I'd buy this if he actually had succeeded in any of these endeavors. But it turned out that procurement process has fulfilled Eisenhower's predictions. There is no reason for a new generation of fighter aircraft, yet they are being built. All the Cold War weapons programs are still operational. The ICBMs are still operational and still manned. The Star Wars budget is intact. The US can't afford both RMA and systems designed to penetrate Soviet air space in place at the same time. Rumsfeld did not have the political capability to cancel redundant, useless programs.

It ain't a revolution if you leave the old systems in place.

Corvid

I watched "Seven Days in May" last night, and it was curious how the roles of the administration and the generals were just the reverse of what we have now. There were a few other curious parallels and reversals, including a free-lance, secret military base in the desert near El Paso that echoes our curiously undisclosed permanent bases in the Iraqi desert.

In any event, I'm not so sure that Rumsfeld is right about streamlining the military. If you're talking about getting from point A to B in the largely rational business world, Rumsfeld is your man. But if you're talking about the wholly irrational and lawless world of war, the bureaucratic and force projection redundancies of the traditional military actually serve a purpose. They give you the resources to deal with the many things in war that inevitably go wrong over and over again.

This isn't new. The usually tendentious but occasionally perceptive David Brooks makes the point in his Sunday column in the NYT. Sounds convincing to me. But beyond that, the obvious question is why, if Rumsfeld's ideas didn't work in Iraq, would they be likely to work anywhere else? Other than precision bombing, I'm not sure the essentials of "modern warfare" truly differ that much from we've always known as warfare. I'm no expert on the subject; I'm just a little suspicious when revolutions in any type of endeavour are proclaimed.

Wasn't Rumsfeld's early problems with the Uniform Military, before 9/11, similar to Les Aspin's? Both wanted to shake up the Pentagon on principles opposed by Military.

In the new American Militarism Andrew J. Bacevich talks about how hard the military and especially the Army worked to overcome the negative impact of Vietnam. They primarily prepared the miltary to guard the Fulda Gap in Europe against a Soviet invasion. This led the miltary to arm itself for a heavy conventional war that was never likely to occur.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Two things that were glossed over. One. With the demise of the Soviet Union's Nuclear Forces and the inept and tiny Strategic Arsenals in the rest of the world, We will continue to remain the World's Superpower for at least another few generations. No country in the forseable future will be able to match our ability to launch a suprise Massive Nuclear Strike or retalitate for the odd lucky North Korean or Chinese Missle by wiping out a country. http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faessay85204/keir-a-lieber-daryl-g-press/the-rise-of-u-s-nuclear-primacy.html

Two. The bad guys know this and the only way to compete and win is to fight us man to man & tank to tank on the street. Like it or not we don't have the money to sustain operations in Iraq and Afganistan without a massive injection of fresh manpower and material and as such we are rapidly losing our ability to field battle ready divisions for future conflicts without significantly expanding the force structure (More Special Forces is a good start but these cost big dollars!) and a massive procurement of replacement parts and new equipment. The spectre of the late 70's early 80's "Hollow Army" is more scary to these General's than another Vietnam. The Principles of War remain despite Rummy's BS attempts to make the Armed Services "leaner and meaner". We are being bled dry in the desert by a thousand pin pricks and have been very lucky so far but our capabilities are being rapidly eroded because there is no plan for victory and hence no chance for the Services to refit and regroup for the next potential conflict... Which may look nothing like a Jihadist with an AK47, and more like 2000 NKPLA tanks backed by modern artillery and rockets... or a massive swarm of Chinese Silkworm missles in the Straits of Hormuz.

Man I tell ya things are fooking crazier than anytime I can remember.Imagine having to go Nuclear because we can't win a stand up fight!

William Hazen

"Every one has a plan...Until you hit them in the mouth." Mike Tyson

You've got it backwards. The oppposition party is supposed to do the opposing, the dissenting, and the presenting of political alternatives. The generals have been all but forced to speak out because there is a political vaccuum on the opposition side. There is a canyon of cowardice where principled opposition ought to be standing strong and straight. When a democracy has to depend on its generals to provide the political opposition it is in big trouble.

I should have been clearer bluebell. Like you, I think Democratic politicians should be speaking out much more forcefully on Iraq, and have mostly been missing in action on the most vital issue of the time. I am not at all in favor of the passive strategy of ducking Iraq, letting the administration handle it, and then tacking whichever way the wind happens to blow. Apart from the matter of the weakness of this approach as a political strategy, it is simply dishonorable and gutless, and I just cannot respect individuals who are willing to shirk their public duty in this way, and sit by waiting for favorable political winds to blow while our soldiers are dying in Iraq, along with tens of thousands of Iraqis. Democrats should have the courage to assume the burdens of leadership.

But I also think Democratic politicians with a national forum should stand on their own two feet and lead, rather than trying to hitch a ride on some generals' coattails. For one thing, attaching one's opinion to this or that group of military officers' opinions is precarious, because it is unclear how many officers the group represents, and becausethe vicissitudes of military opinion are unpredictable: opinions may shift and ranks may close.

