Rubma: what is afro-engineering?

My response to you is the same as I gave SPC123, which is that I was trying to express the idea that the military -- any military anywhere -- operates AS AN INSTITUTION in very hidebound ways. I was not referring to the day-to-day operations of a military unit. Those are, I would guess, much the same as in any other huge bureaucracy -- some are bad, some are good, some just done the best they could.

As I said elsewhere in this thread, it is a cliche and a very accurate one that generals are always fighting the last war, and that is CLEARLY true of the Pentagon, which has the overwhelming majority of its funding tied up in super-machines that are designed for a war with the Soviet Union, which doesn't exist anymore, or China, which is too busy eating our lunch economically to fight us.

On the tactical level, the Army has shown itself to be highly flexible in Iraq. I think I conveyed that -- if not, let me state it now. But the fact is that the American armed forces have shown themselves unable to win a protracted battle of the kind we're fighting in Iraq, if for no other reason than that those who designed our armed forces seem to have forgotten to provide enough troops to conquer and hold a fourth-rate power over a long period of time. That isn't the fault of the soldiers in the field nor those dealing with the day-to-day problems of the armed forces. But it sure seems to me to be true of the civilians running the show, and the top brass assisting them.

My speculation was that this kind of inability to think creatively on the part of our military leadership was somehow related to the nature of the military itself -- to put it as simplistically as I think you believe I did, if you follow orders, you don't learn to think. I retract that statement, based upon your response and that of SPC123.

But whatever the reason, the people who manage our military machine show a STRONG tendency to hidebound and inappropriate thinking. That part of my statement I do not retract.