Rebecca Burgess

Crisp against the gloaming, a bugle sounds a rising then falling strain. It’s 5 pm. It’s cold. Yet in the nation’s capital, something embers. While DC’s iPhone-occupied evening toilers and travelers scurry about to their next diversion, the lone uniformed Doughboy standing at 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue signals a time-honored but […]

May is National Military Appreciation Month in the United States. Unlike many government-designated days and months of appreciation, this has a surprisingly rigorous intellectual rationale that goes far beyond the calendar placement of Memorial Day. Thanks in no small degree to Senator John McCain’s spearheading of the legislation passed by the 106th Congress

America’s military has a criminally inane reinvestment strategy. Despite being 250 years in the business of molding civilians into soldiers, our services seem unaware their most valuable asset for the future fighting force is the veteran. Grand military parades in the nation’s capital for the Army, iconic Fleet Weeks for

Report Summary: America’s military has no formal role in the nation’s civil society, but it is an indelible part of America’s civic fabric. From the days of the Continental Army through the contemporary All-Volunteer Force, the military has played an essential role in shaping a distinct American character. Not only

Not so very long ago, in 2018, the Department of Veterans Affairs was celebrating a record-high financial bonanza of $230 billion in federal funding. Today, even as the population of veterans is diminishing, VA budgetary resources have increased by $100 billion, to more than $338 billion. In the intervening years,