Ken Allard

Day by day, the Democratic strategy becomes more apparent: Wearied by the post-9/11 decade of war, American voters will favor social spending over national defense in the election of 2012, overwhelmingly choosing butter over guns. According to the America Enterprise Institute’s analysis of the 2012 national security budget, this year defense spending will drop to 2.5% of GNP ($531B) while entitlement spending (Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security) will exceed $2 trillion. (more)

Here’s a non-partisan question for Mitt Romney, the corporate board of whatever stock you own or, for that matter, those flea-bitten Wall Street occupiers: Why aren’t American CEOs doing more to defend our companies against cyber thievery, from the Chinese and practically everyone else? (more)

Is a Republican national security platform being hammered out for 2012? So far, the GOP candidates have said little that is new or interesting about the great issues of war and peace. Even so, it is inexplicable that the Republican field did little more than offer cautionary footnotes when the president went to the Pentagon last week to announce his new strategy. (more)

Unless the bastards come after me again, this is my last column on a national disgrace. (more)

Nixonesque cover-ups are not normally associated with Senator Carl Levin, the powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Generals and admirals, secretaries of this and CEOs of that, address him deferentially as “Mr. Chairman,” befitting a man at the top of Washington’s interlocking directorates of money and power. (more)

Has the killing of Osama bin Laden transformed President Obama from a beleaguered Oval Office occupant into a true commander-in-chief? The chattering classes of morning TV certainly think so. Some even suggest that his prowess as the cool, supremely in-control orchestrator of an American military triumph gives Barack Obama the cache that may get him re-elected in 2012. (more)

Contemplating the end of his Latin American visit and the apparently imminent turnover of operations in Libya, President Obama said: "This is something that we can build into our budget. And we're confident that not only can the goals be achieved, but at the end of the day the American people are going to feel satisfied that lives were saved and people were helped.” (more)

Often compared to President Kennedy, President Obama may well find that Libya has become his Bay of Pigs. (more)

My only meeting with Richard Holbrooke was a grim handshake during the saddest day I ever had in uniform. Our brief encounter took place at Arlington National Cemetery following military funerals for two close friends killed the week before on a treacherous road outside Sarajevo; another, General Wes Clark, had barely escaped the same fate. All three had been part of a diplomatic mission led by Holbrooke during the run-up to the Dayton Accords, which eventually halted the worst killing in Europe since the Second World War. It still seems ironic that a peacekeeping mission required an overland trek by armored personnel carriers into a besieged city through a sector regularly shelled by both sides. When a road-bank suddenly collapsed, their vehicle rolled down the mountainside, killing everyone inside. (more)

With high stakes and narrowing races, will voter fraud be an issue on November 2nd? Some Texans are betting that it will be -- and recent history backs up their fears. (more)

Robert Gates, possibly the best secretary of defense in our nation’s history, may leave office next year bequeathing not only legacy but legend. Assuming of course that he survives. Already famed for taking on the Pentagon’s stud ducks, he has now touched the dreaded third rail of American politics: military manpower. Wednesday, in a speech at Duke University, he suggested that there is a widening gap between American society and the military that protects it. The reason: at elite colleges like Duke, military service is as rare as a Republican on the faculty. Our best and brightest are sent there to be educated by the ungodly and the politically correct: our wars are fought by Other People's Kids. (more)

So should he stay or go, be fired or forced to resign? Because all commissioned officers serve at the pleasure of the president, Obama has every right to fire General Stanley McChrystal, either for apparent insubordination or over the bad judgment for which the general has already apologized. Little question there: No wartime commander in his right mind should have granted any reporter a solid month of apparently unlimited access to him and (even worse) to his personal staff. If he’s feeling charitable, Obama could just bust McChrystal back to three stars – maybe throwing in the additional duty of performing KP on the weekends for the next 90 days. (more)