Daily Caller

The hallways at the Pentagon are filled with a constellation of stars and the legions of staffers who support them. I’ve worked in both the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Starting around 2011, the Joint Staff began to surge in scope and power. Though the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is not in the chain of command and simply serves as an advisor to the president, there are a staggering 4,409 people working for the Joint Staff, including 1,400 civilians with an average salary of $196,800 (yes, you read that correctly). The Joint Staff budget for 2025 is estimated by the Department of Defense’s comptroller to be $1.3 billion.

The American public supports a strong military and is in favor of robust defense spending — but the rumor of a $600 Pentagon hammer still hits home. Taxpayers are furious that the Department of Defense can’t seem to find $824 billion, failing its seventh audit in a row. It is hard to ask for a raise when nearly a year’s worth of appropriations have seemingly disappeared into the E-ring’s couch cushions.

As the war in Ukraine rages onward, President-elect Donald Trump brings a glimmer of hope for peace in Europe this Christmas season.

An end to the fighting hinges on three key points: (1) Crimea (2) the Donbas region east of the Dnieper River and (3) NATO membership for Ukraine. Many more issues lurk, but without agreement on these major negotiating points, it is unlikely a peace deal will emerge.

Western leaders keep touting Russia’s high death toll, which estimates now place at 600,000. To military strategists here in the United States, such a human cost is unimaginable. Add up every American combat death going back 160 years through the Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, World War II, World War I, and even the Union combat deaths in the Civil War, and the number does’t reach what Russia has lost in the past 1,000 days.

American and NATO leaders are foolish to underestimate Russian resolve.

Less than a week after the landslide election of former President Donald J. Trump, America’s enemies are running for cover.

A Hamas spokesman told Newsweek it seeks an immediate end to the war. Russia’s Vladimir Putin remarked to reporters that Trump’s desire to end the Ukraine crisis “deserves attention at least.” China’s Xi Jinping congratulated Trump on Thursday, expressing the pair would “find the right way to get along in the new era.” World leaders know that the past four years of U.S. dithering, insecurity, and shame are over.

Trump is right: it’s all too easy to send other people to war. The irony of Donald Trump is that he is not just fighting against the radical left. He is in a vicious bar fight with the neoconservative right, too.

Who are neocons? Short answer: the D.C. desk jockeys who think democracy can be exported by American firepower.

But like a Bruce Springsteen song, the Biden-Harris administration continues to repeat itself calling for an Israeli cease-fire. In Dec. 2023, less than six weeks after Hamas’ medievally brutal attack on Israel, President Joe Biden claimed Netanyahu was losing support due to “indiscriminate bombing“ of civilians.

Never mind that Israel is fighting for its very existence. Never mind that Israel’s tactics work. Never mind that Hamas killed 46 American citizens and holds seven American hostages to this day. Never mind that Israel takes greater precautions to prevent civilian casualties than any army in the history of warfare.

By Biden-Harris logic, the U.S. would have started shipping Band-Aids to Tokyo after the Battle of Midway or airdropped crackers to Germany once we bagged Normandy.