Replies

It's sad to see that National Review continues to slip. This is an especially inaccurate piece.

Andrew J. Bacevich,

I can let you have a parachute and a rifle, and then you can jump out of a C-130 over Talibanland, and show us how it should be done.

Until then, SHUT YOUR STUPID REMF MOUTH about "half hearted measures".

Weak, very weak indeed. Who is the author and what qualifies him to judge a military operation? Does he not understand that this is a different type of war than Desert Storm? We are fighting a country whose government controls only parts of its territory. We are also fighting a terrorist organization stretched across dozens of countries. And last but not least, for the umpteenth time its only been a friggin' month since we started this campaign!

Bacevich bio: B.S., US Military Academy; Ph.D. Princeton

23 years officer in Army. Teaches American foreign policy, national security studies, WAR AND STATECRAFT.

I'm not so quick to dismiss what this author is trying to do. It's also not obvious that he can be easily dismissed as a REMF. This piece, and another one here, both look to me like attempts by well-meaning and knowledgeable people to reach Bush's ear via the media, to lend support to those in the Administration who are trying to warn Bush that a combination of The Usual Suspects in the State Department, and a senior officer corps composed of the sort of men who would rise under Clinton, is not pursuing this war according to what Bush says he wants.

I'm not talking about any expectations that this is supposed to be some sort of walk in the park, or that after three weeks we should expect to see bin Laden's head on a stick. I am talking, as I think these authors are talking, about the timidity and caution that seems to characterize the entire effort so far.

Osama bin Laden took down two of the largest buildings in the United States, and attacked the headquarters of our military. It's a miracle that tens of thousands of people weren't killed... that was certainly bin Laden's intent. Does anybody here believe that an F-16 dropping a couple of bombs here and there, every day for a couple of weeks -- stopping on Fridays so as to observe our enemy's day of prayer -- is the proper response to such an act?

Oh look, a B-52. That's right, a B-52. Not a hundred B-52s, or even 30 B-52's. One goddamned bomber dropping a stick and then going home for the day. This isn't war, this is some clown with a calculator playing a video game in Florida, with one poor pilot out in the real world tasked with living out General Franks' push-button fantasy.

I do not trust Seymour Hersh, so I'm not inclined to believe the story that Franks allowed a lawyer to talk him out of blowing up Mullah Omar when he had the chance. I'd like to think that's not true. But nothing in Franks' behavior so far suggests that he would do otherwise.

When bin Laden attacked, we should have roared like a lion. Instead we peeped like a little bird. That moment is gone; it will never be back. The whole psychological moment when we could have scared those camel jockeys sh*tless was spent being timid, moving our little pieces around as if we were opening with the King's Bishop's gambit. Now the camel jockeys think they have seen the mighty United States, and they haven't seen squat. They couldn't be more wrong, but fighting them now is going to be a lot harder than if we had made it clear from the beginning that they had messed with the wrong guys.

I share the concern of these authors that our military is in the hands of Clinton's favorite officers, and so long as that obtains we will never do what Bush says he wants done. I applaud the efforts of these authors to prod Bush into going farther down into the ranks, to see if there are any warriors down there that we can put in the place of Clinton's peacekeeping bureaucrats.