Steve, I agree with all you said, but you left out the fact that we spend an exorbitantly high price for what has been revealed to be a rather small military. It looks to me like our military exists primarily to provide a conduit for tax dollars to flow to selected "defense" contractors. For sure it doesn't exist to provide a cost effective defense.

I would be delighted to blame Bush for this, but it has taken many years to get to this point - far longer than 5 years. I am certainly not opposed to equipping our military with the best than our industry can supply, but it doesn't look to me like that is what is being done. Don't forget the unarmored or lightly armored vehicles that have contributed to the casualty rate in Iraq. And, we continue to shovel money into the pockets of the developers of Star Wars fantasy weapons.

Biden encapsulates in one body all that's wrong with the Democratic party. Here's a former cheerleader for the war, someone who asked for more troops as late as last June.

And now, without batting an eye, he's telling us we're overextended!

Don't those people have any shame? 

To paraphrase Dylan, Biden doesn't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Bush shattered the mystique of American power. And Biden was his accomplice.

Since our forces are overextended I would imagine a "small feel-good" bombing of Syria and/or Iran is more likely. Now, of course, the fact that this will inflame Islamists and others and cause even more people to plan terrorists act against us is not enough to deter the Wag the Dog crew in the White House.

Hoppy, I keep remembering Dwight Eisenhower's departure speech warning about the military-industrial complex.  You youngsters perhaps don't realize what a splash this speech made at the time, in 1961, coming from a Republican and a general.  It's still worth reading today.

Here's the link:

Nor can they (the industrial-military complex and its minions in the White House and the U.S. Congress) grasp the idea that the American people are not interesting in establishing colonies all around the world and ruling the entire planet.

This is simply beyond their understanding.

Isn't that what Iraq was supposed to be? You know to prove our toughness to the greater Muslim world in the WoT by picking off an easily defeatable dictator using minimal forces?

Bang on, noblesseoblige.  The incoherence of Biden's positions on Iraq--ie, specifically on the point you identify: more troops or fewer troops?--really exposes the fundamental vacuity of the Dem Iraq-hawk view.  There never was anything there but posturing.  And that's really hard to take, because it was precisely those Dem leaders engaging in the most empty posturing who were, and still are, considered the party's "serious" national security thinkers.

There's nothing serious about Biden's view on Iraq at this point, and it's getting harder and harder to believe there ever was.

Bravo, I say, for the shattering of mystiques. 

I understand the notion that potential rivals and enemies might be dissuaded from challenging certain US interests and claims as much by false perceptions of US power as by accurate readings of that power.

But the problem is that these false perceptions extend not just to foreign rivals but to the American public, including most of our elected representatives.  And since the public and its representatives play a decisive role in determining US foreign policy, false public perceptions of US power can have a disastrous influence on national decision-making.

Iraq is a case in point.  Because Americans had an extravagant estimate of US capabilities, the war party was able to convince them rather easily to take on the challenge of Iraq War.  The voices who warned the war could end disastrously, or that we might not be able to achieve the lofty transformational ambitions of the hawks, were relatively few.  Most Americans assumed that Iraq was a relatively easy job, and that we could sweep aside Saddam and establish a coherent, functioning and friendly Iraqi state in its stead without much trouble.

National power, when wielded by a republic, cannot be a poker game in which the opponent can be bluffed while only the player himself knows what cards he is holding.  The player in this case is most of the US population, and there is simply no way to manage a situation in which an accurate grasp of the strength of the hand is shared generally among the citizenry, while being denied to the rest of the world.  A healthy republic, therefore, cannot sustain an illusory "mystique".  To the extent it is successful in manufacturing illusions, to the same extent it sickens itself on ignorance and misinformation.

And a situation in which only a handful of national security insiders knows the true power score, and shields this esoteric wisdom from both the nations enemies and the nations citizens, is a situation that any real believer in republican government should find morally repugnant. As Americans we should prefer a foreign policy in which there are no games, one in which all the cards on the table.

