No Excuse, Sir.

Just kidding. This whole post is an excuse on my lack of posting of late. The long version as to why this has been the case is (of course) multi-fold. Initially, in the wake of the U.S. decision to take an active and combative role in Libya, I really questioned the utility of blogging. I never had any sort of delusions that the President reads my posts or any such thing, but the (in my view) completely irrational - and growingly un-Constitutional - U.S. involvement made me ask myself why I bother to do this. I'm not getting paid for it and this whole situation made me feel like the crazy guy on a soap box yelling at myself.

After some offline encouragement, I got over that. But then real life took hold of the whole situation. As some of you on Twitter may have read, I'm working on stuff that is new to me. Instead of policy-type work, I've moved into more of the technical, tactical, acquisitions realm of DoD consulting. I'm somewhat happy for the change - I feel that I'll be able to affect things in a more direct way in this capacity. The reason I'm saying all of this is that I've been spending a lot of time learning new things and wrapping my brain around new ideas (well, new to me at least). That hasn't left much capacity for thinking and writing about the things in my free time. I guess it hasn't left me much free time at all. This isn't a complaint, just an excuse.

I haven't been entirely idle over the past couple of months in a strategic/policy sense. I'll link in a few weeks to a paper I wrote on U.S. peacebuilding activities in Afghanistan. It's a real corker and pick-me up. In the meantime, I'm set to receive mode over the blogosphere and once I'm firmly settled in the new situation, I'll get back to writing here regularly again.

Slammed

As you might imagine, the publishing of the QDR (document, site) and the defense budget request results in a lot of follow-on work for strategic planners in the Department and at the services, so apologies for the hiccup in your regularly scheduled programming. At some point I'm going to get around to making some comments on the QDR (even though that's probably going to have been pretty well covered elsewhere), but for right now, the chains of salaried employment rest heavily on my shoulders.

Lowest content week ever?

Sorry about that, guys. All I've been doing since I came back to DC from the holidays is trying to dig myself out at work and reading a lot of physics. (Yeah, I know.) But I'm gonna go annihilate some Korean barbeque tonight, then spend tomorrow smoking this unbelievable Bacon Delivery Vehicle and watching the Cowboys beat down the Eagles, and I promise I'll feel refreshed and energized and ready to care about war again by Sunday. I mean, ok, maybe not promise, but I feel confident. It's more likely than not. Like, at least 50/50.

Enjoy the weekend, folks. While you're at it, read Sean McFate in Foreign Policy on how creating a Liberian security force from scratch could possibly have anything to do with training and expanding the ANSF. (Hint: it really doesn't.)