Winning still matters, etc...

[John Young]

There is a decreasing chance the US can apply its military
might to defeat an unconventional enemy. That kind of enemy
is not what long-standing military strategy and most tactics
are aimed at. Rumsfeld was hoping to revise that when yet
one more mighty military war appeared to head off changing
military policy.

The US has demonstrated in Afghanistan and post-Hussein
Iraq that it does not know how to fight unconventionally. That
inability appeared in Korea, then Viet Nam and has been shown
in every combat the US has engaged in since WW 2.

Military professionals know this and are hamstrung by the
narcotic dependency the defense industry and its beneficiaries
has for big iron and every bigger and more expensive platforms.
This has been coupled with gigantism in intelligence, big science
and big technological research advocated and overseen by giant
corporations and institutions. And to gloss this a huge spin
and propoganda machine has been funded to pump up the
threats and the hefty defense tax boondogling.

Special forces and operations were devised to piss-ant an alternative 
to this spread across the US pork-barrell behemothicism. But they 
have seldom been applied beyond pinprick displays, with much 
hoorahing about their stealthy effectiveness: "we can tell you about 
our successes, only failures make it to the media."

Commentators have noted the corrupting influence of empire
Britain thinking its global navy would assure continuance of
hegemony. The more that conceit was believed the weaker
the military became by its failure to recognize new forms of
warfare and new ways of thinking. That empire was undermined
by non-hegemonic forms of combat and thinking.

The US might get a bye with its arrogant belief in military might
for another generation if its lucky, if unlucky it will not survive this 
one. Well, parts of it may survive, away from the cities. Imagine
one of the few cypherpunks holed-up in northwest Utah and
one bunkered in Corralito escape the food-and-water-borne 
disease.

President Attila or May?