This editorial will appear in Tuesday’s print edition.

The Obama administration’s plan to trim the defense budget by $487 billion over the next decade – about 8 percent – has some critics saying it cuts too deeply and others saying it doesn’t cut enough.

But hardly anyone is disputing that Washington state’s military facilities are as well poised as any to weather the cutbacks in the new age of austerity – and perhaps even benefit from them.

That’s because as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, the Pentagon’s focus is shifting to threats along the Pacific Rim. For operations in that region, Joint Base Lewis-McChord and the state’s naval bases in Everett and on the Kitsap Peninsula have a geographical advantage over just about any other state’s military installations. Read more »

This editorial will appear in Thursday’s print edition.

Is Joint Base Lewis-McChord “on the brink,” as claimed in a Los Angeles Times article and headline Monday? (The brink of what is never spelled out, but it’s safe to assume that it’s not “on the brink of something good.”)

The Times cites an article that appeared a year ago in Stars and Stripes that described JBLM as “the most troubled base in the military.” That billing was based on the courts martial of a group of Stryker soldiers for murdering civilians in Afghanistan, a much-publicized – and disputed – complaint by Oregon National Guardsmen of second-class treatment at Madigan Army Medical Center, and increased steroid use among soldiers.
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This editorial will appear in tomorrow’s print edition.

So that’s that. As of the end of the year, the Obama administration will have withdrawn all U.S. troops from Iraq, with the exception of a small contingent of presumably nervous embassy guards.

Obama’s recent announcement that the war was over was mere formality. For America, the serious fighting in Iraq ended a couple years ago, when Iraqi security forces took full responsibility for Iraqi security.

What’s driving the final withdrawal – a legal dispute – seems ridiculously anticlimactic. Some Iraqi leaders would as soon have U.S. forces on hand to keep training their troops, and the Obama administration would as soon keep them there.

The deal-breaker was the U.S. insistence on criminal immunity for American troops in the face of the Iraqi parliament’s refusal to grant that immunity. No triumphal parades, no helicopters fleeing from rooftops, just a breakdown in back-room negotiations. A whimper, not a bang.

The whimper, though, says much about the achievements of American troops in Iraq.
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This editorial will appear in tomorrow’s print edition.

The Stryker brigade soldiers connected to the murder of three Afghan noncombatants last year face grave charges or have already been convicted. Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs – the accused ringleader – will soon be on trial at Joint Base Lewis McChord.

All are enlisted men and lower-ranking noncommissioned officers – toward the bottom of the military hierarchy. The buck doesn’t stop with them. An exhaustive Army investigation has now detailed negligence on the part of the killers’ superiors.

Some of the problems identified by the investigator, Brig. Gen. Stephen Twitty, seem purely …

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This editorial will appear in Tuesday’s print edition.

As soldiers return from war zones and try to adjust to life on the home front, some are finding that they can’t cope. They survived combat, but face a threat potentially as dangerous in country: themselves.

In July, the Army reported it was investigating 32 possible suicides, more than in any previous month in the past two years. So far this year, at least 11 possible suicides have been investigated at Joint Base Lewis-McChord alone.

The Army is so concerned about how many soldiers are taking their own lives that it expanded last week’s National Suicide Prevention week into Suicide Prevention Month. It has taken a number of welcome steps to help address the problem of suicide in the ranks, including suicide-prevention education and training for first-line supervisors and junior officers to intervene early when they see problems developing.
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This editorial will appear in Thursday’s print edition.

Is the Army making it hard for many of its more valuable Reserve officers to resign?

It sure looks that way. A process that is supposed to take about eight weeks is being drawn out – in some cases by up to two years. That’s creating real difficulties for many soldiers, forcing them to put personal decisions like marriage and higher education on hold while the military gets its act together.

The problem is so widespread, according to a spokesman for the GI Rights Hotline, that it seems like a deliberate strategy of delay to so frustrate officers that they will give up and stay in the Reserves. Others say much of the problem is due to the fact that many Reserve supervisors have full-time civilian jobs that interfere with their administrative duties. Read more »

This editorial will appear in Thursday’s print edition.

The way Madigan Army Medical Center treated Oregon’s 41st National Guard Brigade last year was unacceptable, the Army admits, and changes have been made to address the problem.

It just won’t say what those changes are. According to the Army, that information – as well as details about the investigation – are classified.

Talk about unacceptable.

It’s understandable that privacy issues might be involved, but that can be handled by redacting names. Government entities do that all the time. Another reason the Army gives for keeping the information secret is that it pertains to quality assurance – which sounds like an awfully broad and convenient classification.
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This editorial will appear in tomorrow’s print edition.

The prosecution of war crimes at Forward Operating Base Ramrod in Afghanistan promises to become one of the Army’s most honorable episodes – if it focuses as much attention on commanders as it has on enlisted soldiers.

The trials and hearings at Joint Base Lewis-McChord have revealed an attitude of intolerance of atrocities and criminal behavior that might have been dismissed as the cost of doing business in previous wars. Last week’s sentencing of one defendant, Spc. Jeremy Morlock, shows how tough the Army has gotten.

Morlock pleaded guilty to three counts …

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