Military Forces

Govt. plans to procure bulletproof jackets for para-military forces

A little about .... (Free subscription) | 12/08/2009

New Delhi, Dec.8 - ANI: The Government has proposed to procure Bullet Proof Jackets for the Para Military Forces (PMFs).

Kucinich plans to force vote on US withdrawal from Afghanistan

Raw Story (Free subscription) | yesterday

For congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Afghan President Hamid Karzai's announcement Tuesday that his country would need the US's military support for another 10 or 15 years seems to have been the last straw. The outspoken House representative says it was Karzai's statement that prompted him to draft a resolution calling for a House vote on the [...]

Unaccountable Military

The Retrograde and Faithless (Free subscription) | 12/05/2009

"G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" is an awful, stupid movie. I'm not really going out on a limb saying that. But I want to address a certain reaction to the movie, that of the offended anti-militarist. "G.I. Joe" is about an unaccountable military force that protects the world from Cobra, a group fighting for world domination. The part of that story that would offend anti-militarists...

Eric C. Anderson: Demand China Commit Military Forces to the War in Afghanistan

The Huffington Post (Free subscription) | 12/03/2009

... world peace. While I have been accused of being a "Panda Hugger," I am not delusional. Hu's new military strategic guidelines--the "Historic Missions"--are hardly altruistic; rather they are one more element of Beijing's effort to sustain China's economic development. And the PLA leadership is quite aware of the exponential mission creep associated with Hu's directives. How do we know this?...

The Judge Opines On Military Tribunals

Consent Of The Governed (Free subscription) | 12/02/2009

... New York City, and the suspects in the attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole will go on trial before military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the public discourse has lost sight of the fundamental principles that guide the government when it makes such decisions. Unfortunately, the government has lost sight of the principles as well. When President George W. Bush spoke to Congress shortly...

Peril in Pakistan: The U.S. is treading on dangerous territory

post-gazette.com (Free subscription) | yesterday

President Barack Obama's decision to escalate the Afghanistan war by sending in more troops also has serious implications for the United States in Pakistan. Mr. Obama made it clear last week that he considers Pakistan and Afghanistan as part of the same theater of war within which American forces will operate until the conflict ends. Administration officials who visited Pakistan recently...

David Korten: When Our Leaders Fail to Lead

Dialogic (Free subscription) | 12/08/2009

... is not comparable, because our prospects for success there are even worse. I am neither a military strategist nor a student of military history, but I recall well the U.S. experience during the Vietnam War. I was serving at the time as a U.S. Air Force Captain. My first assignment was as an instructor at the Special Air Warfare School in Florida, where we instructed...

Three Books on Afghanistan

Talk Islam (Free subscription) | yesterday

Three Books on Afghanistan Reviewed Times as complex as ours present us with huge moral dilemmas and require minds that receive constant sharpening, and sometimes news reports just don’t do. Since the United States sent military forces after al-Qaida following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the political and cultural landscape of Afghanistan has been a daily [...] a

3 on occupation

Soccer Dad (Free subscription) | yesterday

Twenty years ago Jeane Kirkpatrick wrote (.pdf) |: There is disagreement among Arab governments about who has rightful sovereignty over this area, but all agree that it is not Israel. Arab states have aggressively pushed their case. They have fought costly wars and made it necessary for Israel to maintain large, powerful, expensive military forces to defend itself against them. But when...

What’s Happening With Iraq's Oil

iStockAnalyst.com (Free subscription) | yesterday

As multinational military forces have left Iraq, international petroleum companies have eagerly descended - seduced by the long-term potential of vast oil reserves off-limits to foreigners for decades. Yet lingering violence, legal questions and political uncertainty make doing business in this country a gamble. [More...]

• Undeterred by Political Risks, Oil Companies Eye Iraq’s Multibillion-Barrel Prize - Research Recap
• What's Happening with Iraq's Oil - Safehaven
• See the 5 articles on the same subject

"Franklin Delano Roosevelt Live-Blogs World War II" (via Brad DeLong)

Jeff Weintraub (Free subscription) | 12/08/2009

... ... ... though one has to add that Congress has voted to explicitly approve the use of military force on several occasions since then, including both Iraq wars and the 2001 anti-Taliban war in Afghanistan. The January 1991 Congressional vote authorizing military force against Iraq in the first Gulf War, which I guess came closest to a formal declaration of war, was by...

Jimmy Carter on the invasion of Afghanistan.

PREA Prez (Free subscription) | 12/08/2009

President Jimmy Carter on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, January 4, 1980. Massive Soviet military forces have invaded the small, nonaligned, sovereign nation of Afghanistan., which had hitherto not been an occupied satellite of the Soviet Union. Fifty thousand heavily armed Soviet troops have crossed the border and are now dispersed throughout Afghanistan, attempting to conquer the...

Why Switzerland Has The Lowest Crime Rate In the World

Consent Of The Governed (Free subscription) | 12/08/2009

Switzerland does not maintain a military force as we do in the U.S., rather they have provided a well-armed, well-trained home militia that can be mobilized at virtually a moment's notice. That is what this country used to have. A militia is for DEFENSIVE purposes only, in contrast to our military force which is used for OFFENSIVE purposes (and also used to police the world)....

Obama's War Speech: The Questions It Raises… And The Answer That Must Be Given

The Humane-Rights-Agenda Blog (Free subscription) | 12/08/2009

http://www.revcom.us/a/185/obama_speech-en.html Obama's War Speech: The Questions It Raises… And The Answer That Must Be Given By Larry Everest On Tuesday, December 1, at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point , President Barack Obama announced that he would send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan . He also called for 10,000 more NATO troops, which pushes the total U.S.-led forces...

Jeff Sessions Warns Janet Napolitano That KSM Trial Decision Has Made Her "Mission More Difficult"

The Huffington Post (Free subscription) | yesterday

... of authority that would allow him to detain [KSM], one of which is the [Authorization to Use Military Force], because it directly cites the 9/11 attacks in its language -- the people who planned the 9/11 attacks are combatants and are detainable under the AUMF," explains Ken Gude, a human-rights expert at the Center for American Progress. "Under the .000001 chance that they...