Note the focus on forces in the above paragraphs- that is what Warden is arguing against. Additionally, I would say that joint doctrine is not always (or even often) neccessarily followed. Additionally, the JFC is normally an Army commander, and the Army doctrine is very force centric.
Joint doctrine is written from the operational level point of view - that of orchestrating ways and means to achive an end that is often (usually?) given. Some of Warden's fire appears to be aimed to bypassing the operational level and linking tactical action to strategic ends. The reference to force is about means in the strategic construct of "ends, ways, means". Do you think when he talks of "battle" that is really about the need to orchestrate ways and means against the adversary ways and means (ie the campaign?) and just skip to tactical action for strategic purpose?

If part of the solution Warden is proposing is to "chang ethe vocabulary" that comes by changing doctrine. Whether we follow it is immaterial, it is the source of "vocabularly" for any discussion.

The Army is only the JFC for land campaigns. With the exception of Iraq and Afghanistan, I think just about all the other CJTFs are Navy or Air Force?

Current doctrine in general tends to be "force centric becuase its aabout employinghte means we currently have.

It have been better for me to have invoked Joint concepts instead of Joint doctrine?

Again, Warden isn't saying that land or naval power won't work, or can't help- he is saying that airpower can be more effective in many situations. The fact that airpower can work doesn't mean that land or seapower can't.
Warden's argument seems to be that airpower alone has the ability to attack multiple CoGs in Parallel.

"Only within the last 75 years has airpower made it possible to attack multiple centers if gravity in parallel. Can there be any question that we desperately need to rethink war?"

One argue that seapower has had the ability to attack multiple CoGs for considerably longer than that, it depends on what you consider a CoG. We may well have been able to starve japan into submission in WWII had more attention been played to strangling her SLOCS rather than incinerating population centers (er, strategic sources of wartime labor).

Airpower is unable to reach many CoGs in the required capacity without seapower, so one could make many of the same arguments with seapower rather than airpower as the "effector of greatest economy".

Similarly, there are CoGs that you can't appropriately affect by breaking and instead requires a human being on the ground to appropriately influence. Airpower can't have tea with a tribal elder and convince him to plant alfalfa instead of poppys.

The arguments Warden makes are necessary ones, but the zeal to make them also sufficient to all cases is what rankles parochial hackles.

Warden argues that strategy should start at ends, then work backwards. The Joint Ops Planning Process starts at the ends and theoretically works backwards.
So what is he arguing with. He's won that battle! Why harp on it so much in the paper? IF its about Iraq and Afghanistan, well those were political wars whose ends were political animals that evolved over time for political reasons. Its almost like Warden is arguing that we should only fight wars that fall into the category he is himself defining. Sorry but military folk do get to put constraints on politicians in this country. And war is not always a matte of choice. The adversary gets a vote, and will endeavor to orchestrate situations that are outside Wardens' nice tidy "war box".

We are already so dominant militarily that there are only a handful of potential military rivals who would take us on militarily and in many cases the militaries of those countries are essentially "sacrifical anodes" that will be sacrificed on the alter of puplic spectacle for the express purpose of NOT letting us fight Wardens sort of sterile, bloodless war.

Warden would say that control drives us to strive for decisive battle to seize control of terrain, when we might be able to achieve our objectives by influencing the enemy's will. Subtle differences, but Warden is saying that attrition and battle are a part of our basic mentality in the US military.
The requirement to establish control and provide order to a state after we "Collapse it" is arequirement of international law. We can't just "break" a country, and then point our finger like Ming the Merciless and chide for their impertanane not giving us what we want. As we have seen in Iraq, the other side may decide to "collapse" on a schedule other than the one we plan for just to leave us in a quagmire and transition the battle to an irregualr playfield. Again Warden seems to imply a degree of predictability (you need predicatability in to to plan to the level Warden implies) than is possible.

It is not control that drives us to battle, but competition with the adversary. Warden ascribes to airpower (as many airpower theorists have done) an irresitibility to airpower. Based on what does airpower get to magically avoid enemy attempts to stop it? Last time I checked we did not transpporter bombs and despite the desire to avoid talking 'means' airplanes and missiles, though fast, are still requred to transit through increasingly capacble IADS systems and deal with adversary elements of airpower. Most consider those encouners to be "battles" and they can't be wished away.

In other words, the COA is developed based on the enemy forces expected actions. Again, the Army tends to drive most joint planning because they are most of the people involved.
Agin this is becasue of the pesky reality that the adversary has a strategy, and ways and means that are used to oppose us. When you have means, and the other guy has means, they will bump into each other in the execution of strategy. Despite the desire for immunity, airpower for the foresable future must engage in battles with enemy airpower just llike seapower and land power must.

Service drivers to palnning is very AOR specific. The Navy dominates PAC AOR planning.

True. Humans are complex. But you can still determine ways to affect them.
But how they will respond is unpredictable. For a test case, tell your wife that you are going use Warden's strategy to get here to do what you want.

Then again... don't

more later...