As I recall, there was one candidate in the presidential primaries who kept trying to get this issue into the public debate...
How many bases we maintain around the world...
How much they cost us, in how many different ways...

Not too many people seemed to care.

People called him a 'kook' for talking about this sort of thing.

I don't recall seeing Mother Jones take the ball and run with it when presidential candidate Ron Paul brought this issue up in his campaign either.

Maybe they were not so fearless as to support a conservative Republican on an issue, even when they actually agree with him, knowing he's right on the issue.

Ron Paul said a lot of things that are true, but if Ron Paul actually cared about the left, he would be a Democrat helping to get rid of the Republican Lite DLC, because Republicans actually only represent the Elite Capitalists. REPUBLICANS do talk a good story though, as they are experts in propagandizing the electorate to their benefit.

Ron Paul is obviously more interested in returning the Republican party to it's roots, and wresting control of it from the hands of the Neocons who migrated there from the DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
He's not a LEFTIST, and never has been one. He has always been a Liberal in the classical Liberal vein defined by the Liberal philosophy of the Founding Father's day. You know..., Individual Liberty generally trumps Government Authority...

Why in your wildest imaginings would you suppose he'd try to become a torch carrier for THE LEFT?

The DEMOCRATS will just have to look after their own house.

Interestingly, I think Dennis Kucinich was attempting to push for THE LEFT from within the DEMOCRATIC PARTY, but he got much less support for his efforts than Ron Paul did, which should tell you something about how highly THE LEFT is regarded within with the DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
DEMOCRATS do like to talk LEFT though, particularly at primary time, and then move straight to the calculated middle come general election time.

I would like to comment on this article and some of the arguments present in it. Mr. Wheeler makes many points in his essay and I would like to address some of the ones I find to be not a well-informed as they could be.

“* America's defense budget is now larger in inflation-adjusted dollars than at any point since the end of World War II, and yet our Army has fewer combat brigades than at any point in that period; our Navy has fewer combat ships; and the Air Force has fewer combat aircraft. Our major equipment inventories for these major forces are older on average than at any point since 1946—or in some cases, in our entire history.”

That may be true. However, the United States are involved in fighting two insurgencies, are limited by federal law passed by CONGRESS as to how big their military forces can be, and now find themselves in a unipolar world without a symmetric military threat like the Soviet Union was during the Cold War. There is no potential adversary out there making tanks, ships, or combat aircraft that are better than ours. Therefore, the development cycle of new systems has slowed a bit and some systems in development were canceled due to the changing threat environment. That in no way means that the US military's equipment is second-rate or that the acquisition process has stopped altogether. The Army is actively working on its next generation of combat vehicles and other services are also hard at work developing new systems to meet new challenges on the battlefield.

“* The effectiveness of America's supposedly high-tech weapons doesn't compensate for these reduced numbers. The Air Force's newest fighter, the F-35, can only be regarded as a technical failure; the Navy's newest destroyer cannot protect itself effectively against aircraft and missiles, and the Army's newest armored vehicle cannot stand up against a simple anti-armor rocket that was first designed in the 1940s.”

I cannot comment on the Air Force and Navy remarks, as I am unaware of what is happening in those programs. I assume Mr. Wheeler's comment about the Army's newest armored vehicle refers to the Stryker, the new medium-weight wheeled armor vehicle in the Army's forces and its ability to withstand a direct hit by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). In short, there is only one vehicle in the Army's inventory that can withstand a direct hit by an RPG, and that is the M1-series "Abrams" main battle tank. What one really needs to do before commenting on weapon systems is understand what they are designed to do. The Stryker was designed to withstand small arms fire up to caliber .50 machine guns. If it were armored heavier, it would be too heavy to fulfill its requirement to be air-transportable by a C-130 transport aircraft. Nevertheless, it is an excellent weapon system that provides good protection for Soldiers and gets them to the fight quickly. It also has a new cage-like slat armor that can defeat RPGs, increasing the protection for the Soldiers on the inside. The Stryker has done an excellent job in Iraq, bringing heavier firepower to places where tracked vehicles could not go and protecting Soldiers in battle. It is so effective that many of our NATO allies are looking at it or similar systems for their own militaries.

“* Despite years, nay decades, of acquisition reform from the best minds in Congress, the Pentagon, and the DC think tanks, cost overruns on weapons systems are higher today (in inflation-adjusted dollars) than ever. Not a single major system has been delivered on time, on cost, and as promised for performance.”

