Military
823 Articles
A Legal and Policy Risk Analysis of the Erik Prince Plan to Privatize War in Afghanistan
Trump administration officials reportedly are considering a plan to privatize a significant portion of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Erik Prince, founder of the notorious security…
Tweets, Trans, and the American Military
On the morning of July 26, President Donald Trump turned out a triptych of tweets taking a policy position banning transgender people from serving openly in the U.S. military.…
Trump’s Trans Ban is Bad for Military Readiness
An Army staff sergeant with multiple combat deployments, in charge of an infantry squad. A West Point grad innovating forward-based personnel support in a combat zone. A Lieutenant…
Your Tweet is My Command
My friend Phil Carter has written an excellent piece for Slate, pointing out the institutional dangers of disregarding President Trump’s recent series of tweets that…
We’ve Been Here Before: Discriminating Against Those Who Volunteer to Serve
On the anniversary of the day President Harry Truman desegregated the military, President Donald Trump announced, via Twitter, that the United States military would no longer welcome…
Lessons From Mosul: How to Reduce Civilian Harm in Urban Warfare
Fighting in densely populated areas poses a number of significant challenges to forces trying to adhere to the rules that govern warfare. Even assuming that international humanitarian…
Letter to the Editor: There Is Much More to a Civilian Casualty Investigation than Eyewitness Accounts
I applaud and agree with Sarah Knuckey’s, Ole Solvang’s, Jonathan Horowitz’s and Radhya Almutawakel’s recent post (“Pentagon Admits Major Investigation Flaw: imeshey…
Pentagon Admits Major Investigation Flaw: They Rarely Talk to Air Strike Witnesses or Victims
In a transcript of a Pentagon Press Briefing, released this week by Airwars, Central Command’s Deputy Director for Operations made a striking admission about U.S. investigations…
The “Leahy Law” Prohibiting US Assistance to Human Rights Abusers: Pulling Back the Curtain
With almost weekly news reports of US support for foreign governments with track records of gross human rights abuse—think torture in Yemen by Emirati security forces, violations…
Leaving the Paris Climate Agreement: A Veteran’s Perspective
Early in the summer of 2003, as we made our initial push from the Kuwaiti border up through central Iraq and then on into Anbar Province, our armored cavalry unit was not meeting…
Yemeni Human Rights Activist Radhya Al-Mutawakel’s Speech to the UN Security Council
Yesterday, leading human rights defender Radhya Almutawakel, the Chairperson of the Yemeni NGO, Mwatana Organization for Human Rights, briefed the UN Security Council on the war…
Protecting Civilians through Wartime Investigations: Applying the 2016 Minnesota Protocol When it Matters Most
It is highly important to have internationally recognized standards in investigating and prosecuting “potentially unlawful deaths”—an issue that is well recognized in the…