It seems to me as if we average Americans are getting squeezed between the opinions on Iraq and Afghanistan from an increasingly larger number of retired military senior personnel, and opinions from those in uniform on the ground. Making this even more frustrating is the fact people like me have no "on the ground experience" over there ourselves, to help form our own assessment of the situation. I wish I understood better, for example, what a realistic military "objective" might be, other than to side with well worn, overly simplistic phrases such as to "assure democracy succeeds", etc.
I guess any new "strategies" or whatever you want to call them, will not become apparent (officially) until next year. Keeping so many soon to be deployed and already over-extended troops in limbo much longer is not good.
The Army Chief of Staff is correct when he recently warned that the Army is near being broken, without some major increases in manning and equipment to do it right. We're spread too thin. If I can believe what I read today in the news media, the Joint Chiefs of Staff appear united in that position.
The person I admire the most in relation to how we ought to fight militarily and win is retired Army General Colin Powell, who is now calling the Army overextended and "about broken." He's also skeptical that solutions now being debated will work. What he said in his biography about not repeating the mistakes we made in Vietnam have always been powerful words to me. So, when he speaks, I listen carefully.
