For Russia and NATO, the year of maneuvering dangerously continues

Tu-22M3 Backfire, on the loose again. (Image: Alex Beltyukov via the Aviationist)

New post up at Liberty Unyielding.  Enjoy!

Backing into danger in Iraq: State Department requests more troops

 

U.S. embassy Baghdad. (Image: AP via KPBS.org)

New post up at Liberty Unyielding.  Enjoy!

Why Obama’s Afghanistan strategy is bad faith with our troops

Allen West made an appeal this past weekend that has gone viral on the Web, on behalf of Army 1LT Clint Lorance, who has been sentenced to 20 years for the “murder” of two Taliban scouts in Kandahar Province in 2012.

West refers – correctly – to the following untenable deficiencies in the conditions under which our troops have to operate in Afghanistan:

According to our ridiculous Rules of Engagement, soldiers in a combat zone are told to hold their fire unless there is evidence of hostile action or direct hostile intent. …  

Seas without a sheriff

Now, in 2011, would be the worst of times for the US Senate to ratify the UN Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS; or, “Law of the Sea Treaty”: LOST).

Ratification would presuppose an internationally agreed maritime order into which the US was buying.  The nature of that order is tacitly supposed to be one of agreements, definitions, and legalities; in essence, the form of international order to which the United Nations was intended to give impetus.

Realities of maritime order

But no such order exists, nor has it ever.  There is no overarching order for the US to buy into:

US responds to Chinese aircraft carrier with pointed question

ABC features the Obama administration response as if – well, as if it deserves featuring: