I came up with a related, but slightly different, view of this a couple of days ago.  You have to distinguish between "enemies" and "opponents": for the Army, the "opponent" is whoever we're shooting at; but the much more dangerous threat is from the "enemies" in the Navy, Marines, and Air Force who are competing for funding.  That is the really crucial struggle which determines success of failure for a top military leader - especially when you're the unchallenged superpower and losing on the battlefield is hard to imagine.

To keep this competition somewhat under control, the services agreed on the doctrine of Air-Land Combat, which ensures that no major operation takes place without all being involved - and thus that they each get a healthy slice of the funding pie.  As a side benefit, it turns out to be a great way of winning conventional battles, e.g. against massed tank formations.  And that's how an Air Force guy with no experience in land operations came to be in command of the disastrous Tora Bora "Operation Anaconda".

Now occasionally somebody tries to break this truce - Wesley Clark did it with the air-power-only campaign in Kosovo - and that makes them very unpopular, because they're upsetting a delicate balance of power.  Even though it happened to work just fine.

All experience with counter-insurgency suggests that air-power, the navy, and high-tech weapons generally are not much help.  You need people on the ground; and furthermore, people with good language and culture skills.  Now the US *could* do that - we have 600K Arabic-speakers who are potential recruits.  But it's simpler to just pretend that this is a conventional war and use the usual Air-Land tactics.  Which any idiot could tell you is just about the worst way to fight an insurgency - because every time you drop a bomb, you kill a bunch of civilians, and their friends and family members become instant insurgents.  And since you reckon on needing 10x more troops than the insurgents, for each new insurgent you need another 10 new troops.  In Iraq it seems the Army calls this "progress", but "escalation" would be more accurate.

Posted at December 1, 2005 11:23 AM in response to Counterinsurgency: Always a Day Away

"I don't think that The Administration has any kind of shared organizational self-awareness. "

 We now have several insider accounts of decision-making in the Bush administration, from such as Paul O'Neill, John (?) DeIulio, and most recently Lawrence Wilkerson.  From these it seems clear that all major decisions are taken exclusively in the White House; and that politics always trumps policy concerns.  In other words, the initiatives come from Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and George W Bush. That makes "shared organizational self-awareness" pretty easy to achieve. 

Posted at November 13, 2005 10:57 PM in response to Domestic Policy By Idiots

"China holds a marker on about half the annual GDP"

Nice rant, and I agree with you.  But I believe the debt held by China is "only" about $700B, against US GDP of about $11T, so you're off by almost a factor of 10.  Big problem, and getting bigger every day, but not that big.

Posted at November 13, 2005 10:43 PM in response to Domestic Policy By Idiots

Please please please can we stop using the word "conservative" when we really mean "right-wing radical" ?  Alito wants to change the law in radical ways: he wants to gut anti-discrimination laws, roll back the use of the Commerce clause to the 1920s, and generally cause havoc.  Republicans are just delighted to have these positions described as "conservative".  Democrats should point out that there's nothing "conservative" about destroying 80 years of progress.

On another framing issue, surely the point Democrats should make about abortion is Clinton's "safe, legal, and rare".  Neither party wants more abortions: Democrats want to reduce abortion by putting more people into a healthy economic position so that they can raise kids - Republicans want to keep you poor but force you to have kids and raise them in poverty and insecurity.  A comparison of abortion rates through the Clinton and Bush terms should make the point.

Posted at November 1, 2005 8:02 AM in response to What the Alito Nomination Means for Constitutional Law

Anyone who talks about "Weapons of Mass Destruction" is clouding the issue in the worst way.  Lots of people thought Saddam had chemical weapons.  Most people thought he wasn't anywhere near to having nuclear weapons.  And most biological weapons are so touchy and unpredictable in their effects as to be almost useless.

After Powell's presentation to the UN, it was pretty clear that the US didn't actually have any convincing evidence even for the presence of chemical weapons.  Satellite pictures of a truck and a bunker, and Powell saying "this just looks like a truck, but to our analysts it has the signature of a chemical weapons decontamination unit".  Give me a break!  And everywhere we sent the UN inspectors they'd found zilch, so it was clear the intelligence was all rubbish.

So the nuclear stuff was always nonsense.  The chemical/biological stuff  looked less and less probable as the inspectors checked it out. 

I can have a good deal of sympathy for those who voted to authorize force in 2002, when UN inspectors hadn't been in Iraq for some years.  I have no sympathy for those who supported the war in March 2003 after Powell's obvious bullshit presentation.

Posted at October 18, 2005 8:38 AM in response to Cloudy Crystal Balls

Two points:

 Confirms the "Bush lives in a bubble" theory: asked to pick the best jurist for the SCOTUS, he picks the nearest lawyer.

With the mass of legal trouble brewing for various members of the administration (Franklin/AIPAC, Rove/Libby/Plame, Safavian), including the rumors that Fitzgerald may be preparing indictments on conspiracy charges, can we be sure that Miers would recuse herself from all of these cases ?  Having been both Bush's personal attorney, and WH counsel, surely judicial ethics would require recusal, but these days you never know.

Posted at October 3, 2005 9:42 AM in response to The Miers Nomination

What mw said.  We're 50 years into AI research, and the more we learn, the further the goal recedes into the future.  Ain't gonna happen.

Posted at September 21, 2005 8:55 AM in response to Singularity?

"When was the last time you heard about a high-profile pro-life Democrat?  Whereas there are a number of pro-choice Republicans."

Try Harry Reid, Senate minority leader.  Which is arguably the top position available to a Dem at the moment, since the Senate minority still has some ability to influence legislation and confirmations.

On the other side, try naming a pro-choice Republican who's actually in a leadership position.

Posted at September 14, 2005 9:37 AM in response to The Ventriloquist

The obvious precedent is the final years of Reagan's administration.  If I remember correctly, after Iran-Contra the "sensible Republicans" installed one of their own (Howard Baker ?) as chief of staff to make sure nothing else crazy could happen, and from then on Reagan was no more than a figurehead.

For all our sakes, I wish we could go that route, because another 3 years being ruled by Bush's gut is scary indeed.  But "sensible Republicans" now seem to be extinct.  Without that, our best hope is to win back the House in 06 - the effect of gerrymandering must be that there are many Republican seats with a 55-60% majority, which would be safe under normal circumstances, but after a triple whammy of Social Security, Katrina, and Plame indictments may fall to the Dems with an exceptionally large swing.  The gap in the Senate looks too big, but you never know.

Posted at September 13, 2005 6:25 AM in response to Accountability Moment

"Grave national crisis" = 3000 rich mostly-white people.  100000 poor black people doesn't count ...

Posted at September 3, 2005 12:36 PM in response to Who Are They Kidding?