Vir prudens non contra ventum mingit
The greatest educational dogma is also its greatest fallacy: the belief that what must be learned can necessarily be taught. — Sydney J. Harris
For all manner of reasons I suggest any "forward basing" should be on the islands available, for a moment ignoring politics: Cyprus, Crete, Malta, Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia.
If access from the Indian Ocean is required, yes no islands - unless Yemen allows use of Socotra (no facilities) - so Oman seems to be the only option.
davidbfpo
Part two of the hearings:
Thursday, July 31, 2008 – 10:00 am – 2212 Rayburn – Open
The Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee will meet to hear testimony on A New U.S. Grand Strategy (Part 2).
* Subcommittee Chairman Snyder’s Opening Statement
Witnesses:
Admiral Dennis C. Blair, USN (Ret.) (pdf)
John M. Shalikashvili Chair
National Bureau of Asian Research
Ambassador Robert Hunter (pdf)
Senior Advisor, RAND Corporation
U.S. Ambassador to NATO, 1993-98
Major General Robert H. Scales Jr., USA (Ret.) (pdf)
President, COLGEN, LP
Former Commandant, Army War College
Dr. Philip D. Zelikow (pdf)
White Burkett Miller Professor of History, University of Virginia
Former Counselor, Department of State
Bill Moyers Interviews Andrew J. Bacevich, PBS, August 15, 2008. (Transcript and Video)
Worth watching.
BILL MOYERS: And you use this metaphor that is intriguing. American policy makers, quote, "have been engaged in a de facto Ponzi scheme, intended to extend indefinitely, the American line of credit." What's going on that resembles a Ponzi scheme?
ANDREW BACEVICH: This continuing tendency to borrow and to assume that the bills are never going to come due. I testified before a House committee six weeks ago now, on the future of U.S grand strategy. I was struck by the questions coming from members that showed an awareness, a sensitivity, and a deep concern, about some of the issues that I tried to raise in the book.
"How are we gonna pay the bills? How are we gonna pay for the commitment of entitlements that is going to increase year by year for the next couple of decades, especially as baby boomers retire?" Nobody has answers to those questions. So, I was pleased that these members of Congress understood the problem. I was absolutely taken aback when they said, "Professor, what can we do about this?" And their candid admission that they didn't have any answers, that they were perplexed, that this problem of learning to live within our means seemed to have no politically plausible solution.
I apparently am in the minority, but think Prof Bacevich is spot on in his whole interview. I also sympathize with his diagnosis of how our foreign policy should be re-toolded.
Here's my favorite quote, which I have stated here before:
BILL MOYERS: You say, and this is another one of my highlighted sentences, that "Anyone with a conscience sending soldiers back to Iraq or Afghanistan for multiple combat tours, while the rest of the country chills out, can hardly be seen as an acceptable arrangement. It is unfair. Unjust. And morally corrosive." And, yet, that's what we're doing.
.......
ANDREW BACEVICH: Yeah. Well, my son was killed in Iraq. And I don't want to talk about that, because it's very personal. But it has long stuck in my craw, this posturing of supporting the troops. I don't want to insult people.
There are many people who say they support the troops, and they really mean it. But when it comes, really, down to understanding what does it mean to support the troops? It needs to mean more than putting a sticker on the back of your car.
I don't think we actually support the troops. We the people. What we the people do is we contract out the business of national security to approximately 0.5 percent of the population. About a million and a half people that are on active duty.
And then we really turn away. We don't want to look when they go back for two or three or four or five combat tours. That's not supporting the troops. That's an abdication of civic responsibility. And I do think it - there's something fundamentally immoral about that.
Again, as I tried to say, I think the global war on terror, as a framework of thinking about policy, is deeply defective. But if one believes in the global war on terror, then why isn't the country actually supporting it? In a meaningful substantive sense?
Where is the country?
that Bacevich expresses in the quote that Cavguy has highlighted. I have observed the same thing in CONUS and down under. I think he is spot on.
I had the opportunity to meet Andrew Bacevich and spend some time talking with him and TX Hammes after dinner at an event in Oxford (UK) last year. It was an enjoyable evening - he struck me as honorable and smart. I think that it would not hurt a few more folks to spend some time reading his material and thinking objectively about what he writes before jumping to conclusions.
Last edited by Mark O'Neill; 09-09-2008 at 10:57 AM. Reason: syntax
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