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Presentation: A Nation at War, An Administration in Retreat
The Center for Defense Studies has created an audio presentation, narrated by CDS director Tom Donnelly, assessing some of the key shortfalls of the 2010 QDR and the FY11 defense budget proposal. Check it out HERE. (Note: the file contains audio and may take some time to load.) A PDF of the presentation is available [...]
Reporters and Numbers, Part I
It’s hard to write budget stories, and even harder to write the lede on a budget story. Things stay the same more than they change, so that’s boring, but when you throw in all those numbers, it gets confusing.
Government media manipulators rely upon this combination of little interest and less knowledge. It’s particularly easy to [...]
A Nation at War, an Administration in Retreat
The simultaneous release today of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Report and the Fiscal Year 2011 budget proposal reveals the underlying contradiction at the heart of the Obama Administration’s national security policy. As the second sentence of the QDR states, “first and foremost, the United States is a nation at war.” But the remainder of [...]
Haiti: Preparing for a Long Mission
On Wednesday, the Center for Defense Studies hosted an event on the international relief effort in Haiti, with a focus on the U.S. military’s mission there. Haitian Ambassador Raymond Joseph provided keynote remarks, while Robert Perito of USIP and Johanna Mendelson-Forman of CSIS joined Roger Noriega, Tim Sullivan, and Tom Donnelly of AEI for a [...]
Defense Budget Update: No Reason to Celebrate
The defense press is again reporting that the White House is acceding to Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ desire to slow the rate of decline in U.S. defense spending — that’s right: slow the rate of decline, not increase. At least things won’t be as bad as they looked like they were going to be, but [...]
Refighting Tora Bora
In the rush of the final days prior to President Obama’s decision to deploy additional forces to Afghanistan, Sen. John Kerry released a report — through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which he is the chairman — refighting the 2001 battle of Tora Bora. It was the moment, according to Kerry, where “we failed [...]
What Would Mullah Omar Think?
What would the boys over in the Quetta shura have made of Barack Obama’s West Point speech?
All told, I think they’d be a little down. Sure, they’d take some consolation in the start-to-withdraw timeline that’s supposed to begin in the summer of 2011. And they might nod their heads and think, “Ah, America…truly a weak [...]
Strength Before Brilliance
The long process during which President Obama has reconsidered America’s commitment to what he described as a necessary war in Afghanistan has transformed the purpose of his West Point speech tomorrow night. The first-order question is not the number of troops or the proper strategy; it’s more elemental: does this man believe in victory?
The world [...]
How We’ll Know When the Job is Done
“After eight years…it is my intention to finish the job.”
At last Barack Obama is giving us a glimpse of how he’s approaching the decision he will be announcing next week. But what can he mean by “finishing the job?” In particular, what does he think “the job” is, and in what sense could it be [...]