I agree. The acquisition process could stand to be reformed. However, Mr Wheeler needs to understand one thing about the system before he castigates the military for its management of it: the defense acquisition process was designed by Congress to make sure DoD spends lots of money in the USA and nowhere else. Therefore, it is hard to penalize American companies that purposefully underbid to get a contract and then have cost overruns down the road to cover costs they excluded from their bid for the contract. Additionally, it is extremely difficult to design, develop, build, and field a unique system that has never been built before with technologies that do not yet exist and do it for as much as you thought it would cost as fast as you thought you could do it at the outset.

Nonetheless, some reform is happening and making a big difference in the lives of Soldiers. Changes like the Rapid Fielding Initiative have made a big difference in how quickly Soldiers get new equipment when a need is identified. In many cases, the wait for new equipment to go from idea to fielding has shrunk from years to less than six months. This is a good news story and there are more like it. While the problems with major items get the headlines, the acquisition community understands the need for reform and is responding. However, you must understand that the Congress-mandated rules do not always make that possible and often favor the contractors.

“* The Pentagon refuses to tell Congress and the public exactly how it spends the hundreds of billions of dollars appropriated to it each year; the reason is simple; it doesn't know how the money is spent. Technically, it doesn't even know if the money is spent. President George W. Bush's own Office of Management and Budget has labeled the Pentagon as one of the worst-managed federal agencies.”

Like acquisition, this is changing and oversight is drastically improving. The military understands that it must be a better steward of its resources and it is working to be a good steward of them. Processes, contracting, and oversight have all received a large amount of attention over the past few years and implemented changes are paying dividends.

“* At the start of the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon's senior military leadership failed to warn civilian leaders of the tremendously difficult mission they were being asked to perform. Indeed, most did not even perceive the difficulties of those missions and misperceived that the key issue was the number of military personnel sent to invade and then occupy an alien land in the Middle East. Many of these senior officers then publicly complained—from the comfort of a retirement pension—that their civilian bosses had made a mess of things.”

This is an ill-informed opinion. Former Chief of Staff of the Army GEN (Ret.) Eric Shinseki vocally opposed the plans for Iraq, first in private and then in public, and was forced by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld into retirement. His argument: the military needed a force of at least 500,000 troops to secure Iraq after the invasion. Former Secretary of the Army Thomas White (a retired Army Brigadier General himself) eventually met the same fate as Shinseki for arguing for more troops to secure the country. Bob Woodward's new book “The War Within” states that even former Secretary of State Colin Powell lobbied for another plan that had enough troops to pacify a post-invasion Iraq. Rumsfeld, as I am sure Mr. Wheeler would be quick to point out, did not suffer dissent and pushed the whole Army leadership aside. After his dismissal of both Shinseki and White, Rumsfeld had to pull General Schoomaker out of retirement to be the Army Chief of Staff. Apparently, no one on active duty wanted the job.

Another point to consider in this argument is that Afghanistan is not just an American military operation. It is a NATO operation, too. The problem is that our NATO allies will not fulfill their troop commitments to the ISAF mission and place restrictions on the troops they do send, telling the ISAF commander what these national contingents can and cannot do. German Army General Egon Ramms, the NATO commander to whom ISAF answers, has publicly expressed his frustrations with NATO governments for not completely manning their ISAF contingents in Afghanistan. Were these governments to pony up the troops and let them be committed where they are needed most in the way NATO commanders deem best for them to be committed, things in Afghanistan might look a little different.

“* In Congress and the office of the Secretary of Defense, there have been acrimonious hearings and meetings but no real oversight to appreciate just how and where programs and policies ran off the tracks. Except for a very, very small handful, no one has been held accountable. Indeed, it is not even apparent that anyone in Congress knows how to conduct oversight. If so, they apparently lack the spine to do it in a manner that then-Senator Harry Truman, a superb Pentagon watchdog during World War II, would call competent.”

Here, Mr. Wheeler shifts gears and makes an indictment of what is now a Democrat-led Congress and the civilian leadership at DoD. Uniformed Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen have nothing to do with this. So, why is it included in this essay? It doesn't really follow. Congress, the DoD civilian leadership, and the military's uniformed leadership are three different things and lumping them in the same group for blame purposes just does not work. Calling Senators and Members of Congress would probably be your best recourse for solving this problem.

