Task Force on A Unified Security Budget Institute for Policy Studies, July 2011.
http://defensealt.org/Hzgu7x

Gordon Adams. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 02 March 2010.
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/gordon-adams/assessing-the-qdr-and-2011-defense-budget

Excerpt:

…there is a core assumption in the QDR and defense budget that near-term missions are going to last forever, particularly counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and stability operations. The case for this projection seems to be based on the idea that Iraq and Afghanistan are the model for future U.S. military operations. Here the QDR and defense budget miss the point completely. Iraq and Afghanistan were wars of choice, designed to overthrow a regime and rebuild those countries. Which other countries will we need to invade and rebuild in the future? Neither the QDR nor the budget provides any answers, calling into question the logic behind this premise.

Josh Rogin. The Cable, 20 January 2010.
http://defensealt.org/HiIFt1

Excerpt:

One big chunk of funding at issue is in foreign security assistance, known as the “1206″ account, which could total about $500 million next year. This is money used to do things like military training and joint operations with countries outside of Iraq and Afghanistan, such as Indonesia and Somalia.

Since the military doesn’t have the lead in those countries, the funding should flow through State, right? Well, not in 2011. The president’s budget will keep those funds in the Pentagon’s purse in its Feb. 1 budget release, following a pitched internal battle in which the State Department eventually conceded.

Gordon Adams. American University and the Stimson Center, 16 December 2009. PowerPoint presentation hosted on the Commonwealth Institute website.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/0912adams.ppt

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.

Miriam Pemberton. Institute for Policy Studies, 18 November 2009.
http://www.ips-dc.org/getfile.php?id=461

Excerpt

Because [the Obama administration's 2010] military budget is larger, in real terms, than any of its Bush administration predecessors, 87 percent of our overall security resources are still allocated to the tools of military force. And because of this, the increases in spending on defense and prevention, as important as they are, amount to deckchair arranging on the ship of security spending. The goal of rebalanced security, as a budgetary matter, remains to be realized.

Lawrence Korb, Sean Duggan, and Laura Conley. Center for American Progress, 18 November 2009.
http://defensealt.org/HQ6hXZ

Trice Kabundi. Budget Insight, 13 November 2009.
http://defensealt.org/HenDv2

Excerpt:

…during a USIP event on USAID’s Community Stabilization Program this past Tuesday. Panelist Nabil Al-Tikriti argued that “there exists such a thing as humanitarian space,” and the more the military either engaged in humanitarian assistance or linked objectives with those providing humanitarian assistance, NGO’s/relief workers would be affected and targeted. In his eyes, the DOD’s shift creates a situation where civilian relief workers are now often identified with “military men.”

Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason. Military Review, November/December 2009.
http://defensealt.org/HebU3k

Excerpts:

By misunderstanding the basic nature of the enemy, the United States is fghting the wrong war again, just as we did in Vietnam. It is hard to defeat an enemy you do not understand.

Elections don’t make democracies; democracies make elections.

As Jeffrey Record … notes, “the fundamental political obstacle to an enduring American success in Vietnam [was] a politically illegitimate, militarily feckless, and thoroughly corrupted South Vietnamese client regime.” Substitute the word “Afghanistan” for the words “South Vietnam” in these quotations and the descriptions apply precisely to today’s government in Kabul. Like Afghanistan, South Vietnam at the national level was a massively corrupt collection of self-interested warlords, many of them deeply implicated in the proftable opium trade, with almost nonexistent legitimacy outside the capital city. The purely military gains achieved at such terrible cost in our nation’s blood and treasure in Vietnam never came close to exhausting the enemy’s manpower pool or his will to fght, and simply could not be sus-
tained politically by a venal and incompetent set of dysfunctional state institutions where self-interest
was the order of the day.

No Pashtun would ever identify himself by his province, where we are attempting to impose external governance. Rural Pashtuns thus have no perceivable political interest in this keystone of international military and political effort in Afghanistan.

“Extending the reach of the central government” is precisely the wrong strategy in Afghanistan because it is exactly what the rural people do not want. The level of coercive social change that would be required to actually implement this radical social revolution in Afghanistan is beyond our national means.

Karen DeYoung. Washington Post, 27 October 2009.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/26/AR2009102603394.html

For the fulltext and a key excerpt from Matthew P. Hoh’s resignation letter see http://www.comw.org/wordpress/dsr/resignation-letter-of-matthew-p-hoh.

Spencer Ackerman. The Washington Independent, 22 October 2009.
http://washingtonindependent.com/64830/state-dept-project-signals-big-foreign-policy-change

Melvin A. Goodman, truthout, 20 October 2009.
http://www.truthout.org/1020095

Gordon Adams. Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 08 October 2009.
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/gordon-adams/afghanistan-and-pakistan-the-graveyard-us-foreign-policy-plannin

Glenn Kessler. Washington Post, 19 September 2009.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/18/AR2009091803739.html

Matthew P. Hoh. 10 September 2009. Hosted on the Commonwealth Institute Website.
http://defensealt.org/Hcd0KR

Excerpt:

The Pashtun insurgency, which is composed of multiple, seemingly infinite, local groups, is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies. The U.S. and NATO presence and operations in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified. In both the RC East and South, I have observed the the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.

Reader Comment:

I am now an old man. In the 60/70s I served under John P Vann in Vietnam for a total of over 2 years. I have read Mr Hoh´s letter with great interest. It reminds me of the integrity, compassion and patriotism that Mr Vann displayed, in words and deeds over and again. There was nobody even close, except Ron Ziegler and General Krulak on a good day. Time and pride wore him down, nobody can in the end escape the green machine. For Mr Vann it worked on his vanity until he became Mr B52. And if it could wear down Mr Vann, nobody is safe. I do hope that Mr Hoh gets listened to, that he is supported and that we get out of a war in Afghanistan that we do want to win and that we do not presently have the courage to get out of. ~ Ola Kristofersson

Rebecca Williams. Budget Insight, 12 August 2009.
http://thewillandthewallet.squarespace.com/blog/2009/8/12/us-and-british-governments-concerned-about-overstretching-re.html

Karl W. Eikenberry and Stanley A. McChrystal. Embassy of the U.S.A. Kabul and U.S. Forces Afghanistan. 10 August 2009 (printable .pdf file). Hosted on the Commonwealth Institute Website.
http://defensealt.org/HctLGV

Hillary Rodham Clinton. U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC, 15 July 2009.