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April 24, 2006
Two wars
Today's NYT article Young Officers Join the Debate Over Rumsfeld ties together two key thoughts: despite the overwhelming amount of money we spend on defense, there’s only so much money to go around, and there are two fundamental views on how a war can be fought – smart bombs and boots on the ground.
Here’s the central idea:
[There are] "two visions of warfare — one that envisions near-perfect situational awareness and technology dominance, and the other that sees future war as grubby, dirty and chaotic," the major said [unidentified]. "These visions require vastly different forces. The tension comes when we only have the money to build one of these forces. Who gets the cash?"
When you couple the idea that you can make war efficient through technology based weapons, and the Bush administrations’ “faith based” intelligence gathering, war planning and execution, you get the disaster we call Iraq, with all the collateral damage to our military, economy and national prestige. (PS: If you have any question about the Bush administration’s lying and cover-up in their march to war, check out this.).
I don’t know if technology-based weapons make sense in the future, given the third-world adversaries we face. My feeling is we need an army of solders who are also trained social workers (check you local police recruiter for details). But my motto right now is "smart bombs make dumb wars".
At this point it’s no longer a question of deciding that Emperor Bush has no cloths – my central question in 2008 will be who can put our military and economy back together after 8 years of incompetent, crony based leadership. The good news is that there are intelligent, thoughtful young (and old) leaders out there. I’ve met a few – there is hope.
Posted by pgutwin at April 24, 2006 12:06 AM