The military & GW

So now we take a look at the Bush Administration's use of the military. After 9/11 Bush was correctly lauded for his strong response to the attack. We quickly learned who was responsible and where he was. Bush quickly built up an attack force and demanded the Taliban hand over Bin Laden. When they refused we attacked. The Taliban, a brutal Islamic Fundamentalist government was harboring the most wanted terrorist in the world. By refusing to hand him over they sealed their own fate. By coordinating with and using the Mujahadin (sp?) the forces advanced quickly. The Taliban was no match and was replaced.

Now let's turn to the Iraq mess. And it is a mess. Whereas his father built a large and meaningful coalition in the first Gulf War GW blundered from day one by taking an adversarial stance to the UN. He constantly harped on the inadequecy and ineptitude of the UN inspectors. Although he constantly stated that Saddam had WMD's he, to my knowledge, never supplied any credible evidence. Even if everyone in the world thought he had them that is not proof. We now know that the intelligence he had was deeply flawed and pressure was applied to have the intelligence services supply only intel supporting the administration's already held viewpoint, rather than all the facts determining the truth. Then after dismissing the UN as ineffective and useless he built a "coalition of the willing." This consisted of the British, Italians, Spaniards, Australians and a bunch of smaller countries. Other than the Brits and Aussies most of the others contributed only token forces. The vast majority of the troops were US. Although our troops performed admirably and quickly overwhelmed the weak Iraqi forces the planning for securing the peace was horrible. Looting was allowed and probably even smiled upon as a "release" from Saddam's rule.

When things got out of hand Bush & Co. made one bad decision after another. By throwing out all Bathe Party members from government they essentially forced Iraq to start from scratch. Everyone they brought in had no experience because anyone with experience belonged to the Bathe Party. That's like abolishing everyone in the Republican and Democratic parties and expecting the new people to run everything smoothly.

Rumsfeld didn't help things with his brusk manner and stubborn refusal to admit to his mistakes. In a position like the Secretary of Defense you have to have some people skills. I don't think he ever had any. His combative attitude with the press, his comments about "Old Europe" and his "Rumsfeld Doctrine" only made things worse. Not since the removal of the Taliban has Bush/Rumsfeld made a good decision regarding the use of the military. As I said yesterday, the war on terror should mainly utilize small, highly trained rapid response teams and a beefed up human intelligence service. Although we don't really know about the intelligence side I have heard no evidence of his using special forces troops to good effect recently.

So overall the Bush record is mostly negative in my opinion. Poor choices in Iraq have resulted in the overextension of US forces, extensive use of National Guard and Reserves, the implementation of Stop Loss and the inability to meet recruiting goals. When this administration is done in 2008 I fear our military will be much weaker than when they came in. Heaven help us if a real threat like N. Korea or a Chinese invasion of Taiwan occurs. We may not be able to do a damn thing to stop them.