I wouldn’t go so far as to call the administration corrupt, but inept is right on the money.
My family and my husband’s family both have a long tradition of military service. The pattern is to serve for several years and then come home to the family business. However, I have quietly been encouraging my children to skip military service.
When we have less than total war, when warfighters on the battlefield have to call back to CENTCOM and play “mother may I” with a JAG before they can kill a terrorist, when we prosecute Marines for killing the enemy on the battlefield, I don’t want my kids involved in that. Our military is designed and structured to win wars, not nation-build. We are asking these young men and women to do something they are not trained to do, then complaining when it doesn’t go well.
The officers who survived the Clinton purges are now running the military, and many, if not most of them are simply not fit. With few exceptions, they are politicians, not warfighters, and they make decisions accordingly. They’re the type to tell the administration what they think it wants to hear, not want it NEEDS to hear.
Hey, wait a minute. This morass is not Bill Clinton’s fault. Cohen was a damn good SecDef and DoD was well run and effective. I’m not Clinton devotee, but the truth is the truth and that allegation is ass-backwards. The force was in fairly good shape to carry out the National Strategic Plan after the Bush I creation of the two-war concept. If there’s anything at which the Clinton administration failed, it was the understanding of logistics and the need to keep resupply depots stocked with spare parts. Otherwise, the fielded force was well trained, properly led and efficient. Please keep ideology out of the equation pre-2000. This 100% GWB’s war, no one else’s.
In fact, the actual invasion and deposing of Saddam was consistent with that belief. It was the total lack of understanding how to occupy a defeated nation and stabilize it that caused the present international insurgency confronting our troops. The rejection of real generals who attempted to tell truth to power and the interposition of their own arm chair Commander in Chief phoney baloney strattegy, like Adolph and his General Staff in the early 1940s and Saddam in Gulf War I, neither bush nor Rumsfeld had any idea of how to accomplish the mission. And when the generals told them how much in error they were, it was retirement or banishment to the boondogs for those guys. They then rolled in the Perfumed Prince Generals who told the dumb president and his even dumber SecDef that whatever they chose to do could be accomplished easily and with very few troops.
Bush and his cabal are a travesty and monument to ineptitude born of ignorance and arrogance.
Our military can nation-build just fine, and has done so on numerous occasions.
The really successful ones have been *after* the total war you rightfully demand, and that we should have executed here.
“When we have less than total war, when warfighters on the battlefield have to call back to CENTCOM and play “mother may I” with a JAG before they can kill a terrorist, when we prosecute Marines for killing the enemy on the battlefield, I don’t want my kids involved in that. “
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“When we have less than total war...”
That pretty well sums it up.
The dogs of war were never unleashed and it appears they never will be at this point.