An Interview with Matthew Hoh

Derrick Crowe. Return Good for Evil, 21 November 2009.
http://returngood.com/2009/11/21/an-interview-with-matthew-hoh/

Excerpt:

How many recruits do they [al-Qaida] get per year? A hundred? Two hundred? The Muslim population is over a billion. You’re talking about such a small fraction. It’s really associated with such a fringe movement that we have to attack using human intelligence and using law enforcement techniques. Army brigade combat teams do not affect al-Qaida. Having 60,00 troops in Afghanistan is not affecting al-Qaida. …[T]he destruction of al-Qaida should be our priority…but we need to go after that organization as it exists and not with ground combat troops in Afghanistan.

Long-Term DOD Budget Analyses

Trice Kabundi. Budget Insight, 20 November 2009.
http://defensealt.org/HKD253

Summary

On Wednesday, November 18th the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) held a hearing on the significance and impact of the defense budget in the long-term. The committee heard testimony from: Stephen Daggett, Congressional Research Service; Matthew S. Goldberg, Congressional Budget Office; Thomas Donnelly, Center for Defense studies at American Enterprise Institute; David J. Berteau, Defense Industrial Initiatives Group. The post includes links to the full text of the testimony.

Are American Muslims A Threat?

response by Michael Brenner to question posed by James Kitfield on National Journal Expert Blog, 19 November 2009.
http://security.nationaljournal.com/2009/11/are-american-muslims-a-threat.php#1393085

Excerpt:

…all it would take to restore sanity is some slight reflection on our dismal performance everywhere we have tried our hand at manipulation in the Greater Middle East since 9/11. We have been consistently arrogant, incompetent, corrupt – in all senses, callous to the pain inflicted on the natives and ourselves alike, and abject failures.

Iraq on the Edge

Joost R. Hiltermann. New York Review of Books, 19 November 2009.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23371

Excerpt:

Festering unresolved for years, the Kirkuk conflict has started to contaminate Baghdad politics to the point of disabling Maliki’s government. It has already complicated efforts to create a law governing petroleum and natural gas, for example, and it may well hold up the formation of a new government in the spring. America’s legacy in Iraq could be a divided country that is left to fight over an undefined boundary with Kurdistan while a dysfunctional Baghdad government governs in name only.

Resourcing the National Defense Strategy: Implications of Long Term Defense Budget Trends

David J. Berteau. Statement before the House Armed Services Committee, 18 November 2009.
http://csis.org/files/ts091118_berteau.pdf

Pentagon budget drop anticipated

Roxana Tiron. The Hill, 18 November 2009.
http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/68515-pentagon-budget-drop-anticipated

Excerpt:

CBO also projects that carrying out the Pentagon’s plans in its 2010 budget request — excluding overseas contingency operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere — would require defense resources averaging $567 billion annually (in constant 2010 dollars) from 2011 to 2028. That amount is about 6 percent more than the $534 billion the Obama administration requested for the 2010 budget, excluding overseas contingency funds, according to Goldberg.

Reasons why more resources would be required in the long run include the likelihood of growing military pay and benefits; a projected increase in the cost of operating and maintaining aging equipment as well as newer and more complex systems; plans to develop advanced weapons systems to replace aging ones; and investments in advanced intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems to meet emerging security threats.