Man knows no mortal peril like the kind that attacks his wallet, leaving him without resources in a violent world. We brought that terror home this week, with relentless coverage of the Pentagon's budget cuts efficiencies restructuring reorientation. Drones and bombers won. The Marines' swimming tank drowned. Their short-takeoff-n-vertical-landing plane got delayed. Ground forces shrank. Congress may not be able to stop it. Don't call it a cut.
Darpa wants a thinking camera. That doesn't creep you out? The Taliban isn't coming in from the cold, which should also alarm you. Pentagon conflict-of-interest rules got gutted; danger ahead. Oh, and this respected Navy captain made a lame video several years ago and an embarrassed Navy threw him under the bus (hull?) for it. 2011 has begun with a general-purpose tumult.
In fact, the only person this week who tried to calm our nerves was the Navy's intelligence chief, who wanted everyone to stop hyperventilating about China. But we have a feeling that with Robert Gates headed there this weekend, China will make next week even more dangerous, hard as that is to imagine.
