After a heated, bitterly contested election season, now that the peaceful transfer of power is complete and temperatures have subsided a bit—it’s important for the Profession of Arms to reflect on its critical role in this democratic society. In the spirit of this important reflection, recently, I made the case that, while they should always…
Retired Maj. Gen. Charles Dunlap has written, perhaps unintentionally, a truly ironic essay for The Hill publication. While he may have meant to disagree with my earlier-written opinion that military officers should not vote to maintain their professional obligation to reduce cancerous political partisanship in the ranks, his response’s immense irony is noteworthy.
*Note: This essay was published in the New York Times print edition on October 19, 2016 and is available online here. Tonight, like millions of Americans, I will be glued to my television, watching the third and last presidential debate. But unlike them, and millions of others, whatever I hear tonight, I won’t be taking it with…
The Professional Obligations of Military Officership Having graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point on 1 June 2002, receiving my diploma from President George W. Bush moments after he gave his “doctrine of preemption” speech, the image at left (which I came across this past week) evoked a response from me. Not,…
This past week, a court in the Netherlands found that Dutch military peacekeepers were responsible for three of the 8,000+ massacred at Srebrenica in 1995. The BBC reported it this way: The Dutch were in charge of the UN “safe area” when Bosnian Serb forces overran it in 1995 and killed 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men…