At first, I thought the author is seriously challenged with respect to knowledge of just exactly what a real military is and how one needs to be equipped in this day of American ineptness in foreign policy, complete disregard of our borders, and a debilitating drain on our country’s wealth due to entitlements that dwarf our defense budget.
However, I looked him up on the net and see that he’s a USMA grad, a retired Col and a VOCAL critic of Iraq and Afghanistan involvement by America and have to rethink his knowledge.
I see his son was killed in Iraq in 2007. I have to assume that grief has poisoned his logic and reason - and everything he learned or knew before then about the military. In this regard, his credentials don’t matter any more. He’s really nothing more than that Cindy whatshername at this point. My two cents
Your reply is spot on. Bacevich’s books, more so since his son died in Iraq, have aligned with the Democrat party ideals of immoral war, re-instate the draft so all can feel the pain of loss in war, it’s easy to manipulate the current volunteer force, contractors rule over the Pentagon, etc. He obviously feels his son died in vain in an unjust and immoral war. It’s the same reason Jim Webb became a Democrat when his son went off to war in Iraq. He’s Cindy Sheehan with “street cred.”
If so, you would know that he is best known as a CounterCoin, or, opposed to counter-insurgency as a military strategy. Or, opposed to the top Coindinista, David Petraeus.
Also he is known as a foreign policy Realist, as in opposed to NeoCon Republicans and Liberal Interventionist Democrats. But most careerists, such as those from the military and State Dept, are Realists. ,