(Editor’s Note: Jason Tudor, GCMC Public Affairs Specialist, is blogging all week from Israel. He is traveling with the Program on Terrorism and Security Studies field studies trip March 5-11. These blog entries are from his travels with the students, attending lectures and experiencing their studies first hand. Students and many lecturers cannot be identified due to the nature of their professions.)

We’re staying in Tel Aviv this week and traveling to a number of locations. The March 6 locations were Latrun and Jerusalem.

In Latrun, we visited the Armor museum and memorial at the site. There are better than 60 pieces of armor on the site, which also has a clear view from the West Bank from its roof. Our hosts reminded us that Jordan’s border was even closer until 1967. Having those challenges so close made everyone look twice at what they were seeing. Our tour guides, Israeli reserve generals in the fields of intelligence and special forces, offered great detail about the Latrun site, a former British police headquarters until the creation of Israel in 1948.

Please click here for the English transcript of President Obama’s address Tuesday evening about the way forward in Afghanistan.

GCMC will have transcripts in Russian and German available by Friday.

UPDATE (3/12): Russian translation (PDF) available here. German translation here.

The director of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, Dr. John P. Rose, took some time to thank the better than 800 followers of our social media channels. Those channels include Facebook, Twitter, our blog, this Web site, YouTube and more.

You can watch the video here or, if you’re unable to see the video below, click here to go directly to the YouTube Web site to watch, and please let us know what you think!

The Regional Centers Registrar and Alumni Programs Conference is wrapping up here tomorrow. About 60 folks from around the world are talking about various aspects of how the Defense Security Cooperation Agency’s regional centers do business in a number of areas. Our director, Dr. John P. Rose, will close the event Friday afternoon. We’ll have a full story for you Friday as well.

The director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (and our boss) has a new blog entry about H1N1 and how leadership on the DSCA team has vigorously worked the issue.  Here’s an excerpt:

A key challenge faced by the team was that in any one week, DSCA personnel can be spread around the world. This makes gathering accurate organizational data daunting. Yet, on a daily basis, we know, by desk location, if there is an H1N1 illness. We can then track the world for potential travel plans.

Link.

Marshall Center Prof. James Wither, Maj. Gen. Ramiz Nadjafov, Head of International Military Cooperation Department for the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense; and Marshall Center Professor Dr. Ann Phillips. Photo by Joseph Embler

GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, Germany – Promoting a “whole of government” approach to stability operations and challenging leaders to think similarly, professors from the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies recently conducted a seminar in Azerbaijan.

The Stability Operations Regional Education Team Seminar provided a two-day, stability operations mobile course Oct. 29-30 focused on building Azerbaijani capacity in stability operations, according to Joseph N. Embler, Alumni Relations Specialist. This seminar uses Marshall Center Professors to engage senior military and civilian officials in the complex subject that is stability operations.

“It requires participants,” Mr. Embler said, “to examine the need for and challenges of stability, security, transition and reconstruction operations, develops an understanding of the roles of various players, including non-governmental organizations and private corporations, as well as the important factors in building host nation’s capacity and legitimacy.”

By Jason Tudor, GCMC Public Affairs

General Dutton speaks with conference attendees following his speech.Photo by Karlheinz Wedhorn

GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN – Describing the effort in Afghanistan as “doable,” the deputy commander of coalition military forces there said the coalition’s work is at very different points in different parts of that country during a visit here Oct. 21.

British Lt. Gen. J.B. “Jim” Dutton took the position of deputy commander of the International Security and Assistance Force in Afghanistan in October 2008. He visited here to speak at a conference of senior alumni from both the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies and the Asian-Pacific Center for Security Studies.

General Dutton said this was an important opportunity to address the ISAF mission with about 30 conference attendees, whose members included alumni from Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“It’s good to explain how we function and what we’re trying to achieve to people who may have some potential influence in that situation,” General Dutton explained.