260 articles
If you were to ask a sampling of American security and intelligence officials for their pick as the gravest threat to face the United States from global jihadists, you might be surprised by the answer you would hear. If you listen to official Washington, or the establishment media, for your answer, you might hear: a […]
It’s Christmas morning, and I am wondering if it’s too early to break out the bourbon. We are at a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan, about 12 kilometers from the border with Pakistan, in the heart of Pashtun country. It’s a quiet morning, no rockets have been fired at the base, and there are no reports […]
In an October 15, 2014 article by Greg Zoroya featured in USA Today, which cites an NPR story from the same day, the author points out that a small number of Westerners – in this case, Dutch bikers – are heading over to Iraqi Kurdistan to fight the Islamic State (also known as IS, ISIS, or […]
People are always asking, “What do I need to do to become a Navy SEAL?” Or they say, “Those Rangers are all psychos and mindless killing machines; that’s not for me.” Or, perhaps someone thinks they have what it takes, physically, to be a Special Forces soldier, but they don’t know if they have the […]
A recent Wall Street Journal article by Michael Phillips, which asked whether U.S. soldiers were dying of survivable wounds in Iraq and Afghanistan, has caused a minor uproar in the military medicine community with its assertion that the military is moving too slowly to adopt casualty care techniques that could better prevent survivable wounds in […]
We all know it is hard to be a special operator forever. The toll the job takes on an individual, let alone a family, can be high. Lots of guys—and it is still mainly guys— do four to six years of service, maybe more, then move on to do other things. Former SEALs, Green Berets, PJs, […]
We need a new American Grand Strategy if America is to preserve a long-lasting world order commensurate with its national interests and values.
Brett Jones is a former Navy SEAL, and — full disclosure — a former SEAL teammate and friend of this author. He is also gay, and has been his whole life. In a perfect world, this second point would not need emphasis, nor even mention, given Brett’s service and his accomplished life to date. However, […]