Red Cross Army

A brilliant piece by George Will, appearing in The Washington Post:

Have you noticed how many of the U.S. armed services’ recruiting appeals, on television and in advertisements in airports and elsewhere, show this or that service engaged in humanitarian relief operations, distributing food and medicine? These present the U.S. military as the Red Cross with, for reasons that are unclear, weapons. Given that some of the services sometimes seem reluctant to recruit for their primary mission — maintaining a credible capability for war — it is not so odd that the Obama administration flinches from the word “war.”