Personnel spending memo
I just wrote this memo on personnel spending and the military.  Here’s the gist: It’s not surprising that weapons systems draw all the attention when defense spending reform comes up. They translate into jobs that defense contractors spread cunningly across the nation’s states and congressional districts. But the “guns versus butter” debates between liberals and conservatives miss a key point. It’s not just weapons that drive defense spending through the roof — it’s the people, too. According to its official budget, the Defense Department will spend $533.8 billio

Obama’s Afghan decision strongly hints McChrystal’s strategy embraced
McClacthy is reporting that the Obama administration has decided on a strategy that will involve sending at least 34,000 more American troops to Afghanistan. At present, this is a single-source story coming from at least two anonymous “U.S. officials” and has yet to be confirmed by the White House.  Separately, the Washington Post has reported that an announcement will be made “within days,” possibly in a prime-time address to the nation next Tuesday, December 1. If the report proves to be true, it

Lorelei Kelly at ...
Lorelei Kelly at the New Strategic Security Initiative issues a thoughtful challenge to progressives over at the HuffPo: If progressives really want to help forward the policy discussion, they should develop a set of alternatives premised on enduring commitment and solidarity with the Afghan people (local grants through the National Solidarity Program is a good example), and not pose them as a tradeoff for troop levels. Heck, even the commanding general in Afghanistan says this conflict has no military solution. Take that and run with it. But doing so means exercising forb

Know your Juncker from your Van Rompuy?
(With apologies to Dennis Hopper and the no doubt wonderful screenwriters behind Speed) Pop quiz, hot shot:  Who are Jean Claude Juncker and Herman Van Rompuy? If you answered, “Two guys I met studying abroad in Florence my sophomore year,” you’d be close… but wrong.  And according to the BBC, you wouldn’t be alone in your ignorance — a smattering of man-in-the-street interviews produced hardly better results Mr. Juncker and Mr. Van Rompuy are the prime ministers of Luxembourg and Belgium, respectively (and, if you trivia buffs need some extra ammo to entertai

Iraq update
It seems like just yesterday - to surge or not to surge? If you’re thinking it was just yesterday (literally), then you’ve got the wrong major American military deployment.  Not Afghanistan, but Iraq.  What a difference a year makes - at the heart of the presidential campaign debate on national security in 2008, Iraq has all-but-faded from public discussion. So, to review:  Earlier this month, the Iraqi parliament passed an election law to govern the January 18, 2010 parliamentary vote.  The law theoretically resolved a handful of outstanding yet crucial issues that were needed to facilitate the vote, even though the UN’s man in Baghdad says p