“* Perhaps most damning of all, America has permitted itself—and most leaders from both political parties have aggressively pursued—a national security strategy that has torn us apart domestically, isolated us from our allies, made us an object of disrespect in the eyes of those not committed to our cause, and caused our enemies to find motivation for greater provocations on their own part. In fact, it is not even clear whether our leadership understands what an effective national security strategy is, much less how to put one together and exercise it effectively.”

I live overseas. I see other nations' perceptions of the US first hand. We need to make one thing clear here. Our allies and other nations are smart enough to separate the United States of America from a head of state and foreign policy they do not like. The world, for the most part, still likes America and it still likes Americans. Many people still dream of emigrating to what they call the “land of unlimited opportunity.” The world, for the most part, does NOT like President Bush. Despite the dislike our allies have for our president and his foreign policy, they still are committed to working with us in NATO and other arenas. I have been there and participated in this cooperation firsthand. The problem is that America cannot be all things to all people. Extremists that hate the US will continue to do so. We have to continue to mend strained relationships and our next president must make this a priority.

The question of an effective national security strategy is a valid one. Then again, one could ask that about the Clinton administration, too. The Clinton-era National Security Strategies read more like report cards of what the Clinton administration did rather than the way ahead for national security. The bottom line is that the US is in uncharted waters and while a good NSS is nice, we need good leadership to execute any plan. I'll let everyone else decide who can best provide that leadership.

“* A collapse of the grotesque American exercises in Iraq and Afghanistan is only a matter of time. The architects of the war in Iraq glibly proclaim victory in sight thanks to the success of the 'surge.' Politically motivated to their very core, they studiously ignore the internal dynamics in Iraq and the region that have been inestimably more powerful in lowering the violence there. Blind as the proverbial bat, they—and even opponents to the Iraq misadventure—now proclaim that more of the same in Afghanistan will rescue the imploding situation there.”

Here Mr. Wheeler slips out of objectivity and into polemic. His use of descriptions like “grotesque,” “blind as the proverbial bat,” and “misadventure” betray an emotional bias and prevent him from being taken seriously here. What everyone must understand is that defeating an insurgency takes a long time. In fact, successful campaigns against insurgencies take nine years on average. There is a lot of work to be done and contrary to what Mr. Wheeler states, our military is very studious of the internal dynamics of Iraq and GEN Petraeus just this week declared that our gains in Iraq can be very easily reversed. However, the main problem with Mr. Wheeler's polemic here is that he pins everything on the military. The military is not in the business of building governments and democratic institutions. The government agency with that role is the State Department. The military will do its dead-level best to provide a safe and secure environment so that other agencies can help the Iraqis create a functioning government and take over their own security, but the military is not able- or supposed- to do much more than that.

“As Pentagon wags used to remark inside the building, "It's data-free analysis and analysis-free decisions" driving US national policy. That is especially true of the mindless talk about expanding the size of the Marines and Army and maintaining the Pentagon budget at anything near its current hyperbloated size.”

Is expanding the military's size “mindless” because there is good reason that we do not need a bigger force or just because it does not agree with what Mr. Wheeler thinks we need for a military? He might want to consider what a 24 year-old Soldier might say to that while he serves his fourth tour in Iraq. Or maybe consider what his wife and young children might say about it, since he has been gone to war for four of the eight years since he graduated from high school and got married. We need more Soldiers and Marines to shoulder the burden and we need the budget to pay for their salaries, their houses, their healthcare, their equipment, and everything else that helps them stay safe while deployed and take care of their families while they are gone. Once the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are over, the budget will shrink. No one has any illusions about it doing anything different. Right now, though, we need the money to fight the wars. Frankly, though, this budget as a percentage of US GDP is nothing compared to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's WWII budgets, which were 50% or more of the GDP. Today, our “wartime” defense budget totals only about 6% of our GDP. So why don't you tell me which budget YOU think is “hyperbloated?”

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on this essay. I find it interesting to learn what others think about my profession. Unfortunately, not everyone gets a chance to learn the things I do about the military. So, it was useful, at least in my opinion, to set the record straight on some things.

I am a student in the US Army Command and General Staff Officer Course. The opinions I expressed in this blog post are my personal views as an individual and in no way represent official policy or position of the United States Army.