“and there is stress on the institution to do what we are required to do, pretty much by law, for the nation.”

That sounds like a threat.  Most people don’t realize that “soft” coups happen all the time.  I think that the current state of affairs where our biggest spending military adversary Iran spends less than $10 billion a year on its military and North Korea, the other, spends less than $5 billion a year.

With the Iraq and Afghanistan wars we’re spending in the neighborhood of $550 billion a year.  No one with a brain would suggest that you could use an army and air force to seek out 1,000 or 5,000 “terrorists” hiding somewhere in the world.  This is about Eisenhower’s military industrial complex.

If you don’t feed it, it gets irritable.  And it has a lot of money and a lot of guns and it has secret and not so secret alliances with unsavory, but very effective international spy/sabotage organizations like Pakistan’s ISI.

The intellectual ineffectiveness of using the war on terror as a replacement for the cold war is that without a real adversary, there has to be a remember the maine sort of incident periodically to keep people on the edge of their seats.

Here, the military industrial complex wanted their money and power and they got that (DOUBLED spending since 1998), but only through the arrival of this new hard to define “threat” that essentially is just a few thousand guys.

I’m not suggesting that the US government or military would do it, but there are so many private mercenary firms involved now and so much cash changing hands and so much power and future deals and relationships on the oil there, no one will allow this to be turned off.

If some general or politician tries to shut this off, they will blow up something big to turn up the fear.  Nobody is going to walk away from the sort of money and power this is worth.

Yeah, like Patton’s quote: “the idea…is not to die for your country, but to make the other poor bastard die for his country.”

Seriously though, I see this kind of message coming from a lot of angles now: they’re talking about ramping up, not down. I think that’s what Bush will push for, and these are just the initial volleys in what is beginning to look like the first major congress-Bush battle of the coming year. We’ll see.

Actually, the brilliance of generals depends upon the death and destruction of the other side’s forces.  Guess you are saying we would be better off without such historically inept generals like George Washington, US Grant, Eisenhower, McArthur, Patton, Bradley and the like.  Or George Marshall whose brilliance in managing the military response in WWII was only overshadowed by his later superb accomplishments on the diplomatic front in the rebuilding of Europe.  Or Or inept Colonels like Theodore Roosevelt.  The mission of the American military is to defend the country and the Constitution against all enemies.  This sometimes means war.  War is inherently illogical and should be avoided..but when it does happen, the professional military performs its duty.  To issue blanket and ill thought out platitudes about the military shows a lazy and dishonest intellect.  Some of the finest people you will never meet are in our military.

men love war. always have; always will. but we need critics from the comfort of their safe lives to remind us of the vast difference between their smugness and sharp, and clever brains and the men and women who don’t complain, but follow orders. KISS means keep it simple stupid. Let the generals fight the war.

The accomplishments of all Generals depend on the death of their troops !

i’m shielding my eyeballs so the brilliance of this farsighted thinker won’t blind them