Stabbed in the Front?

Somehow I had missed this report:

WASHINGTON, DC—Departing from his usual hopeful rhetoric during a question-and-answer session with reporters in the White House Rose Garden, President Bush suggested Tuesday that the war in Iraq has not been successful because the nation's armed forces are "just not very good."

"When the decision was made to liberate Iraq, I was going on what my advisers were telling me and what everyone has said for nearly a century—that the U.S. military is the best in the world," Bush said. "But if that were the case, and we did have the most powerful army, navy, marines, and air force on the globe, we would be winning, right?"

The president admitted that he'd been toying with the idea that a thorough lack of quality in personnel, from the top U.S. commander to the lowest-ranked private, is the only way to account for the colossal failure in Iraq, given that everything on the administrative side of the war has been carried out with the utmost care and precision.

"I know the folks on our end didn't drop the ball," Bush said. "The civilian oversight of this war and the plan of attack has been brilliant. There's no doubt about that in my mind. Hate to say it, but maybe our men and women in uniform just aren't what they're cracked up to be."

[...]

Bush said that in the past year he has had much occasion to think about the U.S. military's role in history, which, he recently was forced to conclude, is "overrated." He traced the roots of the misperception back to the nation's victory in World War II.

"We haven't really flat-out won a war since then, and you have to admit even that one was pretty close," the president said.

Continued Bush: "We pretty much have a 3-4 record in terms of important wars, and that's being generous, because I'm counting the Civil War as a victory. We got absolutely killed in Vietnam, which was another war where the leadership at home did a fine job, only to be let down by the troops. Not quite sure what happened in Korea. And I thought we won the first Gulf War, but apparently we didn't, because we're still there."

Shortly after the press conference, the White House announced that an advisory panel comprised of former officials from both Bush administrations and of private military contractors would be formed to devise effective solutions to problem areas in the nation's defense, namely the quality of the soldiers. Some of the likely recommendations include toughening recruitment standards so that not just anyone can enlist, and offering swift advancement opportunities for troops who show less dependence on the support current forces seem to constantly require from the American people. The panel is also expected to recommend that the nation enter into additional costly overseas conflicts as a way for the military to hone its combat skills.

Also, this.

Comments

[Tibor R. Machan]

It is too bad that in your May/June Cato Policy Report you gave all that attention to Randy Barnett's WSJ piece in support of the war in Iraq, but none to my numerous columns opposed to it, written even prior to when it started (in column after column in papers owned by Freedom Communications, Inc. and on numerous web sites). Of the two published libertarian thinkers I would have thought a bit of attention to the one consistently against the war would have been warranted.

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