Of course, that doesn't mean that certain details about tactical capabilities can't be kept secret.  There might be a nearly universal public consensus to keep certain weapons systems or troop positions secret, for example, so that if they need to be used our soldiers will have surprise on their side.  The citizenry in a republic should be responsible for setting general strategic goals, for establishing specific commitments to the defense of certain interests and allies, and for making major foreign policy decisions.  But it delegates battlefield execution to the generals, and lets them choose the specific weapons and decide how to position and use them.

But it is vital that the citizenry have an accurate general sense of of our capabilities and commitments, of what we can and can not do, and on whose behalf we will do it, so that its public foreign policy choices are wise and informed ones.

One limit to US power with which our decision-makers seem to have trouble coming to grips is in the area of manpower.  Given its size and wealth, the US just does not have as many men under arms as comparably large and wealthy countries of the past.  That is because Americans are themselves citizens of a republic, sovereign over themselves, rather than subjects of a sovereign power that rules them.  Since Americans have constituted their government for their own benefit, to pursue their own happiness, they are resistant to their self-conscription for violent and dangerous projects dubiously related to that happiness.   They will fight in massive numbers when they perceive their lives, liberty and happiness are threatened, but draw back from less vital commitments.  And jealous of their capacity to govern themselves, Americans are traditionally loathe  to place force in the hands of unreliable mercenaries.  Because even their volunteer soldiers are fellow citizens, Americans are reluctant to dispose carelessly with soldiers' lives when their is no vital threat to the country.  American military power is thus not simply a tool for the pursuit of the interests and agendas, whether selfish or moral, of various elites.  This seems to be a permanent source of frustration to these elites.

If one consequence of the Iraq War is that illusions have been dispelled, and the US "mystique" deflated, then that is at least one good thing that has come of it.

Murtha may have been a hawk, but he is not a "chickenhawk". That term is reserved for those who were all for the Vietnam War (such as "5 deferment Dick" Cheney), but were only willing to fight it to the last drop of someone else's blood. Whatever you may think of Rep. Murtha he went to Vietnam and didn't avoid it even though he was for it (I assume Murtha was for that war when he went over there) the way W and so many of his aides did.

lol! That was actually very funny. 
In reality, inflammatory rhetoric about Muslims is nothing new. In a curious way, I felt that early 1990's attitudes towards Muslims were also harsh. Secular leaning Muslims have generated a good deal themselves because they complained to western analysts about the power of and constraints imposed by Muslim clerics. 
For many western secular leaning intellectuals/analysts (largely Dems), these very Muslims have held a certain kind of intellectual and moral legitimacy because their complaints resonate with their own attitudes about the role of organized religion in American culture. So they have readily turned complaints by those Muslims into a cause of their own. Sometimes they sound as if they want to be remembered as the ones who brought reforms to the Mid East. The reforms though should be brought about by Muslims themselves. Westerners should let go of their urge to control the process, for it is increasingly reflects their own frustrations with not being in the Oval office. 

gqmartinez: Biden called for more troops 6 months ago. Today, he's deploring the overextension of our troops!   Are there two Joe Bidens out there who never talk to each other? Or is there just one Biden who thinks that Americans are gullible idiots with no memory?

Unless Congress cuts all funding for the war in Iraq, there will be a war in Iraq.  Elimination of funding for the war will not happen until each member of Congress knows that the voters back home will remove him or her, one by one, for not doing just that. Antiwar critics should accept this and plan in terms of it.  Bush will not bring the troops home by any Christmas.

The war a year from now may be today's size, or perhaps a bit smaller if Bush's advisors persuade him that he will still be perceived as the Mission Accomplished President after he pulls some troops out.  But there will be 100,000+ uniformed targets in Iraq next Christmas, 2006.  The war will go on, even if via “re-deployment” and “defensive bombing” like Juan Cole proposes.

