Cliff, I haven’t yet read the Krepinevich piece, but David Brooks’ Op-Ed

strikes me as very important. I much admire Secretary Rumsfeld, although

I’ve felt since 9/11 that we’ve underplayed the need for troops. The best

time to expand our armed forces would have been right after 9/11. Even on

an all-volunteer basis, we could have gotten the numbers substantially up

at that time. Then maybe an “oil patch” strategy of occupation could have

been adopted from the start. But to be realistic–and fair to Secretary

Rumsfeld–the left has long been salivating to use military expansion as a

political tool, a few DLC-type Democrats notwithstanding. The

administration tried to finesse our national divisions by making the most

of a military that had been downsized after the Cold War. So the political

division we might have saved from a different occupation strategy would

likely have emerged anyway if we’d significantly expanded the

military. Any way you look at it, post-sixties pacificsm will have its

revenge.