Military Celebrates Another Successful Acronym
Anyone who works in defense knows that the military loves its acronyms. The most recent acronym has been a hot topic of discussion amongst officials, servicemembers, reporters, and scholars: the 2010 QDR.
A Quadrennial Defense Report is mandated by Congress every four years. The build-up and hype to the 2010 QDR has been reminiscient of Avatar or Spiderman 3, only with Defense scholars and observers instead of nerds. There has been much speculation over whether specific changes to U.S. strategy and policy would be laid out for the near future or whether it would be a vague "budget exercise" as it has been accused of being in the past.
The reality of the 2010 QDR, released this week, lies somewhere in between. U.S. military policy is inextricable from the necessary budget battles. As the shape of the U.S. military involvement overseas continues to evolve, the funds, organization, and structure of the military has had to shift with it (shift to UAV's, emphasis on mobility and flexibility in ground forces). The QDR does not explicitly mandate policy or attitude changes for the future but it does speak to some of those shifts by emphasizing sections dedicated to cyberspace, building parter states security capacities, and anti-access environments. The budget battles are directly connected with attitudes shifts in the Pentagon (which traditionally have significant institutional inertia). As Stephen Colbert would say, it's like boxing a glacier.
What do we have in the QDR? It seems vague and not especially pointed, but the shifts in focus will have an indirect impact. The second main chapter is entitled "Rebalancing the Force". This reflects the internal struggle between the capacity for irregular and conventional warfare, or the struggle between the wars we fight today and the ones we may fight tomorrow. Ultimately, our military that has always strove towards "awesome" and "mighty" must strive for "anticipatory" and "adaptable". The QDR is an important first step for this in many ways.
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I heard that Biden told in one of his recent interview that the war in Iraq is one of the greatest achievements of Pres. Obama. He even told them that about 9,000 of US army troops would be coming home to their families this year. But what’s for our economy? Again, years ago, many people were convinced, for good reason, to convert to a Roth IRA from a traditional IRA, such as a 401(k). Many took losses on their IRA portfolio because of market turmoil, and think of an IRA conversion back to a traditional from a Roth. To do this, you have to talk to your IRA Custodian (a broker or bank), and you'll have to file Form 8606. The advantage is a 401(k) is contributed to pre-tax and thus more can be written off, but Roth IRAs can lose more money because contributions are made after taxes. War in taxes in now seen, is there any thing that could administration do to stop this?
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