A group of disenchanted humanitarians recently launched a spin-off of the infamous game Cards Against Humanity entitled JadedAid. Included among the deck’s many satirical (and subtly true) combinations is the game’s tagline: “Coming to terms with the fact that your intervention is the problem.” The expression applies equally well to the interventionist foreign policy the U.S. has broadly followed since ... Read More »
The clock is ticking for America. There are 70 days remaining until the presidential election, and after the results are counted, America will be a tinderbox ready to explode no matter who wins. What follows is an educated analysis of the political friction now escalating in America. Note carefully that nothing in this article should be construed as any intention ... Read More »
One of history’s most recent and successful counterinsurgency (COIN) campaigns proved so successful that few, even in the military community, are aware that it ever took place. Between 1962 and 1976, Anglo-Omani forces fought what began as a localized insurgency, later to be co-opted and escalated by communist guerrillas. Despite a restive populace and an ineffective initial strategy, the Anglo-Omani ... Read More »
In December 2014, a middle-aged man driving a car in Dijon, France, mowed down more than a dozen pedestrians within 30 minutes, occasionally shouting Islamic slogans from his window. The chief prosecutor in Dijon described the attacks, which left 13 injured but no one dead, as the work of a mentally unbalanced man whose motivations were vague and “hardly coherent.” ... Read More »
There are two ways of seeing and writing about a thorny issue. To borrow a well-worn expression, one can see the trees or the forest. Magazine editors and social platforms do plenty of the latter, while often missing the individual, the tree that is, by miles, in the hopes of not appearing indelicate or biased. I understand this approach, though ... Read More »
Death and destruction in combat is a difficult subject that has been considered at one time or another by most of us who have served our country in uniform. But for the majority, the consideration was more of a philosophic endeavor than something we were actually likely to face. I want to open a dialogue with you. I urge you ... Read More »
Without question this is already a busy year for Defense Secretary Carter and his department. In terms of external challenges, there is the ever-expanding fight against ISIS, now about to include the deployment of U.S. forces to Libya. Then there is the intensifying confrontation with China over that country’s attempt to turn the South China Sea into Xi Jinping’s private ... Read More »
AS WORLD leaders gathered in Istanbul this week for the World Humanitarian Summit, Kenya’s government dropped a bombshell announcement — that it plans to close the Dadaab refugee camp in six months, which with 400,000 mostly Somali residents is the largest in the world. Deputy President William Ruto said the camp is a “center for recruitment, radicalization and training and ... Read More »
Last month, the United Nations held a large conference in Geneva to discuss its plan to prevent violent extremism; that same day in Washington, D.C., two federal contractors with experience in peacebuilding held a conference on the same subject, at which DHS Secretary Johnson and Sen. Cory Booker delivered remarks. Our own non-profit presented at the latter event; we spoke ... Read More »
Last month, Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pinned Purple Hearts on four fellow Marines at a remote outpost in northern Iraq. They and four others were wounded in an attack by the Islamic State group that killed their buddy, Staff Sgt. Louis Cardin. Less than a week later, Dunford was seated before the Senate Armed ... Read More »
SOFX The Crossroads of Special Operations