Working my way backwards from an Eschaton post to Max Boot...
Most of our resources aren't going to fight terrorists but to maintain a smattering of mini-Americas in the Middle East. As one Special Forces officer pungently put it to me: "The only function that thousands of people are performing out here is to turn food into shit."
How to explain this seemingly counterproductive behavior? My theory is that any organization prefers to focus on what it does well. In the case of the Pentagon, that's logistics. Our ability to move supplies is unparalleled in military history. Fighting guerrillas, on the other hand, has never been a mission that has found much favor with the armed forces. So logistics trumps strategy. Which may help explain why we're not having greater success in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Max Boot: Our enemies aren't drinking lattes
How true is that? We've set up a very large mechanism for supplying food to humans who themselves serve no useful purpose.
You can work your way forwards to the Yglesias TPM Cafe post
here...
Committed to Failure
where Matthew states the obvious
The stuff he's worried about just isn't going to change.
So why would you, if you're Boot, remain committed to the continuation of a war whose strategy you think is doomed to failure? An awful lot of the more intelligent hawks seem to be in this position. They don't want to endorse withdrawal, but they have no good-faith belief that continuing the war on any realistic course will produce a positive outcome. That, to me, is near the height of irresponsibility.