Center for a New American Security

Yesterday, 165 House Republicans voted to completely de-fund USAID as part of austerity measures designed to address the U.S. budget crisis. They suggested a lot of other cuts, but you can guess what they did not suggest cutting: the budget of the Department of Defense. They suggested we zero out the budget for USAID but not make any changes to the amount we are currently spending within the Department of Defense.

The FY2011 Department of Defense budget request was $548.9 billion dollars for the base budget, which does not include the $159.3 billion dollars set aside for "overseas contingency operations" such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just to give you a little perspective, the International Affairs budget we set aside for foreign and security assistance programs totaled, according to Gordon Adams and Cindy Williams, $500 billion in the three decades between FY1977 and FY2007 -- $50 billion less than the base budget for the Department of Defense for one year of operations!

But that incredible disparity is not what folks need to know about USAID. The question that last factoid should prompt in the heads of at least 165 people in Washington, DC is, "Wait a minute, why is discussion of the USAID budget included in the authoritative book on the national security budget?"

The answer is that Adams and Williams understand what every U.S. military officer and defense official from the youngest second lieutenant at Fort Benning to Bob Gates understands: the money we spend through USAID is part of our national security budget. Some money, such as the money we spent through both the defense and aid budgets in Haiti last year, we spend for mostly altruistic purposes. But the two biggest recipients of U.S. international aid through USAID are Afghanistan and Pakistan. We can have a separate debate about whether or not this money is being well spent, but we cannot have a debate as to why it is being spent: it is quite obviously being spent to advance what are seen to be the national security interests of the United States.

USAID, as an organization, no doubt wastes a lot of money. But so too, to put it mildly, does the Department of Defense. I have no doubt, in fact, that the amount of money USAID wastes in any given year amounts to a small fraction of the amount of money the Department of Defense loses through cost overruns for the F-35 alone.

The bottom line here is that the biggest defender of the USAID budget will be Bob Gates -- and any U.S. military officer who has ever served with someone from the Office of Transition Initiatives in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Sec. Gates will argue, supported by veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, that while USAID has problems, the money we spend through it is just as related to U.S. national security interests as the money we wasted on the Crusader or the money we spend to put an 18-year old through basic training. To not understand that is embarassing because it means you're an elected policy-maker and still uneducated about the wars we've been fighting for almost 10 years now.

You want to spend less money on aid and development in Afghanistan? Fine, I agree with you. But get of USAID? Now you're just being ignorant.

Josh Foust and I, as we often do, were engaged in a lengthy Twitter conversation on how to properly evaluate counterinsurgency tactics in Afghanistan. Writing in 140-character increments was going to drive me crazy sooner rather than later, so I suggested we do a joint blog post on the subject. What follows is the question and answer session we had this afternoon. This is cross-posted on Josh's blog. Enjoy.

JF. Recently, Paula Broadwell recounted on Tom Ricks' blog some operations in the Arghandab Valley, in Kandahar province. I found some of the events she described, like razing entire villages to the ground, appalling. At least in terms of tone, you seemed to agree: on Twitter, you referred to some passages as "cringe-inducing." I saw that as an example of questionable tactics in service of a non-existent strategy. But it also made me think back to a report you filed when you returned from a tour of the Arghandab. "Counterinsurgency," you wrote, "as practiced at the tactical level, is the best I have ever seen it practiced." Clearly, I'm missing something between the two accounts of this valley. So, what are the indicators you use to evaluate tactical counterinsurgency as the best you've ever seen?

AE. Yeah, the main problem I had with Paula's post concerned the inability to see how ISAF actions might -- while making perfect sense to ISAF military officers (and a West Point graduate like Paula predisposed to see things from the perspective of a military officer) -- be perceived from the Afghan perspective. One of the things you often hear older military officers tell younger military officers is to "turn the map around": how might the battlefield look to the enemy? I think that in counterinsurgency operations, where the population might matter more than in conventional, maneuver warfare, we have an obligation to turn the map around and see how our actions might be perceived by the local population.

Like Paula, though, I was impressed with a U.S. unit I visited in the northern Arghandab River Valley (ARV) last month. I have not had the chance to visit or observe the ARV over a long period of time and cannot say whether or not improved tactics will have a strategic effect, but I have observed U.S. military units struggle with the conflict in Afghanistan since 2001. I myself served there as a young platoon leader in 2002 and again as a Ranger platoon leader in 2004. I only mention that because I often compare and contrast units and small-unit leaders today with myself and the units I led in 2002 and 2004. I returned again in 2009 after several years spent wandering around the Arabic-speaking world.

