Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Bacevich and some friends: Time for a commission to assess the post-9/11 wars

Andrew Bacevich, one of the more interesting thinkers around, has a good piece with some other cats proposing a independent, non-partisan commission “to evaluate the military experience of the past decade.” They call for an examination of five particular aspects: The design of U.S. combat forces, the U. S. global military footprint, the national security ...

By , a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy.
familymwr/Flickr
familymwr/Flickr
familymwr/Flickr

Andrew Bacevich, one of the more interesting thinkers around, has a good piece with some other cats proposing a independent, non-partisan commission "to evaluate the military experience of the past decade." They call for an examination of five particular aspects: The design of U.S. combat forces, the U. S. global military footprint, the national security apparatus, the civil-military gap and how top jobs have been filled.

Andrew Bacevich, one of the more interesting thinkers around, has a good piece with some other cats proposing a independent, non-partisan commission “to evaluate the military experience of the past decade.” They call for an examination of five particular aspects: The design of U.S. combat forces, the U. S. global military footprint, the national security apparatus, the civil-military gap and how top jobs have been filled.

This strikes me as a worthwhile proposal.

Meanwhile, I finally caught up with Professor Bacevich’s essay on Albert Wohlstetter, which contains this memorable two-cushion shot in reference to the revolution in military affairs, or RMA:

Joint Vision 2010 stands in relation to the RMA as Tom Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree stands in relation to globalization: it is an infomercial-marketing disguised as elucidation.

Thomas E. Ricks is a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy. Twitter: @tomricks1

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