Should the Pentagon offer new recruits an option to finish post-active-duty military obligations in the Peace Corps, rather than the reserves? It was a question ready made for commentary by Colman McCarthy, former Washington Post columnist and now director of the Center for Teaching Peace. He’s 100 percent behind the idea. In an op-ed in Sunday’s Post, McCarthy even denigrates anti-military “elitists” who would bar the door to the Peace Corps ranks. Why? He thinks that the partnership will shake Peace Corps funding from the Pentagon’s “money tree.”
U.S. Southern Command recently announced its first lethal strike on a suspected narco-trafficking vessel in two months, and the first under a newly formed permanent counter-cartel task force. The U.S. is also reportedly planning to transfer MQ-9 drones to Colombia to bolster its counter-cartel efforts.