Big happenings at the Air Force Pundit...

So yesterday I was put forward by the "Save Our Soldiers Foundation" as one of the best 2006 Military Blogs. Check out the sweet logo banner image on the right of my blogroll. Then today, Brian Bender from the Boston Globe interviewed me for a few minutes about the milblog community. He brought up the issue of different viewpoints among the military blogosphere. It has been my experience that the closer to Washington one lives, the more political the blog will be. The closer to the action and forward deployed, the less domestic political issues will be discussed. At the same time, many on the front lines among our Marines, Soldiers, and Airmen do indeed call for increased support on the home front. They are often times baffled and bewildered at how the media here at home portrays what they are doing and the results of their actions. On the other hand, many of the best milblogs spend the vast majority of time focusing on foreign policy and military strategic issues. That is what I try to do here. It is impossible to fight a war without touching on domestic political issues, since we live in a constitutional democratic Republic. Therefore, all issues at the end of the day become political ones. Particularly when the two large parties differ substantially on their views regarding the use of force, force application, and warfighting doctrine and tactics. It would be nice if both parties saw the same problems, and then the military would only have to concern itself with finding out the solution to those problems. Unfortunately we are in a bifurcated world- not only in our United States but throughout the Western world as a whole. In that respect, Al-Queda and Iran/North Korea/Syria have a much easier task. Being dictatorships, they only have to concern themselves with application of force issues. While being an enlightened Western democracy, we have to worry about taxes, the price of oil, and elections every two years. This brings us back to the centuries long debate over whether democracies can triumph over dictatorship. The balance of history proves that when the will is there, a democracy can absolutely defeat totalitarian forces. Here is to the hope that we prove this adage true once again in the coming years...