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As the weekend fast approaches, a few thoughts and stories from the week:

• SPC Erik Oropeza has been awarded the Army’s second highest award, the Distinguished Service Cross.  SPC Oropeza was in a Stryker when a massive IED (13 155mm howitzer rounds) detonated beneath his vehicle.  He somehow survived the blast and regained consciousness a few minutes later, at which point he engaged insurgents around his vehicle and providing first aid to wounded personnel in the Stryker until he was able to summon a medevac. 
• An under-reported bit of news was the closing of Manas Air Base, in Kyrgyztan.  Manas was a major logistical asset in supplying the US effort in Afghanistan, but the Kyrgyz government has said its decision to close the case is final, citing a host of concerns.  The fact that Kyrgyztan recently accepted a $2 billion aide package from Russia also has a few US officials miffed, since there is apparent suspicion of Russian pressure for the closure.  It’s unclear at this time where the logistical functions will be shifted to after Manas closes.
• On the lighter side, this list by Cracked.com, while rather crass (and somewhat vulgar) is absolutely hilarious and rather well researched.  Worth a read for a laugh.

ABC has reported that the increased troop deployment to Afghanistan has been delayed by Secretary Gates until President Obama “decides what force levels he wants.”  Long story short, 3 brigades, including a Stryker brigade, were due to be sent in keeping with President Obama’s campaign goal of increasing force levels in Afghanistan.  The exact nature of the delay (which, the Department of Defense insists isn’t a delay) is unclear; it appears that the Pentagon’s plan for deployment is complete, but pending a comprehensive strategy from The White House and CENTCOM.

On a related, interesting note, this marks the first planned deployment of US armor to Iraq.  Thus far, the war has been conducted by helicopter borne troops, light infantry, and special forces.  Canada deployed heavy armor, including Leopard 2 Main Battle Tanks, to Afghanistan in late 2006 and, as this Canadian Army report attests, the tanks performed extremely well.  This, however, marks the first time the US has considered following suit.

After long and gradual security gains, it looks like we have some more evidence of political progress coming out of everyone’s favorite Middle Eastern country.  First, the Economist and WSJ reported the very positive initial reports from the election, and the Washington Post followed suit shortly thereafter.  Now, even the decidedly anti-war LA Times is reporting progress on the political front.

While the LAT is more measured in its assesment and emphasizes the undeniable fact that violence remains an issue, it is part of the building media consensus that Iraq is improving not only in security metrics, but in political ones too.  Despite some allegations of fraud, the elections went extremely well and most early indicators are that stability will continue to increase due to this success. 

The fact that Maliki was able to run (and, in all likelihood, win) on an anti-sectarian platform in a country that was in a virtual civil war two years ago is a testament to this progress.  The fact that the Iranian influence in Iraq appears to have been stymied is the icing on the cake.

Today’s top story on Army Times is a pretty interesting read.  Long story short, reports from 1991 and 1994 recapped the HUMVEEs performance in the Gulf War and in Somalia and found it extremely vulnerable to IEDs and anti-tank mines, even with up-armor kits.  The implication, of course, is that we should never have rolled into Iraq with inadequate vehicles.

This is an interesting case, in part because it shows the mentality of the military through the 90s.  Half the reason that a replacement for the HUMVEE was never at the top of the to-do list was because no one at the Pentagon really thought we’d end up in a protracted ground war.  The coalition operations in Kosovo were a poster-child for future military operations (high-tech, low footprint, and lots of airpower) and evidently, nobody thought we’d need an armored utility vehicle in mass numbers.

Thankfully, we’re using MRAPs in increasing numbers nowadays which, as the article says, increase survivability by 400%.  Even so, it is unfortunate that it took as long as it did (4+ years) to start fielding the MRAP in large numbers. Hindsight on the performance of the HUMVEE should provide an important lesson about flexibility in procurement for the future.

by Brian Domitrovic

Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies by M. Stanton Evans (New York: Crown Forum, 2007)

Washington used to be a nice town, the reminiscence goes. Before our own day, when “the personal is political,” time was when the partisan fighting was fierce at the Capitol, but everyone played by the rules and went out for drinks together after all the wrangling was done. This is one of the most intransigent clichés in American politics.

In February 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin made a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, in which he said he had a list of fifty-seven names of Communists working in the State Department. The next month, a Senate committee chaired by Maryland’s Millard Tydings convened to discuss the McCarthy list. The committee did not devote itself to investigating the accuracy of McCarthy’s list, much less to forming policy about what to do about the situation if it were true. Rather, its effective purpose was to frame McCarthy in a criminal act. more

by Tristan Abbey

On April 8-9, Gen. David Petraeus, commander of American forces in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker will testify to Congress on the state of the war. Over the past year, Coalition and Iraqi forces have implemented a “clear, hold, and build” strategy, nicknamed “the surge” due to the increase of roughly 30,000 troops that made it possible.
Concurrent with counterinsurgency operations, Sunni tribes that were previously at war with the Coalition have banded together in “Awakening Councils” to fight al Qaeda in Iraq. Casualties and terrorist attacks have decreased nationwide ever since.

To give our readers a preview of Gen. Petraeus’ testimony, we consulted a range of informed sources on the situation in Iraq. We asked them what they thought he should and would say. more

by Paul Gottfried

The Truth About Leo Strauss: Political Philosophy and American Democracy, by Catherine and Michael Zuckert (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

In The Truth About Leo Strauss, Catherine and Michael Zuckert, both professors holding endowed chairs at the University of Notre Dame, have set out to vindicate the reputation of their mentor Leo Strauss. The results reveal both a detailed and sympathetic knowledge of Strauss’s teachings and the choice of eminently deserving targets for criticism.

The Zuckerts develop a far more plausible picture of Strauss than the caricatures offered by leftist critics in the national press and by two widely quoted academic writers of censorious volumes about Strauss, Anne Norton and Shadia Drury. The Zuckerts remind us that those who should know better, like Alan Wolfe, have ascribed to Strauss a bogus “fascist” lineage. In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Wolfe condemned Strauss and his disciples for, among other blunders, being associated with me in some unexplained fashion, because of my authorship of a book on Strauss’s supposed teacher, Carl Schmitt. Wolfe, a sociologist, does not document his assertion, a task that would be impossible since the assertion is baseless. more

by Richard J. Bishirjian

In Summer 2004 Modern Age published my case for a realistic American foreign policy grounded in pursuit of the national interest. 1 The essay had a long gestation— about twenty-five years. 2 At the time this essay was prepared for publication I hoped that President Bush was pursuing a foreign policy aimed at preserving the national interest of the United States. If not, I argued, “this country may become something other than it is now,” a revolutionary nation (not unlike the French nation of Napoleon), and a disruptive influence on the world stage, a threat to itself and to the stability and the order of traditional cultures, and world politics. 3 President Bush’s Second Inaugural and subsequent statements by him and his Secretary of State and other Administration spokesmen are clearer evidence that Wilsonian liberalism has been renewed and American foreign policy is in a steep spiral from which there is no escape. more

by Ellis Sandoz

In the following commentary I want to pose this question to the readers of Modern Age: What is the proper role of the United States in world affairs? My answer is that it must be what it has always been: To serve liberty and justice as best we can while defending our security and national interests. None of these terms is susceptible of tidy definition, of course. more