But more importantly, hiding behind a few generals, or latching onto them like subordinate pack animals latching onto an alpha, only underlines the perception of the Democrats as followers, not leaders, in the area of national security.

So, let the military officers offer their criticisms of the civilian leadership, or their support for that leadership, as their conscience dictates, and politicians should give these opinions the respect they are due. But by all means, politicians need to establish a strong and independent voice based on personal conviction, and stick to it. In the United States, the military is subservient to the civilian leadership. If you are a presidential candidate, and you trying to convince the public that you are prepared to assume command of the military, you don't want to send the signal that you are a slavish and manipulable follower of whomever happens to be wearing the big hats and the stars.

TRIED VERY HARD TO LISTEN. THEN I TRIED VERY HARD TO
READ....but no matter how hard I tired I couldn't get
out of my mind what EJ Dionne had to say about our so
called war on terror: we've been on a long holiday
from complexity. That is the best criticism I ever
heard of our "war president" and his war on terror. I
labored with the videos and transcripts of his
repeated speeches on Iraq. They are all lies, idiocies
and incredibly childish oversimplifications repeated
over and over and over and over again, though each is
billed as a "new policy presentation." Given the NSA
"listening-in" scandal and all that, putting that
together with this oversimplification of everything, I
think that George Orwell would now say: it's a bit
later than I thought, run by a bunch a bit dumber than
I thought, but what the hell it is my "1984" just as I
described it.

As time goes on, people are realizing that if they
stay as stupid as they were on election day 2004,
nothing makes sense. So I see that they are struggling
with all the "how come?"s created by expectations
based on Bush's previous speeches.

We know that Cheney and Rumsfeld are part of that
Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) and Young Republican
(YR) and Christian Right (CR) breed that populate the
Bush Administration. They are different from GW Bush.
His rule in life was: I DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT
ANYTHING, MY POPPY IS PAYING SOMEBODY ELSE TO DO THAT.
So he hired himself a Vice President-- not to replace
him if he dies, after all, actuarially Cheney's
prospects of dying as VP are 1000% greater than Bush's
chances of dying as P-- but to do his worrying for
him. And so we must look at this administration-- at
least the first 2001 to 2005 term-- as one where
George followed God's voice talking to him through his
gut, so all GW had to do was "follow my gut," on the
big issues and the Cheney-Rumsfeld team were taking
care of everything else.

Right wingers are something you can't understand
unless you grew up with them. As a group, they are the
runts in the litter sired by a very mach bravado dad.
So growing up it was all football and not crying. But
what if you are a runt and can't be tough? Well, then
there's always modeling yourself after that "tough
guy," JR Ewing from the TV show "Dallas." He showed us
how a runt can be macho by deception and theft. The
bad-er you are inside the corporate structure, the
baaaaddddeeeerrrr you seem. These guys soon realized--
maybe around third grade-- that they don't have much
up there between their ears for schooling. So they
decided to become corporate organization men. They
went on welfare from the Corporate Establishment.
Screaming, "the Commies are coming, the Commies are
coming," they got members of this and that corporate
boards to throw them a bone here and there that adds
up to a lot of cash. They created YAF and YR, claiming
to become the spokesmen of Wall Street and the
defenders of Corporate greed. They always wore a suit
and tie and always said: yes sir, yes mam. But inside
their own mini-corporate YAF and YR boards they were
true cannibals, eating each other voraciously, just
like Parana. They all realized that they are
intellectually very mediocre and very weak physically.
So they stuck to the JR script of deception. But to
get ahead, they had to eat the guy standing on top of
their heads. So they came to the principle that: YOU
HAVE TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX to eat your way ahead.
Now what does that mean to an amoral, mediocre,
undignified crud who only wants to climb and doesn't
care how?

The answer is becoming very clear in a Platonic
fashion. Plato suggested that if you blow up a problem
to reeeaaalll gigantic, then nobody is going to miss
the intricacies of how it works. And indeed, finally,
the shenanigans of the YAF and YR Parana have become
clear in the operation of a former YR named Abramoff.
As an Jewish Orthodox outsider, he realized that he
would have to work twice as hard to keep up with these
big bad WASP goyim. So while Ralph Reed was floating
cash out leisurely from the coffers of the Christian
Right, a la Reverend Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye,
Abramoff was hellfire hyperactive squeezing everyone
and sucking every corner dry. He was really not just a
con-man but a super-neocon! And, inevitably, withing a
decade, he got caught. Now the scaffolding under this
whole YR-YAF-neocon runt progeny of Middle America is
exposed. We are seeing everything from influence
peddling to out and out theft exposed now that the big
fat Republican Elephant in Congress is about to fall
over. Between Cheney's mendacity and bravado and
Rumsfeld's power grabbing-- insisting that everyone
understand that THEY are in charge-- it is becoming
quite obvious that they are both mediocre crooks
reaching far, far above their grasp, who only hired
other mediocre crooks as assistance so that they don't
get eaten themselves by their deputy-Paranas.