The way one evaluates the tactical performance of a unit in combat depends a lot on how one perceives the conflict and what is important for victory. When it comes to maneuver warfare, the U.S. military has reached something approaching consensus on how we evaluate the tactical performance of leaders. U.S. Army Field Manual 7-8, Infantry Rifle Platoon and Squad, for example, is a commonly accepted reference used to teach small unit leaders how to fight maneuver warfare at the tactical level in an infantry unit. It is based on both recent historical experiences as well as practical lessons learned. It contains loads of assumptions, most of which have been pretty rigorously tested. (With often painful results for those testing them!)

U.S. Army Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency, and  U.S. Army Field Manual 3-24.2, Tactics in Counterinsurgency offer similar standards for how we can teach and then evaluate units in combat in counterinsurgency operations. I should add, though, that I do not think the U.S. military and the scholarly community has reached anything approaching consensus with respect to counterinsurgency. I also do not think we have as rigorously tested the assumptions in these manuals as we should. (To give but one example, I question the degree to which our provision of social services really matters for success.) That having been said, when it comes down to it, I feel both of our counterinsurgency field manuals get a lot right. The emphasis in 3-24.2 on leveraging and supporting host national security forces, for example, is spot on. So too is the appendix on intelligence preparation of the battlefield (IPB): you can't just know who you are fighting; you also have to know about the environment in which you are fighting. And I agree with the considerations for both offensive and defensive operations. [Note: I welcome any scholars who would criticize the manuals. My own thoughts on the things I think each manual gets right have been influenced by a) historical studies, b) what I myself have been able to learn by fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and c) spending a lot of time studying the conflicts in southern Lebanon and Afghanistan as a civilian scholar and researcher.]

Based on the doctrine, what I observed in the ARV was encouraging. I saw a unit conducting aggressive offensive operations, fully integrating special operations forces into their plans and operations, and taking local security forces really seriously. I also saw a very sophisticated IPB -- the best I had myself ever seen at the company-grade level. The unit I spent an afternoon with, for example, really knew their neighborhood. They knew everyone who lived there and all the buildings in their area of operations. When something changed, I got the sense this unit would notice. And that's really important. I use The Wire a lot to explain everything from Lebanese politics to counterinsurgency, and I would liken the U.S. Army to the character Ellis Carver: when we meet him in Season One, all he wants to do is kick ass and take names. By Season Five, though, he's become a much smarter police officer. He's taken the time to get to know the people he's trying to protect and can thus better separate the bad guys from all the people just trying to get on with their lives.

Anyway, all of that led me to observe that U.S. counterinsurgency operations at the tactical level were some of the best I had ever seen. Caveat lector, I do not know whether or not these improved tactics will yield a strategic effect. There are too many phenomena -- many of them exogenous, as @ndubaz pointed out on Twitter -- that we cannot even observe much less measure. And we still have a lot of known pains in our asses (like Afghan governance and sanctuaries in Pakistan) that could render tactical gains ephemeral.

As one final caveat lector, my observations were based on a limited sample, and unit and leader performance should be assumed to be uneven across the country. Still, I was encouraged.

JF. Okay, so I can summarize: the operations you saw last year in the Arghandab matched with your interpretation of how one would enact both tactical and counterinsurgency doctrine, yes? Aggressive operations, integrating SF, and taking local security forces seriously, all of which add up to good tactics? Is there any way to be more specific?

For example, in this Broadwell episode, the local unit was most certainly using aggressive operations, and they integrated SF, and they even worked through the ABP to develop local knowledge. The thing is, the aggression resulted in the destruction of an entire village (something General McChrystal strongly urged against in the 2009 COIN guidance for which you were a consultant), and the SF's use of the ABP -- Col. Raziq is not from the Arghandab (the ABP has no jurisdiction in the district) and his tribe has been in conflict with many communities in this part of the Arghandab -- is, let us say, a bit questionable. How can we tell the difference between an appropriate use of these three aspects of good tactical activity, and inappropriate use of these three aspects of good tactical activity? For example, what makes aggression proper now, versus the restraint previous COIN strategies required?

