A SFC who was working in sex abuse education was running a prostitution ring on Fort Hood? Someone needs to stop making this stuff up. Oh, that's right, you can't make up stuff like this.

I am surprised that SecDef Hagel isn't slugging four stars as they walk in his office, and then giving them noogies and banging their heads into the wall. This of course comes on top of the allegedly butt-grabbing AF LTC who was his service's sexual assault czar. Can you imagine the damage a guy like that could allegedly do during a year-long tour at Bagram? ("ILB because someone has enough time during their deployment to run this website.") And probably has.

Part of the problem: For years, the services have been dumping non-performers into EO and sexual harassment billets. In other words, they weren't taking this stuff that seriously. Now they are reaping what they have sowed.

Or, as Gen. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told reporters yesterday, "We're losing the confidence of the women who serve that we can solve this problem. That's a crisis."

Just when I was feeling very unhappy with the Obama administration, Dick Cheney pops up to remind me of how much worse things could be -- and were. Joe Klein has the story here.

I always thought that President Obama wanted to model his domestic policy on Lincoln and his foreign policy on Eisenhower.

But the news this week of the IRS harrassing right-wing groups and the Justice Department harrassing the Associated Press evokes the Nixon era for me.

On the other hand, Nixon had better relations with the military (despite contemplating firing Creighton Abrams in Vietnam).

This is me really going off the Obama reservation.  

From Orwell's diaries, 21 September 1942: "Yesterday met Liddell Hart for the first time. Very defeatist and even, in my judgement, somewhat inclined to be pro-German subjectively."

I like this because I was really disappointed when I read Liddell Hart. 

By Jason Fritz

Best Defense guest respondent

When my copy of the January-March 2013 issue of The CAVALRY & ARMOR Journal (the U.S. Cavalry and Armor Association version of ARMOR Magazine) arrived in the mail a couple of weeks ago, I was also a bit puzzled by the article titled "How to Eat Steak with a Knife and Fork!" Not only because the title motif "How to Eat X with Y" has become quite tired, but because I expected it to be the beginning of an onslaught of "Armor Rulz!" articles in future issues. Of course, reading the article you can see that it is not a paean to maneuver warfare but rather is only a plug for three schools offered by the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, written by the commander of those schools.

To me the biggest issue was not that ARMOR ran an article about "core competencies," but rather that the publishers used valuable space in a branch journal to advertise schools that officers and NCOs should be going to anyway. I do not share Tom's lament on the tactical focus of ARMOR as it is a journal for armor units, which are by definition brigades and below and therefore tactical formations. But his post brings up a prevalent problem: the demise of the branch journals.

Anyone who subscribes to their branch journal has probably noticed this decline. Articles are becoming repetitive. Issues are becoming thinner. I certainly can't think of a single article in the past two years in ARMOR from which I felt I learned something. In the case of ARMOR, which was first published in 1888, this demise is ill-timed. For the first time in over a generation our armor force has extensive and varied combat experience and we should not lose these lessons.  And this is true for every branch.  In an introduction to the Association version of the issue that Tom linked to earlier in the week, MG (R) Terry Tucker, former chief of Armor and current president of the U.S. Cavalry & Armor Association, wrote:

I would like to take a moment to thank all who contribute to this Magazine and participate in the important discussion of our Mounted Force. However, as important as it is for our contributors to submit articles based on history, "tactics, techniques and procedures," or personal experience, our mission challenges us to exchange critical thought among our members. I believe we too often fall short in this area in our Cavalry and Armor Journal and in ARMOR Magazine. We want discussion, differing opinions, and even heated debate when appropriate.

Branch journals may not be Foreign Affairs, Parameters, or even PRISM, but they are and have been the primary outlet for professionals at the tactical level to disseminate, discuss, and debate their tradecraft. Theirs being such a focused audience, you won't find academics rushing to get published. That leaves it to those of us who have been there and done it to keep these forums alive; you don't know who needs to know what you know or what doors writing will open for you. I wrote one article for ARMOR in 2008 while I was still in the Army. In addition to earning a free year's subscription to the magazine, this article played a significant role in my securing my first job out of the Army. The article, titled "Measuring Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare," has been the publication prospective employers have invariably asked about first because they recognize ARMOR and because they are interested in the topic.  Recognizing this success, I shouldn't have stopped at one article -- something I intend to fix this year.

If you are a commander in the force, find a way to incentivize your officers and NCOs to write for their journal -- prospective writers need to know that writing is valued in their organization.  Whether you are a commander or not, submit articles to your branch's journal (make sure you abide by their submission criteria). Get your good ideas and your name out there and put it in print.  Branch journals provide an opportunity for you to influence your community, work on your writing skills, and maybe help someone who needs the information or idea you're holding on to.

Jason Fritz served as an armor officer in the U.S. Army for six years. He is now a defense consultant focusing on land power issues and a contributor to the Ink Spots security blog.

Colin Kahl's new report on containing a nuclear Iran (done with a couple of his homies) is long, but worth it. I was asked to suggest cuts to a draft and honestly couldn't find any. It is the best thing I have read about Iran policy in a long time.

The problem is that much what he is recommending for containment is expensive stuff like forward-deployed missile defenses and conventional forces, and defense budgets are going in the other direction. He also wants us to get more involved in Syria and in attacking Iranian networks of "covert operatives, surrogates and proxies" across the region.

It is interesting. I'd like it even if I didn't have a book on it.

Military Review had a pretty good understanding of mission command back in 1986, when it ran an article by Daniel J. Hughes titled "Abuses of German Military History." (The article itself starts on p. 66 of the linked issue.)

To understand how the German military worked, Hughes writes, it is crucial to understand that "by current standards, no ‘system' actually existed. Improvisation was the key to the Prussian-German approach which regarded the conduct of war as an art -- a free, creative activity with scientific foundations."

Something else I didn't know: Use of the word auftragstaktik was "exceedingly rare" in the Germany army of World War II and before.

Here's more.