More Donald Rumsfeld: sometimes he has good ideas, and sometimes not; sometimes both at the same time.
This is good:
Well into the Bush administration's second term, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is concentrating much of his energy on remaking a small but important corner of the military: special-operations forces....Rumsfeld's top-to-bottom review posits that the gravest long-term threat to national security comes from small cells of al Qaeda and its radical offshoots scattered across more than 80 countries. To take them down, Mr. Rumsfeld wants to build a much larger and more aggressive special-operations force with broader latitude to both work with indigenous forces and take action in countries where the U.S. is technically not at war.
This is short-sighted:
The Pentagon chief's focus on these elite forces reflects his conviction that the Iraq war -- in which about 140,000 U.S. troops are struggling to rebuild a country from the ground up -- is an anomaly that is winding down and won't be repeated, say senior defense officials....Meanwhile, conventional ground forces, which are doing the bulk of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, will by 2011 return to their prewar levels. The Air Force and Navy will absorb even deeper personnel cuts.
One of our huge problems right now is that our military -- in every way -- is simply not big enough. The post-Cold War drawdown has left us dangerously weakened, and it shows in Iraq and elsewhere.
This part of Rumsfeld's thinking is a mystery.
Posted by Alan at February 18, 2006 07:51 AM