Break out the shock and awe

[bemildred]

Here's a guy that favors the old Roman approach to dealing with the provinces. This is the guy that ran the "rendition" program.


In this age of mindless phrases, such as "out-of-the-box thinking" and "a time for change," another silly phrase -- favored by presidents Bush, Clinton and Bush -- is causing America's defeat in Afghanistan and Iraq. The phrase is "small, light and fast," and it refers to the kind of military that they think we need to have.

"Small, light and fast" means not your grandfather's Army -- far fewer heavy weapons and far less of the ground infantry that made up the conventional forces the United States has always relied on in major wars. Instead, its proponents believe, the U.S. military should rely more on covert operations and special forces to fight counterinsurgencies and irregular wars.

To varying degrees, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama want this as well. Obama, for example, recently called for "more special operations resources along the Afghan-Pakistan border."

But this approach cannot work. One lesson of the last decade is that our leaders' efforts to win wars with the CIA-led clandestine service and U.S. Special Forces in the lead only delivers defeat. We cannot fight a worldwide uprising of radical Islamists with the type of forces once thought most appropriate to suppress rebels on tiny Caribbean islands.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-scheuer9mar09,0,3189542.story

[babylonsister]

1. This is a guy who longs for endless war and massive casualties.

Maybe he should rethink our going into this part of the world to begin with, or maybe he should have considered we contain our efforts to Afghanistan to begin with.

[bemildred]

2. He seems unconcerned about how to pay for it, or where to get the resources.

Or lots of things actually, it just kill them all and let the deity sort it out, and things will be fine again. But then, being who he is, he has a lot of serious butt-covering to do.