J. Astore “Global reach, global power”: that was one motto of the U.S. Air Force when I was on active duty. “A global force for good”: that’s the new motto in advertisements for the U.S. Navy. Note that word: global. For the ambitions of the U.S. government and military transcend national security: they truly are…
W.J. Astore Also at Huffington Post. President Obama’s decision to deploy 3,000 troops to Liberia in Africa to assist in efforts to contain Ebola got me to thinking about the military as white blood cells. As a military officer, I took an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. In a…
The Militarized Realities of Fortress America By William J. Astore (Featured at TomDispatch.com) I spent four college years in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) and then served 20 years in the U.S. Air Force. In the military, especially in basic training, you have no privacy. The government owns you. You’re “government issue,” just another G.I., a…
W.J. Astore What will West Point graduates do without wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Don’t worry! There are a lot more threats listed on the classroom chalkboard. The New York Times this morning has an interesting article on this year’s West Point graduates. With the end of the war in Iraq (at least for us)…
JEREMIAH GOULKA MARCH 27, 2014 National security think tanks are cheerleading for the shale gas industry with near-complete disregard for climate change and water security. Guess who’s funding the studies? When it rains, it pours, so they say, but pouring rain is not exactly what you want in a drought. The big storm that hit the parched…
W.J. Astore The United States spends nearly a trillion dollars a year on national defense, to include wars, homeland security, a bewildering array of intelligence agencies, and the maintenance of nuclear weapons. Are we buying greater security with all this money? Consider the following fact. A private contractor hired to vet security clearances for US…
Here, as promised, is what I hope is some fresh thinking. I also posted this at Huffington Post. Currently, so-called “fresh” thinking on national security from the Obama administration includes the pivot to Asia, more emphasis on cyberwar and drones, continued expansion of Special Forces, a withdrawal from Afghanistan in super-slow motion, and intervention (sending arms at minimum; troops…
Andrew Bacevich, a retired U.S. Army colonel and professor of international relations, writing in January 2009 as Barack Obama took office as president, made the following cogent observation about the need for true “change” in Washington: When it comes to national security, the standard navigational charts used to guide the ship of state are obsolete.…
The Contrary Perspective 