AE. Those are great questions, some of which I am hesitant to answer. I am reticent to pass judgment on operations I have not personally observed. I am especially reticent to comment from Washington, DC on operations in Afghanistan. My perch at 1301 Pennsylvania Avenue is a great place to think about strategy or policy, sure, but not so much operations and tactics. The best (only?) place to observe the latter is in Afghanistan itself. So instead of passing judgment on the aforementioned operations, let me ask some questions instead -- questions that may be useful for both commanders on the ground as well as for analysts like Paula who have had the chance to directly observe the operations themselves:

1. What are we trying to do here?
2. What effect will these operations have on the enemy?
3. How will these operations affect or be perceived by the local population?
4. What are the trade-offs for using a character like Col. Raziq? (On the one hand, he is seen as being effective, but on the other hand ... well, anyone who has not yet read the 2009 Matthieu Aikins profile of Raziq for Harper's should.) 
5. What are the likely second- and third-order effects of our operations?

The thing is, you can be, to quote one Stan McChrystal, "tactically brilliant but strategically stupid." Are the operations that Paula describes tactically sound? Maybe -- I don't know. But I would hope that officers on the ground -- as well as Paula herself -- are thinking through whether or not these operations will have the strategic effect we hope they will have. Maybe they will. But I would hope we're thinking through those five questions I listed above, which have more to do with strategy than tactics.

As far as tactics are concerned, I would again refer readers to FM 3-24.2 for what the U.S. Army considers to be good counterinsurgency tactics. I cannot myself reduce "good tactics" down to three or four things: I just picked out three or four things that I believed helped to illustrate why I left the ANV last month impressed.

JF. Okay, so you don't like to condemn events you didn't personally witness. That's... fine, I guess. I wonder why, though, an afternoon of briefings is sufficient to declare tactics good in one case but a few thousand words describing tactics is insufficient to question tactical decisions elsewhere. It's kind of the crux of what started this whole discussion: at what point can we reasonably ask probing questions about conduct? The outlines of this village razing incident in the Arghandab, in my view, warrants probing questions precisely because it is such a drastic measure.

So, at best I can tell this leaves me with two remaining questions.

1) If tactics are good and adhere to theory, but either undermine or don't advance our overall strategy, what's the point of praising tactics? Isn't that just wasted time, effort, money, and, most importantly, lives?

2) I can accept your view that it's difficult to question too much from the U.S. But if no one sitting in Washington, DC, can really question the tactics we read about, in what way can we, in good faith, question and strive to understand the war? This, too, is at the heart of why I'm asking these questions. It's not as if everyone who is interested in understanding the war can go embed with the troops (and there is, unfortunately, greater difficulty for war skeptics to get precious embed space, compared to non-skeptics). If personal accounts, even (as I called Broadwell's latest) hagiographies, are not enough to prompt serious questions about our conduct, how can we reasonably evaluate what's happening?

AE. Okay, I'll address your points one at a time, but before I do, let me just say that I have really enjoyed this. Compared with trying to explain this over Twitter, conventional prose is a joy. And your questions are good ones.

1. Oh, there is a lot of good in praising good tactics. Let me name two. First, improved tactics demonstrate a military organization that has learned -- which big bureaucracies often have trouble doing! That's very positive. Second, it is too early to tell whether or not the near-term security outlook for the ANV has changed for the better. But if it does, we will want to note the correlation between improved tactics and improved security for rather obvious reasons.

2. This is a great and legitimate question. I should be more careful and allow that we can, in fact, judge operations from afar when the documentary evidence is solid. I'm not trying to say I can't second-guess or judge William Calley, for example, because I wasn't personally at My Lai! But I would want a lot more documentation than Paula's single blog post before weighing in on this particular example.

I think you are somewhat incorrect to say that skeptics do not get to visit Afghanistan. You write this because you're thinking of people like me who travel there as part of our jobs as civilian researchers and have been outspoken in support (to varying degrees) of the current strategy. But plenty of other civilian researchers and journalists I know visit Afghanistan as guests of the command and return to write critical reports -- and then visit again (see Hastings, Michael). Other journalists and civilian researchers write highly skeptical accounts without ever embedding (see Dorronsoro, Gilles). I mentioned earlier the journalist Matthieu Aikins, whose reporting I love. It's worth pointing out that he has, in addition to observing the war as both an embedded and unembedded journalist, also been an outspoken skeptic of the current strategy and, together with fellow activist-journalists Nir Rosen, Gareth Porter and Ahmed Rashid, offered his own policy recommendations. (Along with some guy named Foust and a bunch of other non-journalists.) So if all we had to go on was a blog post from my friend Paula, I would agree with your point. But I linked to that great Aikins piece on Raziq from Harper's that is required reading for many government analysts working on Afghanistan. There is a lot more of that kind of critical reporting and analysis out there -- you and I link to it every day. I'm just hesitant to judge something after reading any one thing -- and I think you would agree with me there.

