Rumsfeld's Folly

Max Boot is one of many defense experts dismayed by what he sees in Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's Quadrennial Defense Review, which seems better suited for the 1980s than today's realities.

Says Boot in a Los Angeles Times commentary:

For example, the Pentagon is continuing to fund three ruinously expensive short-range fighters — the F/A-22 Raptor, the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter — even though we already have total dominance in the air. The entire budget for language and cultural training — $181 million — comes to less than the cost of one F-35.

Also being funded is the Virginia-class nuclear attack submarine. . . . Even more ill-suited for irregular warfare are two other ships whose development will eat up untold billions: the CVN-21 and the DD(X), a next-generation aircraft carrier and destroyer, respectively.

. . . Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld still seems to think that Iraq and Afghanistan are the exceptions, not the norm — that in the future we won't need so many ground troops. The U.S. has already paid a high price for the misguided decisions not to send enough troops to secure Iraq or to capture Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora. Now, it appears, we are fated to make the same mistake on future battlefields, simply because we won't have enough troops available.