But while the common insult for the military is that it always prepares for the last war, until that becomes too obvious to ignore, those doing the preparing are viewed as visionaries:
The U.S. Army is getting a chilling message these days from its civilian bosses in the Department of Defense. The message is that, for the foreseeable future, the nation will not need a large army, equipped with heavy weapons. Special operations forces and some light infantry is OK, but any plans for lots of armored units slugging it out with similar foes is, well, no longer on the menu. The army thus becomes an expeditionary force, to be sent overseas for emergencies America can't avoid. But not to stay and get involved with another Iraq or Afghanistan.So the entire lesson of our Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns is that in the future we'll have to fight enemies just like we face in those campaigns--but we won't do it for very long.
So we will build a military that can't fight insurgencies even though it is geared for them because it can't stay long enough to win the fight, and can't fight a conventional enemy because it is too light.
That's just effing amazing. Best and brightest, indeed.
