Robert Gates appears to be talking about nothing less than shifting the focus of the American Army from mainly attack and defense directly to functions of administering an empire. Is the intent then to perfect a model of empire-building? Why does this make you happy, Mr. Kaplan? Is America to be the new Rome? Are there more Iraqs on the horizon?

Clearly this capacity is needed at this moment in time with the US mired in Iraq. But the wisdom of drastically and permanently altering the military this way is more than a little suspect, IMO.

The need for this change was not set by W, it was good old Bill and his Bosnia precedence. Thanks, Bill!

More Iraqs? Hmmm, What about 'Saving Darfur' (Realworld requirement; 'Invade Sudan')? The AU and UN seem pretty incompetant at anything but raping the local population. The Congo? Northern Uganda? Zimbawbwe? None of which our current Army are organized for. China (over Taiwan), Russia? As scary as those possibilities are, even those would not be traditional.

Bottom line is that full-scale tank wars are done, as of the first Gulf war; dominating airpower makes them pretty pointless. The only people who could stay in the air with our military for more than 3 days would be Israel, after which death would rain on any ground forces unmercifully. Standard ground combat will- if and when it occurs- will follow the Fallujah model at the top end. The current Army is not organized for such.

Mike, are you Air Force? Navy air myself...but your comments concerning air power sound a lot like an Air Force flag pressing Congress for more money. There is one fact you are missing though, air power doesn't hold territory....ground forces do, tanks included. We had overwhelming air superiority shortly after D-Day, and it gave the Germans hell....but it didn't win the war.

We have complete air superiority in Iraq now, and so what? We can move guys around, and provide tactical air strikes / air cover as and when needed, but without enough boots on the ground, it doesn't make any difference.

There were plenty of boots on the ground (more than 20 per thousand civilians) and only about 10% were American.

That was a good example of the right way to do it. As a matter of fact, we now have soldiers from the Balkans serving in peacekeeping ops elsewhere, ie, thay have become exporters of security and stability.

Agreed. You can make the rubble bounce with bombs and artillary, run over it with cavalry, and grind it into dust with armor but you don't own a piece of ground until there's an infantry soldier (or Marine) standing on it. Period. That fact is as true now as it was at Agincourt, Gettysburg, the Somme, Stalingrad, the Ardennes, Pork Chop Hill, and Hue City and will be true as long as wars are fought.