Democrats voted for the war because it was popular.  Because they were caught up in the post-9/11 hysteria generated by the War Party. Because they reflexively supported U.S. military intervention overseas, without giving it so much as a second thought. Not because they were misled by the lies (do they really expect us to believe they were convinced Saddam was about to nuke American cities from the air using unmanned drones?).  And now, more and more, some want to do what's currently popular, and jump on the antiwar bandwagon.  OK, fine.  Better late than never.

But, the Democrats in Congress need to be held accountable just as much (if not more so) than the Republicans. They, after all, empowered the War Party: they gave a bipartisan gloss to a decision that led to the worst strategic disaster in American history. They didn't just sit on their hands and let the pro-war wave wash over them -- they stood and applauded, "loudly and proudly," as the war fever reached fever pitch.

Except for the relative handful that resisted the war hysteria, screw them all.  Let them pay the political consequences of their complete lack of leadership and their cowardice.  Every single member of Congress who voted for this war should apologize (especially to the families of the fallen), and resign.

marcf --  I think you're absolutely right to want to keep doors open for people who are changing their minds as a result of changing situations in the real world and as a result of good-faith reflection. 

However, I take noblesseoblige's point--one that I'm pretty sympathetic to--to be that nothing has changed in the last six months to account for Biden's shifting stance in this particular situation.  You could have done the exact same arithmetic six months ago, or even a year ago, to determine that US forces were stretched too thin, that the current deployment in Iraq is unsustainable, and that even if there was the political will to commit more troops (i.e., exactly what Biden wanted), more troops didn't exist to commit.

What do we know now that we didn't know six months ago about the unsustainability of the troop deployment in Iraq?  Or about the strength of the insurgency, and the perceived legitimacy it gets in Iraqis' eyes as being a counter-occupation effort?  I can't think of anything much that's changed.

What I can think of that's changed in the last six months is that polling numbers on public support for the war, and support among Dem primary voters especially, is sinking like stone. 

Yeah, he changed his mind right after he realized the public is going to fry his butt if he doesn't get with it!

Murtha is not perceived as having any ambition and so his change of mind on the Iraq war is seen as genuine; while with Biden, the impression seems to be that he is swaying with the wind; his opinions are tailored to keep him politically viable. This may be an injustice to Biden, but that's how I see it.

Sorry about the fragmented thoughts. I looked at some of Biden's speeches, and firstly, his position cannot be reduced to a sound bite.

Here is a sample item from mind-2004.

http://biden.senate.gov/newsroom/details.cfm?id=222925

Second, reading the link above, it occurs to me that the departure of Colin Powell may have greatly reduced the confidence that the hawkish Democrats have in the President.

Consequently, I thought I could be more effective working behind the scenes with those in the administration who generally shared my views than I could lobbing partisan bombs in public. I was encouraged in this course by the president's initial reaction to September 11: Instead of lashing out, he looked for international support, building a case and a coalition before attacking Afghanistan. Conferring regularly with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, I kept most of my criticism private and publicly praised the administration when it did what I thought was right, to the occasional consternation of some of my Democratic colleagues.

In the long run-up to Iraq, I expected the president to follow a similar course, siding not with the ideologues in his administration but with the cooler heads in Powell's camp and with the political hands in Karl Rove's shop (polling data showed the American people wanted Bush to go to Congress and the United Nations and to try everything short of war before invading Iraq).

Did Murtha, etc., change their mind because there was no longer Powell to reassure them? Or is it really the President's falling poll numbers have emboldened them to speak out now?

[Americans] will fight in massive numbers when they perceive their lives, liberty and happiness are threatened .  .  .  .  Dan K

As will all peoples under such circumstances -- at least, when lives are threatened.

Currently, are there circumstances reasonably imaginable which would induce Americans to accept a levee en masse?  Or is this paean to America's strength of character a mere abstraction deployed to support the dialectic?