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Horsefeathers. He thinks strategic victory requires an aura of invincibility that he thinks can be created by entirely military means. He is completely wrong about that. He thinks it is possible to win strategically by the right military formula. He faults the achievements of present tactics because he does not see them leading automatically and on their own to a strategic victory.

There is nothing the Marines can do on the ground in Iraq that will make their enemies think they are undefeatable, when those enemies aren't expecting to defeat them on the ground in Iraq, but in elections in the US. As long as they think our domestic commies will pull the plug a few months down the line, nothing would make them give up. You could nuke ten million of them and they'd still think victory would be theirs for the asking on January 20th.

There wasn't any military victory to be had, on the ground, in Iraq, in April of last year. Failure of the tactics employed to deliver such a strategic victory, on that occasion, are not a failure. It is a windmill chase. As soon as the election was secured, the Marines had everything they needed to clean out Fallujah and they did so. There is no defeat there, anywhere. He sees one, and it isn't there. He is just wrong.

The source of his error is thinking the bar to be cleared by purely military tactics is securing strategic victory regardless of political environment. That is a common reaction of military officers to the presence of political constraints, but it is not a realistic one. It is a man with a hammer looking for nails. As a military officer giving advice on tactics, he does not have access to the actually broken subsystem - US domestic politics - so he whangs away at whatever is sticking up, even though it is working perfectly.

That the military is directed by politicians for political objectives is not a anomoly or mistake or a problem to be solved, least of all by altering military tactics rather than political goals. It is just Clauswitz chapter one, reality, deal with it. That our present political situation is bad due to domestic traitors is indeed a problem we have to deal with. But short of military coups, not one the military can help address, at all. We have to address it as citizens through the political process.

And military men need to understand that, stop trying to fix military systems that are not broken or to hold them to unrealistic and unsatisfiable standards (win so big even commies love you - ain't going to happen). Do your job, bleed the enemy as directed, stay within the op tempo limits prescribed by political authorities, stop whining, and suck it the freak up. The pols are the ones facing the real enemy and the real problems, and they don't need your moaning.