ArcaMax

Pete Hegseth has a very fine mind -- a mind strategically informed by a superb military combat record and some 20 years of active duty and reserve Army service. Dodging bullets and crawling through mud at 0200 hours are physically grueling and mentally sobering experiences. A soldier learns firsthand spinmeisters in Congress and the faculty ...Read more

Prepare to toss the common peace negotiation recipes, ceasefire artifices and usual foreign policy nostrums out the window.

When asked about Donald Trump's Ukraine peace plan, that's my hunch in a sentence.

Henry Kissinger said that politics is the art of the possible. The businessman's art of the deal is to create a win-win out of no win. ...Read more

In a recent post discussing shifting U.S. domestic political views, John Hinderaker of Powerlineblog.com noted "that many conservatives have changed their ideology ... in response to events. Pretty much all of us grew up as doctrinaire free traders, but events since the 1980s have convinced many -- including me -- that while free trade is the ...Read more

It's simple, and everybody with common sense gets it. A national border isn't a line on a map. A border is a door -- a door to your nation. Your nation is your home in the broader sense of the term, especially if you respect your state and national laws.

The door to your home, in commonsense terms, means you -- the homeowner with loved ones ...Read more

On Oct. 13, a Hezbollah-launched unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) evaded Israel's air and space defense system. The slow suicide bomb struck a troop mess hall on an Israeli base about 40 miles from the Lebanon-Israel border.

In this attack, Hezbollah launched two drones -- "wingmen," in airpower slang. Israeli defenders shot one down over the ...Read more

The destruction wrought by Hurricane Helene floods in Georgia, the Carolinas and eastern Tennessee is appalling.

So are the documented complaints and shortcomings (they are more than anecdotal) that federal disaster relief responses have been slow, uncoordinated and ill-planned.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is supposed to "manage"...Read more

Successfully recruiting and retaining skilled uniformed military personnel is absolutely essential to America's defense.

Superior military technology matters -- witness Israel's air and space defense systems smashing Iran's Oct. 1 ballistic missile attack. However, testing, controlling, repairing and employing the hi-tech gear and weapons in ...Read more

Reuters reports the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has begun inspecting all its equipment for "evidence of explosives." If accurate, that's a fascinating but understandable reaction -- scrutinizing not just communication equipment and other electronic devices but all equipment, including vehicles and, I suspect, ammunition stocks.

Why the ...Read more

The list of American security agencies stained by bureaucratic incompetence, dreadful leadership and outright political corruption just keeps getting longer.

Let's start -- but not finish -- with the erstwhile elite of the elite in the bodyguard business: the U.S. Secret Service.

On Sept. 16, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) released his "...Read more

How will the next president deal with communist China's slow war of attrition against the world?

The question is serious but too complicated for TV talking heads to ask presidential candidates, assuming the talking heads understand the threat is much more than a headline.

In the Sept. 10 debate, China's threat was treated as an economic ...Read more

On Sept. 2, the U.S. Department of Justice reported American agents had seized a corporate jet "owned and operated for the benefit" of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. The agents seized the French-made Dassault Falcon 900EX in the Dominican Republic and then flew it to Florida.

DOJ's website added context. Attorney General Merrick Garland ...Read more

As I write this column, the Pentagon says the U.S. has no deployed aircraft carriers -- zero -- in the western Pacific Ocean. Two Pacific carriers have moved to the Middle East. The other carriers "in the region" are in U.S. West Coast ports -- not deployed at sea. Naval News reported Aug. 25 the carrier "gap" will continue for three weeks in ...Read more