The Best Trained, Most Professional Military...Just Lost Two Wars?

[Madhu]

The US military is an awesome, almost too amazing to contemplate, instrument when used appropriately.

It's also a wasteful overly bureaucratic and weirdly managed (within and without) machine.

Both are true at the same time. It's possible for both to be true and that complicates discussion.

I was studying for my medical specialty boards when 9-11 occurred. I never gave a thought to the military in any way in my entire life up to that point. I had cut off my cable television in order to study and never saw any images contemporaneously. Never, until years and years later. Just never wanted to watch or look. I heard everything on radio.

Prior to toppling the Taliban, there was a huge argument, that the US would get bogged down. But what people meant is that we would never initially topple the Taliban. I remember those articles and pundits talking on the radio like yesterday because I happened also to be intensely studying and it all stuck, the genodermatoses and quotes of various officials and military, all in my magpie brain.

The initial removal of the Taliban did shock and amaze, it happened so quickly. To say otherwise is to rewrite history. To completely rewrite it.

But what happened afterwards? That's a group effort, Iraq, complacency, NATO and ISAF and the US military and governance and public opinion, American and otherwise, and the whole messy lot of it.

All that the "international system" had built up intellectually after world war II came out in the desire to re-wire an entire society, it came out from the UN and aid agencies and Brussels and DC and various international capitals....

Like I said, a different kind of Marshall Plan.

So, used appropriately, you are beyond gifted as a military. The trick is to do it properly.

Fuchs makes a good point about "tricking" bureaucracies and this is where the whole disruptive thinkers debate comes in and my comments about lobbies are not entirely inappropriate.

But how?

[Madhu]

@ Ganulv, Steve Blair and others. I'll try and check them out. That is exactly what I wanted.

Carl - A Col. Tunnell's article is making its way across the web, on Michael Yon's website and on zenpundit's. There are people who spoke up behind scenes, it appears. That letter won't make you entirely happy though, because he appears skeptical of the way we did things with our ISAF Karzai Pakistan NATO everyone else alliance pop-COIN-iess (er, not comments on policy, but on the way this affects day to day tactics. I think. My lack of military knowledge hurts me in interpreting things).

No one is really in charge, it seems from my outsider viewpoint.

From my vantage point, I can't know what happened behind closed doors, who stood up for what, who protested, and how it went down.

The better part of valor for me may be to do just what I said: wait for declassified materials and proper study at a distance.

Not much help for today's issues but I won't be a help. "Stay out of it mostly" is not a message that resonates much outside places like this.

[carl]

[B]No one is really in charge, it seems from my outsider viewpoint.

From my vantage point, I can't know what happened behind closed doors, who stood up for what, who protested, and how it went down.

The better part of valor for me may be to do just what I said: wait for declassified materials and proper study at a distance.

Not much help for today's issues but I won't be a help. "Stay out of it mostly" is not a message that resonates much outside places like this.

Sometimes what you write sounds like you are apologizing for what you write. Knock that off! You call 'em like you see them and you KEEP calling them like you see them. Your good sense, honesty and the work that is behind what you write is apparent to all. Don't shy away any more. If you do I might get peeved.

I haven't read Tunnell's article yet but I will.