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Two reviews outlining the Obama administration’s defense and security strategy have avoided any mention of anti-Muslim labels, reported the Washington Times on Friday, February 12. "(President Barack Obama) had made it clear as we are looking at counterterrorism that our principal focus is al Qaeda and global violent extremism,” David Heyman, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Policy, said. “And that is the terminology and language that has been articulated." A 108-page review by the Homeland Security Department has dropped any reference to words such as “Islamists” and “Islamic”. Instead, the document used the terms of “Al-Qaeda”, “terrorist”, “extremist” and “violent...

The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review report gives unprecedented attention to the issue of climate change. Previous QDR reports did not identify climate change, global warming, or other environmental issues as major concerns for U.S. security. The 2010 QDR, by contrast, dedicates three of its 105 pages (plus executive summary) to the issue, highlighting it (along with energy) in a section dedicated to its impact on the "future security environment." All in all, the report mentions "climate change" 19 times. China is mentioned only eleven times, Iran five times, Russia four times, and North Korea three times. It seems that the...

The Obama administration’s latest Quadrennial Defense Review relies on flawed climate science. The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review report gives unprecedented attention to the issue of climate change. Previous QDR reports did not identify climate change, global warming, or other environmental issues as major concerns for U.S. security. The 2010 QDR, by contrast, dedicates three of its 105 pages (plus executive summary) to the issue, highlighting it (along with energy) in a section dedicated to its impact on the “future security environment.” All in all, the report mentions “climate change” 19 times. China is mentioned only eleven times, Iran five times,...

Alice, from "Through The Looking Glass" provides insight on Obama's National Security Policy. President Obama and his administration along with the liberals in Congress have only themselves to blame for the uneasiness in the minds of the American people when it comes to national security and battling terrorism. From day one since taking office they have taken a "Tweedledum-Tweedledee", approach to the problem. I have said often that Obama complicates simplicity, and turns the obvious into the ludicrous. It is an understatement to say their logic is flawed. Every action they have taken, from announcing the closing of Guantanamo, right...

While Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told the House Select Committee on Intelligence on Wednesday that a terrorist attack against the United States was imminent, on the other side of Capitol Hill, Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell slammed President Barack Obama's national security policies. Speaking to a packed auditorium inside the Heritage Foundation, McConnell criticized what he called the Obama administration's "ready, fire, aim approach" to developing national security strategy. He reserved his sharpest attacks for Attorney General Eric Holder and the administration's dismantling of the CIA's enhanced interrogation program, saying that putting the nation's top lawyer in charge...

President Obama's foreign policy agenda may have "run out of steam" and he must now take risks and provide effective leadership, former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said Friday. In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, Brzezinski said Obama's foreign policy agenda is suffering from gridlock in Washington. "I have the feeling that because of domestic problems, he has run out of steam, and I don't know really how determined he is to resume what he started doing so well, which is to engage the world constructively," Brzezinski said. Brzezinski, who is now at the Center for Strategic and...

The Obama administration is aggressively pushing back against Republican criticism of its handling of terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, sharpening a partisan debate about national security policy, which is likely to be a major issue throughout the midterm election year. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs issued a rare point-by-point critique of a statement by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who said Wednesday that "there was no consultation with intelligence officials before the Department of Justice unilaterally decided to treat Abdulmutallab as if he were an ordinary criminal." Gibbs released a list of senior intelligence officials involved in the decision to...

Perhaps I should have subtitled my address "How do you celebrate the first anniversary of the Second Coming?"-- a conundrum that has confounded theologians for centuries. Six months ago, when I was thinking of my subject for this address, President Obama was halfway on his trajectory--downward trajectory--from divinity to mortality. But now that we've arrived at the last day of his first year at precisely the point where the magic has worn off and the charisma grown cold, where Massachusetts--bluest of blue--is even thinking of electing an obscure Republican to the U.S. Senate seat traditionally reserved for the Kennedy family...

Yesterday, the President issued his Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 defense budget request to Congress, and the Pentagon provided the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) to Capitol Hill. The request builds upon last year's defense budget that began to chip away at core defense capabilities. These capabilities should be the mainstays of strategic planning, and include: strategic defense; control of the seas; air superiority; space control; projecting power to distant regions; and information dominance throughout cyberspace. The QDR is intended as a major defense strategy that looks forward 20 years and delineates how the U.S. will structure its armed forces. The QDR...

Review Seeks to Rebalance Military Toward Current Threats, Not Hypothetical Ones President Obama announced in his State of the Union address that national security programs would not be subject to his proposed spending freeze. But that hasn’t stopped Pentagon officials from placing what they consider to be outdated military programs in the budgetary icebox. In its master planning document for the medium-term defense outlook, known as the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon will announce cuts to some Navy and Air Force programs. The Pentagon will not purchase any more of the costly C-17 transport aircraft for the Air Force. It...