Like many of this blog's readers, I was unable to stop watching al-Jazeera today. The scenes from Tunis have been incredible. Alas, despite a little time spent in Morocco and Egypt, I know very little about North Africa and nothing at all about Tunisia. So you'll have to go elsewhere for analysis. For those who can read or otherwise understand French or Arabic, your options are better than the options for those who do not. Al-Jazeera, al-Jazeera English, and Le Monde may be worth checking out.

Aaaand, this is why America is going down the drain. By now, everyone has noted what class acts Rush Limbaugh and the gang at KNST are for this peach of a billboard, which until Monday morning was just down the street from where Gabby Giffords was shot and six others killed. But there's more reason to be outraged: this is what a "straight shooter" is in America these days? Look at that shot group! You've got six or seven rounds in the center, but spaced out by several feet, and I don't even want to know how hard Rush had to jerk his trigger finger to get those two rounds all the way out on the right and left, which suggest some rounds didn't even hit the target. C.J. Chivers noted that a lot depends on whether or not Rush Limbaugh had his selector switch on fully automatic, which is logical enough, I guess, but no marksman worth his salt fires his weapon on fully automatic, and honestly, between that and Rush Limbaugh being high as a kite on pain-killers, which explanation for his crappy marksmanship sounds more logical to you? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Rush Limbaugh, folks: Not only as classy ever, but also incompetent with firearms.

I spend much of my time throwing cold water on those who try to make Hizballah out to be al-Qaeda (or want to draw more lessons from 34 days in 2006 than the entire wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined). But sometimes I read something about Hizballah which, while grim, is probably also true:

"Hezbollah is ... willing to sacrifice the Lebanese state to maintain its standing in the Middle East and its perpetual war against Israel."

You can try -- and scholars have -- to say Hizballah's ambitions are more about securing the newly enriched socio-political position of the Shia within Lebanon than they are about the fight with Israel, but to say this you must first ignore the rhetoric of the organization's leaders and the organization's behavior since the Israeli withdrawal in 2000.

I disagree with Thanassis, though, that Hizballah might lose popular support if members of the organization were to be indicted. I think the organization has already succeeded in convincing its followers that the Hariri Tribunal is an Israeli-American conspiracy against the Resistance.

What do we think of the following assumption, represented in graphic form below? Let's start by assuming both China and Iran have an interest in U.S. military assets remaining in Afghanistan at great expense. Let's also assume that neither country, both with interests in Afghanistan, wants more instability. Will China and Iran take a more active interest in stabilizing Afghanistan as U.S. troop levels go down? Discuss in the comments. (Update: Zathras and @joshuafoust asked me to define some terms, which is fair enough. Take "active interest" to mean a willingness to intervene to stablize the country. And take "stablize" to mean an action whereby violence is managed or "capped" in such a waty that it allows for both a peaceful political process and economic access. And I'm not trying to precisely quantify everything, gang, which would be impossible. But for planning purposes, assume U.S. troop levels drop from 100k to 25k between now and 2014.)

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Pakistan confounded analysts once more on January 4 when a policeman in the security detail of the governor of Punjab turned his gun on the man he was supposed to be guarding.

Pakistanis - let alone the rest of the world - have gotten depressingly used to bombs in markets, mosques and government buildings wiping out dozens of people in one go. They, like the people who study the politics of Pakistan, thought they had it sussed: Deobandis are the school of thought of the Taliban. They want to kill all those that think any differently from them.

But the killer of Salmaan Taseer, a consummate twitter user (@salmaantaseer) and governor of Punjab, wasn't a Deobandi, he was a Baraelvi; the "good" school of thought, the ones that are also getting targeted by the Taliban. (I've staked out the differences between Deobandis and Baraelvis before.) The reason the killer gave for his actions was Taseer's support for a Christian woman who was accused of blasphemy and his call for Pakistan's blasphemy law to be changed. (Read Mosharraf Zaidi here to get an idea of how the blasphemy debate works). To many observers, it wasn't just the killing that was shocking, it was the reaction - the seemingly widespread idea that Taseer deserved it.

