I traveled recently to Israel to visit a state-of-the-art military training facility in the southern Negev Desert opened by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) last year. The facility, at the Tze’elim army base, is meant to simulate urban operations of the kind the Israelis have so often faced in their conflicts with Palestinian and Lebanese…
Category: Military History
Military History: History’s Last Left Hook?
Military Envelopments with Strategic Implications “Left hook” is a boxing term for a short, sideways, inside punch which often lands on an opponent’s jaw. Left hooks generally come as a surprise because for most people it is much harder to punch with their left arm. So, while boxers may continuously jab, cross, and uppercut, the…
Military History: WW2-era 914mm Mortar “Little David”
Whoa!!
Quirky Diplomacy: 9 Wars that were technically “Ongoing”
Throughout history, a number of conflicts, due to the quirky nature of international diplomacy, never officially ended. Of course, these “extended wars” have never actually had any bearing on international relations. Instead, the ongoing de facto peace overrode any technicalities on the world stage. However, the patching up of these diplomatic irregularities has been used…
74 Years Ago Today: Attack on Pearl Harbor Remembered
At five minutes to eight o’clock, on a Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941, in Hawaii, Japanese planes attacked the United States military base at Pearl Harbor. An hour later, a second wave of Japanese planes continued the attack. By 9:45 a.m. (local Hawaii time), the attack was finished, with all but 29 Japanese planes…
Crusader Corner #9: Understanding ISIS’ “De-Centralized” Organizational Structure
Decentralization: The Future of ISIS by Nicholas B. Pace With the United States increasingly involved in counter-terror operations across the world, terrorist organizations have had to become more flexible and adaptive to their environment. Centralized, top-down terrorist organizations with ambitions to target the United States and its interests are no longer feasible. The United…
In 2015, Why Do We Still Fight?
Why fight wars at all? We lose lives and treasure even if we win. Those who survive are haunted by the violence and the price they paid; whether they were drafted or volunteered every one of them offered up their lives for an ideal. War is a bloody, terrible business. Military personnel are trained to…
Israel honors GI who told the Nazis, ‘We are all Jews’
US Army Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds, who died in 1985, led over 1,000 POWs in refusing to deliver Jewish comrades to German captors The Nazi soldiers made their orders very clear: Jewish American prisoners of war were to be separated from their fellow brothers in arms and sent to an uncertain fate. But Master Sgt….
8 Unbelievable Stories from the Second Battle of Fallujah
Veterans from 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines share their incredible stories from the Second Battle of Fallujah. This time of year marks the anniversary of one of the most storied battles in recent Marine Corps history: the Second Battle of Fallujah. The city became the scene of brutal urban combat when American, Iraqi, and British forces…
Islam, Europe and the Tet Offensive, Take Two
Matthew Bracken is a former Navy SEAL with a BA in Russian Studies from the University of Virginia. In 1983 he led a Naval Special Warfare detachment to Beirut, Lebanon. Links to his short stories and essays can be found at EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com. More than a decade ago I wrote my first novel, Enemies Foreign and…