The Pentagon will lay out a long-term vision for U.S. national security on Monday that jettisons the military's decades-old belief that it needs to be prepared to fight two large-scale wars simultaneously, according to defense officials familiar with the matter. The shift in strategy sets up potential conflicts with defense contractors and powerful lawmakers uneasy with the Pentagon's growing focus on smaller-scale, guerilla warfare. The Quadrennial Defense Review, a congressionally mandated report on U.S. military thinking presented by the administration every four years, will instead focus on developing the strategies and weapons needed to prevail in Afghanistan, Iraq and the...

Inside Defense got a leaked draft copy of the forthcoming Quadrennial Defense Review. The national security planning document, being spearheaded by Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy, shapes U.S. defense posture around the globe for the next several years. The draft dates from December 3. The QDR is expected to be released on Monday. The headline is that the forthcoming draft QDR scraps the 2-major war posture construct of the past decade. But it's hard to crisply explain what it moves to, except greater complexity. As Inside Defense's Jason Sherman notes (sub. only): The Defense Department is abandoning an explicit requirement...

Apropos of my story today about the consistently-ballooning defense budget, Defense News has a leak of the Quadrennial Defense Review, the PentagonÂ’s big planning document that, among other things, is supposed to shape the budget. This is just a leak of a draft, and not the final document. But the document is entering its absolute final phase, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will be testifying about it and next yearÂ’s budget (theyÂ’re released simultaneously) before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. As I wrote today, Gates sent...

It sure looks that way. As I mentioned in a previous post, Defense News got a leaked draft copy of the Quadrennial Defense Review, an important Pentagon planning document that will be officially unveiled next week. But reading down into its guts, the draft references a document that doesn’t even have a release date yet: the 2010 National Security Strategy, to be issued by the White House. Recall that in 2002, President George W. Bush’s National Security Strategy centered around a declared right of the United States to “if necessary, act preemptively” against “rogue states and terrorists.” But the international...

With the FY2011 budget and QDR expected to be released next week, there is almost no point discussing the speculation beginning to pop up in draft versions the media has obtained. A good example is this Defense News article, which is certainly a topic worth diving into - if we weren't only a few days from seeing the real thing. I am one of those who believes this QDR will end up prompting more questions than answers. Over the last several years, those in defense policy have continuously stressed the environment of uncertainty. It has left me with the impression...

Obama's Speech Won't Dwell On Foreign Policy State of the Union focus will be domestic, although Iran remains big issue By Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations President Barack Obama's State of the Union address Wednesday is likely to focus on domestic economic problems rather than on foreign affairs, says Richard N. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. He says this reflects that "the world of foreign policy and national security is relatively calm" in contrast to the economy. He believes that "Iran will prove to be the most compelling foreign policy issue of...

President Obama's Middle East policy is in ruins. The U.S. continues to press Israel for a settlement freeze (and a freeze on Jerusalem), but Obama's strategy has totally fallen apart. He turned the Israeli populace against him and strengthened the hand of Prime Minister Netanyahu (who he has no use for). At the same time has pressured political hacks such as Congressman Steve Israel to lend their names to the anti-Israel group known as J Street to give his administration some "cred" amongst the pro-Israel community. The Arab League nations answered no to the President's request for a peace gesture,...

Scott Brown's stunning victory in Massachusetts Tuesday triggered a wave of dire predictions about health reform, but Brown's win also could pose a threat to a less obvious aspect of President Barack Obama's agenda - his anti-terror policies and plans to shut down Guantanamo Bay prison. During the campaign, Brown repeatedly railed against criminal trials for terrorism suspects, took out a television ad opposing giving "rights to terrorists who want to harm us" and declared that he did not view water-boarding as torture. And in his nationally televised victory speech Tuesday night, the senator-elect seized on the issue again. "I...

I follow national security news stories pretty closely, but I have to admit to being shocked by Human Events magazine’s publication of an excerpt from a new book. It is Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, by Marc Thiessen. Thiessen was a top speechwriter for President George W. Bush. For that reason he had access to very highly classified national security documents and information. One excerpt about information gathered from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (“KSM”) is astounding, mind-boggling: [KSM’s] resistance is described by one senior American official as “superhuman.” Eventually,...

Before the faltering economy hijacked the 2008 presidential race, President Obama's campaign was largely defined by his bold defense promises. He differentiated himself from then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the primaries by his opposition to the Iraq War. Later, during the general election, he pledged to engage America's enemies, shutter the Guantanamo Bay prison facility, end enhanced interrogation techniques and establish a timeline to leave Iraq -- all of which earned him scorn on the right. But following through on his promises to break with Bush administration policy hasn't proved easy either, and Obama has been criticized on his left...