So where does this leave Pakistan? Well, it leaves many Pakistanis profoundly depressed about where their nation is heading. Those people who when I arrived a year ago said that Pakistan had a moderate majority and religious parties never got more than 15 percent of the vote sound much less self assured since the death of Taseer.

Taseer's death, like the blasphemy debate that preceded it, was about much more than religion; it was about the politics of resentment in a state that's failing. Not long before his death, Taseer posted on twitter; "It is the rich educated & privileged who have destroyed Pak not the poor illeterate & dispossessed". He had a very good point. Decades of failed governance in Pakistan has led to the emergence of very different communities living side by side in one country. I don't mean ethnicities or religious groups. I mean world views fashioned by opportunity; whether that means economic opportunity, educational opportunity or the opportunity to gain exposure to the wider world or the rest of your country beyond your village/town. That opportunity comes with a cost implication. As the decades have worn on in Pakistan, less and less people have been able to afford that opportunity. Those that have it guard it jealously. Wealthy families in Pakistan, it is often noted, send sons into politics largely to guard and expand the family fortune. Those that have gone from poor to rich have often managed it through an uncommon degree of ruthlessness. Once they succeeded, their pasts were laundered by establishment figures in need of moneyed allies. For most of its life, Pakistan has been a system that rewards bad practices and punishes good ones.

I've spent a large part of the last 10 years working in the Middle East and Africa, but I've not seen a society as economically segregated as the one in Pakistan. The rich - the ones who were able to afford the opportunity - often do not share any public space with the poor. The chai khaane (tea houses) are similar to Arab qahwas in that they both serve hot caffeinated beverages. The local area's wealthy and not-so wealthy do not sit in corner cafes  reading the same newspaper. In fact, often, the wealthy and poor read newspapers in different languages; the English ones being much more balanced and sophisticated than the Urdu ones. With very few reference points in common; to the wealthy, the poor are to be mistrusted. To the poor, the wealthy (the "elites") are practically aliens. Having recently spent time in various rural parts of Pakistan, I find myself being asked to explain the rest of the country to Pakistani friends. To many Pakistanis, much of their country is a foreign place.

Like many other elements of public discourse in Pakistan, your position on the blasphemy law has become a measure of you as a person; much like the abortion debate in the US. Those "elites" who don't reflect "real" Pakistani/Muslim values are portrayed in the argument as sellouts and traitors. A much cleverer person than I (Ms Henley-on-Thames) suggested this was economic resentment manifesting itself as cultural resentment. The wealthy in Pakistan, it seems, drew up the drawbridge on the rest of the country many years ago, but in the process left themselves outnumbered and at risk of being overwhelmed.

In a country falling apart at the seams, where the ability of the government to enact its will is extremely limited (as is its ability to formulate effective policy in a timely manner), violence and death is becoming a regular feature of public discourse. If you don't believe the authorities will stop a local official acting in a corrupt manner, what do you do? Beat him up. What happens when you think a couple of kids have been stealing and the police don't care? You beat them to death.

Having said all this, I don't want to give the impression that all wealthy, English-reading Pakistanis were appalled by what happened to Taseer and the poor were all convinced he got what he deserved. As a Reuters story shows, regular, working-class Pakistanis were shocked by the killing. Whereas, many wealthy Pakistanis were perhaps most alarmed by the support people of their own background gave to the killer's actions. A Facebook page in praise of the killer, Mumtaz Qadri, attracted 2,000 followers in a few hours before it was deleted. In an increasingly polarised international context where the Muslim and Western worlds see themselves at odds, it has practically become an affirmation of your "Muslimness" (and your self esteem) to be as opposite to the West as you can. Whereas the West allows people to ridicule the prophet, in Pakistan, you'll get killed for it. 

The problem transcends religious ideology. Why is it that the blasphemy law becomes a litmus test for people's religious credentials and not bonded labour? (Millions of peasant farmers in Pakistan are forced into slave labour by landlords who saddle them with dubious debt and then charge interest of over 200 percent a year NB. Charging interest is a sin in Islam). The blasphamy law may have become a benchmark against which to measure your identity, but that didn't happen by accident. Religious political parties and even rightwing largely secular parties and individuals have tried hard to present it as such. In recent times, their efforts have been echoed by a sensation-loving media in competition for the most attention-grabbing headline. In previous years, extremist ideology was encouraged as a recruiting tool in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, which Pakistan's leaders at the time saw as a perfect opportunity to keep themselves relevant on the world stage.

