Perhaps you’ve heard: not only is Moscow about to maraud its way through Ukraine, not only is Tsar Vladimir I seeking a new Eurasian empire, but – as if to add insult to injury – Russia is "returning" to Africa in a big way, intent on "displacing" the...
Let’s be honest: Americans don’t care about Africa – by and large, at least. Despite the lies we tell ourselves – and the raging debates we have – about PC-culture, critical race theory, and so on, this remains a salient fact. Sure, the delusion is soothing. It tends...
In the rather prescient 1998 film The Siege, CIA agent Elise Craft (Annette Benning) – speaking about counter-terrorism – lectures her FBI colleague Anthony Hubbard (Denzel Washington) that: "In this game, the most committed wins." Well, that...
Just over two months before the military mission in Kabul – along with broader American delusions – collapsed, the Center for International Policy released a report on America’s failed and futile Afghanistan adventure. It was a war that took four lives and five limbs...
Yesterday I found myself dry-heaving and hyper-ventilating in broad daylight, crouched behind the corner of an unused outdoor patio bar in Kansas. I hadn’t had but two beers, but I’d had more than enough of American obtuseness. On a smoke break from wielding my...
To say that the mainstream press’s recent coverage of America’s ostensible Afghan War withdrawal – and Iraq-Syria mission muddle-throughs – has been atrocious could be a competitive candidate for understatement of the year. Nearly everyday is the same, when I open my...
When I entered West Point’s Thayer Gate – and army life – 20 years ago last month, America was not at war. Not really anyway. Back then, when a 17-year-old’s mother (had to) sign him into the military, he might expect some peacekeeping duty in Kosovo or – at worst –...
Ever since the "end" of the latest forty-four day war between Turkish and Israeli-backed – and American-enabled – Azerbaijan and (at best vaguely) Russian-aligned Armenia, there’ve been a slew of policy-wonkish laments about the resultant "illiberal...
No matter how powerful or influential, a nation’s government is ultimately just a pack of people – a clique of flawed and fallible human beings. Now I don’t know about you, but in my own wee experience, when a person over-the-top-overreacts over some small matter –...
"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!" ~ Michael Corleone, The Godfather III (1990) Kandahar Airfield ("KAF") was as bizarre as it was dusty. You sort of tasted it before you smelled it – and smelled before you saw it. It’s been a...
