Center for a New American Security

Stephen Walt -- who has apparently written more than just one book -- has a post up on foreignpolicy.com on the military budget and why it will be so hard to trim. He cites a study by Cindy Williams, who I once heard give a three-and-a-half-hour lecture on the federal budget with a special emphasis on defense spending. I am not kidding when I say that it was three and a half of the most fascinating hours in my life. For serious.

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I didn't post anything on yesterday's intelligence appointments, but when it comes to anything related to the intelligence community, the reporter I like to read is Pam Hess at the AP.

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Studs Terkel, may you rest in peace, but Tom Ricks understands there is no such thing as a good war. (In all fairness, Terkel did too.) Ricks mentions Operation Anaconda in his post, and the two of us were talking about that just the other day. We actually met in between missions during that operation, in March 2002, and I remember him being surprised to learn that this U.S. Army lieutenant had read his earlier book on the Marine Corps. Which is a good one.

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And there was a good article in the New York Times about Israel trying to learn the lessons of 2006 in Gaza:

This time, Israeli military commanders are leading from the front, not trying to direct the infantry from television screens. This time, the military has clear plans, in stages, drawn up with a year’s preparation. This time, there is no illusion about winning a war only from the air. This time, the military chief of staff has kept his silence in public, all cellphones have been confiscated from Israeli soldiers, and the international press has been kept out of the battlefield. ...

And Mr. Olmert has been far more careful this time to state ambiguous and modest goals for the war, unlike his extravagant pledge two years ago to destroy Hezbollah.

But the ambiguity is also a function of political disagreement and confusion among Israeli leaders, many argue, which promotes poor coordination of military action and diplomatic aims. And it remains far from clear how to decide when to end the war, and what would constitute victory.

Israel has so far failed to decide what its ultimate goals are for this conflict, said Giora Eiland, a former army general and a former head of Israel’s weak National Security Council. “Either we want to achieve a sustainable arrangement, with a lasting cease-fire and a stop to arms smuggling from Egypt, or we want to bring about a collapse of the Hamas government,” he said. “These lead to very different actions on all fronts, but the answer is not very clear. There is disagreement at the moment in the troika” — Mr. Olmert, Mr. Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.