If events such as the killing of Taseer are the symptoms of a failing state, would a succeeding state be the solution? In a word, yes. Pakistan's antidote, if it arrives, will come in the form of good, effective governance, social justice, accountability and transparency. At the end of the day, only Pakistanis can achieve those things for their country.

Dear Sir or Madam:

A few days ago, the Virginian-Pilot reported on a raunchy video made by U.S. Navy Capt. Owen Honors. They posted the video on their website but edited the content to cover up some of the faces of sailors and Marines. Why did you, two days later, elect to post the unedited version of the video and not cover up the faces of sailors and Marines? I myself can see no added journalistic value in doing that. And if I were one of the sailors or Marines in the video, which I likely participated in making because the second-in-command of the ship on which I was serving politely asked ordered me to do so, I might be a little pissed off. Sailors and Marines in a chain of command, last I checked, do not sign letters of consent before making these kinds of videos.

But then I read in today's Politico that not one but two tapes were sent by an anonymous leaker -- one to the Virginian-Pilot and one to the Navy Times. But whoops! The tape sent to the Navy Times apparently went unopened for several days, allowing your newspaper to get scooped by the Virginian-Pilot due entirely to your inability to open you own mail. So if I were the kind of person who questions the motives of journalists scrambling to amass page views (and I'm just a blogger, so what do I know about page views?), I would ask whether or not this was a cheap way to play catch-up on a story in which you got scooped due to your own incompetence. I would also ask if throwing members of your primary readership under the bus was worth those extra page views.

You stay classy, Navy Times.

Yours,

Abu Muqawama

When not drinking whisky with relatives, watching college football, or sitting in a deer blind -- or, uh, drinking whisky with relatives while sitting in a deer blind and getting updates on bowl games via text messages* -- I read some great essays and books over the holiday season. Here are a few of them to kick off your new year:

1. "Counterinsurgency as a Cultural System," by David B. Edwards. This is a gem of a paper published by the author of this magisterial book on Afghanistan. (And this one as well.) The U.S. military should welcome such constructive criticism from a leading anthropologist and Afghanistan expert.

2. "Solitude and Leadership," by William Deresiewicz.

3. "Quartered Safe Out Here," by George MacDonald Fraser, author of another classic, must-read book on, um, Afghanistan. (I bought this handsome edition of the latter for my brother-in-law for Christmas.)

4. "The Generals' Victory," by Peter Bergen.

Enjoy, and leave your own suggestions in the comments section.

*I did not actually drink whisky while in a deer blind, though I did sit with relatives and receive bowl game updates. Alcohol and firearms don't mix, kids. And stay in school while you're at it.

The Economist once called it "enlightened mountain Republicanism." For whatever reason, Tennesseans have long looked to retired Sen. Howard Baker (McCallie '43), a moderate Republican who forged compromise across the aisles until retiring from the Senate to be Reagan's chief of staff after Iran Contra, as the model for how senators should behave. When Republican senators have lurched too far to the populist right, as Sen. Bill Frist did during the Terry Schiavo mess, their approval ratings have plummeted. The same explains why the once admired former Sen. Al Gore lost the state of Tennessee in 2000 after he was perceived to have lurched too far to the left in the 1990s. Regardless, Sen. Lamar Alexander reminded me yesterday why I supported him in his last campaign, and Sen. Bob Corker (Chattanooga City High School '70) locked up my support for his next election campaign. It would have been all too easy for my two Republican senators to have been petulant drama queens about the New START treaty, but instead here is what Sen. Alexander said yesterday:

And here is Sen. Corker:

It almost makes up for Basil Marceaux:

Now that he's in TRADOC he can even wear his beret like a pastry chef:

The World Association of Chefs has named Master Sergeant Mark Morgan of the U.S. Army Rangers as one of the three best pastry chefs in the world, as reported in the local newspaper of Fort Monroe, Virginia, where Morgan is based. He earned the distinction at the recent Culinary World Cup in Luxembourg, where he represented the U.S. culinary team and won two gold medals.

 

Morgan has also been honored in his day job as an Army Ranger. At some point during his six tours of duty--two in Iraq and four in Afghanistan--he was awarded the bronze star. He is currently the aide to General Martin Dempsey, who runs the Army Training and Doctrine Command, also known as TRADOC, at Fort Monroe.