At War II: 'Time Is Not on Our Side'.(US military planning)(Brief Article)

From the beginning, the comforting thing about the war on terrorism has been the assumption that the U.S. would win. How could we not, given our enormous wealth and military power, and the backwardness of al-Qaeda and the countries associated with it? But political will isn't so easily quantifiable. As President Bush's will has seemed to flag, he has suffered a loss of momentum on all fronts: He appears to have been distracted from pursuing regime change in Iraq by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Pakistan has been returning to old habits, releasing many of the militants it arrested at the start of the year and allowing jihadists -- in a possible provocation to war with India -- to continue to cross the border into Kashmir; and the U.S. uniformed military leadership has reportedly succeeded in at least postponing, and may be trying to kill off entirely, a U.S. invasion of Iraq.

This last item is the most disturbing, and is another sign that America's military leadership can be unimaginative and backward-looking. The uniformed bureaucracy successfully resisted Donald Rumsfeld's efforts to wrench the military from its taste for 1970s- and '80s-era weapons systems last year, and it is fighting a rearguard action against them still, even after the demonstration of the effectiveness of the new-generation military in Afghanistan. The tussle over Iraq appears to be another front in this civilian-military battle, with the generals trying to make policy instead of simply executing it.

That said, the Joint Chiefs may have legitimate worries. They reportedly say there aren't enough refueling planes to support a sustained air campaign against Iraq, because those planes are so old and rickety (one third are in repairs). They also are said to worry about having to keep tens of thousands of troops in Iraq after the war, given other commitments around the world and their belief, repeatedly stated publicly, that the military is already short 50,000 troops. This is the "hollow" military that Republicans complained about in the 1990s coming home to roost, as U.S. forces feature an odd ...