Of course, desperate to save himself from having to
worry about the guy payed to do his worrying for him,
Bush sought to fire them both before the 2004 election
and replace Cheney with Senator McCain, the guy Bush's
little demon, Rove, screwed in the good old YAF-YR way
during the Republican primaries in 2000. But Cheney
and Rumsfeld threatened to take all those "right
wingers" with them if they've gotta go. So now, Bush
has to worry about all the many guys payed to do his
worrying for him!

Alas, Bush doesn't trust them. So that leaves him no
one to depend on but Karl Rove, his political guru.
But Rove told him: in three years you are gone into
the past, but the Republican majority must live on. GW
Bush responded: I don't care, I'm the president, and I
have to pass laws that gives all the robber barons
that funded by re-election campaign each a big chunk
of America, or they'll be mad at me and won't let me
get drunk with them on their ranches after I retire.
So now Bush and Rove are also on the outs. So what's
left? The answer is the SPEECH WRITERS. Yes, those
guys who know how to twist plain speech that is
totally devoid of information into "le beau mot." Now
they come up with phrases that they think will "sound
good" in a speech. Sooooo, GW simply molds the
"policies" around the speeches. For example, wordsmith
Dan Bartlett said on PBS recently that the public
expects the president to "prove that he can walk and
chew gum at the same time." And so, sure enough, we
now have national policies that look exactly like
that, walking and chewing gum at the same time. With
no "politicos" and "experts" to help him with anything
else that he can trust, Bush is simply guided in
policy making by what the speechwriters think would
sound good in a speech. We are a nation bound to
policies that sound good in a speech to the
speechwriters that compose them, period.

If Bush were a physician, he would have his license
pulled and would be before a judge on charges of
CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE. But he's not a doctor, he's a
president-- a war president. Therefore, he can let the
bodies pile up because no one is going to sue him in
the middle of a "war on terror." Suing a president has
another name: IMPEACHMENT.

Daniel E. Teodoru

BUT HERE'S SOMETHING VERY INTERESTING! THE DADDY OF
ALL YAF-YRERS, BILL BUCKLEY HIMSELF, HAS FINALLY
REALIZED THAT THIS "WAR pRESIDENT'S" WAR IS NUTS!!!
February 24, 2006, 2:51 p.m.
It Didn’t Work

"I can tell you the main reason behind all our woes —
it is America." The New York Times reporter is quoting
the complaint of a clothing merchant in a Sunni
stronghold in Iraq. "Everything that is going on
between Sunni and Shiites, the troublemaker in the
middle is America."

One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq
has failed. The same edition of the paper quotes a
fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Reuel
Marc Gerecht backed the American intervention. He now
speaks of the bombing of the especially sacred Shiite
mosque in Samara and what that has precipitated in the
way of revenge. He concludes that “The bombing has
completely demolished” what was being attempted — to
bring Sunnis into the defense and interior ministries.

Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have
proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000
Americans. The great human reserves that call for
civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they
are latently there, but they have not been able to
contend against the ice men who move about in the
shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols.

The Iraqis we hear about are first indignant, and then
infuriated, that Americans aren't on the scene to
protect them and to punish the aggressors. And so they
join the clothing merchant who says that everything is
the fault of the Americans.

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elucidates
on the complaint against Americans. It is not only
that the invaders are American, it is that they are
"Zionists." It would not be surprising to learn from
an anonymously cited American soldier that he can
understand why Saddam Hussein was needed to keep the
Sunnis and the Shiites from each others' throats.

A problem for American policymakers — for President
Bush, ultimately — is to cope with the postulates and
decide how to proceed.

One of these postulates, from the beginning, was that
the Iraqi people, whatever their tribal differences,
would suspend internal divisions in order to get on
with life in a political structure that guaranteed
them religious freedom.

The accompanying postulate was that the invading
American army would succeed in training Iraqi soldiers
and policymkers to cope with insurgents bent on
violence.

This last did not happen. And the administration has,
now, to cope with failure. It can defend itself
historically, standing by the inherent reasonableness
of the postulates. After all, they govern our policies
in Latin America, in Africa, and in much of Asia. The
failure in Iraq does not force us to generalize that
violence and antidemocratic movements always prevail.
It does call on us to adjust to the question, What do
we do when we see that the postulates do not prevail —
in the absence of interventionist measures (we used
these against Hirohito and Hitler) which we simply are
not prepared to take? It is healthier for the
disillusioned American to concede that in one theater
in the Mideast, the postulates didn't work. The
alternative would be to abandon the postulates. To do
that would be to register a kind of philosophical
despair. The killer insurgents are not entitled to
blow up the shrine of American idealism.

Mr. Bush has a very difficult internal problem here
because to make the kind of concession that is
strategically appropriate requires a mitigation of
policies he has several times affirmed in high-flown
pronouncements. His challenge is to persuade himself
that he can submit to a historical reality without
forswearing basic commitments in foreign policy.

He will certainly face the current development as
military leaders are expected to do: They are called
upon to acknowledge a tactical setback, but to insist
on the survival of strategic policies.

Yes, but within their own counsels, different plans
have to be made. And the kernel here is the
acknowledgment of defeat.

(c) 2006 Universal Press Syndicate