Yes.
But, he also wanted a larger force in the Iraq War.
And he was right! Folks can dump on him for the beret but you can’t dump on him for looking out for his soldiers.
You need two hands to put a beret on. You needed only one hand to put the old baseball cap on.
Also, recently it was decided that combat badges (hitherto restricted only to infantrymen) would now be awarded to certain other branches (such as the armored and possibly the engineers). Which means, that the branch which has the lowliest, dirtiest, and most casualty-ridden job gets deprived of one of its unique distinctions, which helped give it pride.
Pretty soon we’ll just start handing out medals to everyone like they hand out good grades to everyone in schools, so that no child fails...