Posted on 11/13/2006 3:10:19 PM PST by neverdem
He isn't the Ph.D. who sold the get slim fast pills on an infomercial back in the nineties is he?
I don't care if you read a library full of his books, anyone who would talk about a person as honest and upstanding as Donald Rumsfeld is an idiot....
I happen to think that Mr. Rumsfeld has served his country very well, and is very well respected by most of the American people...he did a job that needed to be done, and did it well and with dignity...that says alot in my books.
As far as the author of this piece, he's an idiot....
Kagan forgets the muscle-bound character of the military. The idea of a leaner-meaner military is anathama to a military that has twices as many flag officers and high ranking civil servant than it needs. Right now we have a huge number of redundant pants-bottoms on chairs in Iraq where we ought to have boots on the ground.
This author is an idiot....thank you...
Thank you for all the MANY, MANY great things you've done in service to this Country Don Rumsfeld...you are the BEST!
Nearly all articles about Rumsfeld are biased against him, even though he's far from being perfect.
However, I am confident that Robert Gates will be an excellent Secretary of Defense.
Amen.
Yeah my bad for trying to pry welded shut Dincocon minds open with the facts.
I have read that on the average, Saddam's thugs murdered around 20,000 people a year to keep the regime going.
Johnnie, according to the iCasualties cite you sent me to, about 10,000 people a year are now dying in the insurgency.
So, however dismal things may seem, we're actually still saving lives over there, compared to what existed before.
I don't understand why everyone is so negative on the situation in Iraq. The place has a free press. It has elections. The government is grumpy and fractitious, just as ours is. But members of the government are working together to try and solve problems.
It took the US about a decade from the Revolutionary War victory to form a successful system of government. Should we expect much different from a fractitious country with little in the way of a Democratic tradition?
I don't argue that things are perfect, or that we should not be distressed by all the killing. At the same time, the guerilla war has not been particularly effective other than in getting publicity. It would appear that as we train the Iraqi Army they are becoming more effective.
I don't understand why we want to suddenly back away from Iraq when we should be on the cusp of a genuine victory for the Iraqi people and for us.
So why is there all this talk about our side losing? Seems to me that we're winning in a landslide, and the only thing the enemy has to offer is hate, which is becoming an increasingly difficult sell as ordinary Iraqis reject it.
D
The history of the second half of the 20th century shows that the American people won't support that sort of long term commitment. That leaves scorched earth or something like it. The only way they will support a long term action is if they feel their very survival is at stake (yeah, I know it is, but they apparently don't believe it) AND they see some progress in the war (Yeh, I know, we've made lots of progress, we'd have made more if we hadn't fought quite so light and quite so PC) but again they don't see that progress, because the fourth estate has become the fifth column. Anti American all the way.
If this article was bagged and spread as fertilizer in Darfur, it would turn into the Imperial Valley.
If so, why then did he not use the cuts in weapons systems, not to mention money for electric bills on posts and stations, for increased numbers of troops, BIG increases are required if we are going to go head to head against the bad guys with essentially low tech weapons little better than the bad guys have.
In favoring Shinsekis Stryker over more Bradleys, how many troops were killed. The Styker is too heavy for it's "light" fast deployent mission, and too light to stand up to even RPGs, let alone the sorts of things that Hzb'allah used against Israeli *Tanks*.
Now they are going after something called "FCS" Future Combat Systems, in which the entire future of the US Army's tech base, except manned aviation, is put into the hands of Boeing, and based on the same notions as Stryker.
But with Rummy thrown under the bus (I agree with that, I do like him as a leader, I just don't like some of his policies), Bush a lame duck, and the far left wing of the Democrat Party in control of Congress, I expect that FCS will at minimum be greatly stretched out, and possibly even canceled in favor of more Strkers, including the Mobile Gun System version, which showed a disturbing tendency to flip over when the gun is fired broadside to the direction of travel, despite it being the older 105mm gun, rather than the 120 mm in the Abrams. (And the 125mm in Chinese and Russian tanks. BTW the as of 2005 the Chinese had about 2,000 of the more modern types, I'm sure they've built more since then) Might be acceptable, as the technically inferior Stuart was able to whup the superior German tanks by using shear numbers. But we won't build enough to do that.
These decisions about weapons systems affect 20 to 30 years of the future. Want to guarantee we won't have to fight a "heavy" enemy during that time? Don't count on the Air Force, as their numbers are being cut by 40,000 (including active gaurd and civil servants) under the Bush/Cheney plans. Murtha and Pelosi may have other plans, in fact I'm pretty sure they do. They'll not only cut the spending on the war, they'll take nice "peace dividend" just as their party did after '74 and especially after '76.
Actually, as a former cold-warrior and star-warrior, the US has shown long term committment. The demise of Soviet Communism spanned two generations. We are now near a first generation of star-wars as well. We can do long term stuff IF the damn RAT party is kicked out of the way, that is. My prediction is that the M$M is going to be telling us how great things are in Iraq in the near future. They are going to claim victory, when they did their best to lose it.
Why are liberals so "round?"
Frederick W. Kagan's dissertation at Yale was entitled: "Reform for Survival: Russian Military Policy and Conservative Reform, 1825-36"
Kimberly E. Kagan's dissertation was entitled: "The Face of Battle, the Eye of Command"
When they were faculty in the history department at USMA, his areas were listed as "military, Russia, World War I & II" and hers as "international"
DOWNFALL
How Donald Rumsfeld reformed the Army and lost Iraq.
Abizaid, a Lebanese-American who speaks Arabic, went on to note that the insurgents were mostly mid-level Baathists, members of Saddam’s Special Republican Guard and security services, and that they had organized regionally into cells. For his efforts, Keane says, Abizaid “got his ass handed to him.”
The American invading force had prepared for a chemical assault from Saddam’s Army, for a set-piece battle with Saddam’s armored units, and for a long, bloody battle for Baghdad. “What we didn’t plan for,” says Jack Keane, “is what happened.”
If the dems blow this Counter Insurgency that Rumsfeld refused both to plan for or to recognize for so long, there's going to be hell to pay for the U.S.
WashTimes: China sub secretly stalked U.S. fleet (surprisingly within firing range)
From time to time, I’ll ping on noteworthy articles about politics, foreign and military affairs. FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
Yes, Rummy probably should have backed off his dual ambitions when the siege of Iraq became more into focus. But I consider this just one more time-bomb strategically left by President William Jefferson Clinton -- thus securing his true legacy.
Kagan is a pretty smart guy, but his nose is out of joint for some reason, and he just can't think clearly about this business.
Pity.
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