Back to the future: time to renounce panaceas in Afghanistan

My friend Andrew Exum and two of his colleagues at the Center for a New American Security, retired LTG Dave Barno and Matthew Irvine, published a new paper this week calling for a shift in the primary emphasis of the Afghanistan war effort.

It is time for a change of mission in Afghanistan. U.S. and coalition forces must shift away from directly conducting counterinsurgency operations and toward a new mission of "security force assistance": advising and enabling Afghan forces to take the lead in the counterinsurgency fight.

This change, the authors suggest, is necessary to solidify security gains made by coalition forces in recent years and ensure the continued protection of Western interests after NATO forces leave the country. While the report marks an analytical step forward, environmental and institutional constraints are likely to blunt the effectiveness of its policy prescriptions if not block their enactment altogether. It's difficult to escape the conclusion that what passes for creativity in our contemporary efforts to "save the war" has in fact come as much too little, and far too late.

A simple rendering of the report's main argument goes as follows: of the several courses of action available to U.S. forces between now and their ultimate withdrawal date in 2014, the one most likely to produce lasting positive effects entails an immediate, aggressive, and committed effort to increase the capability of Afghan forces. The other alternatives are presented as unpalatable caricatures: 1) continued emphasis on coalition-led counterinsurgency operations through 2014, then sudden and complete cessation of combat activities by NATO forces and transition to predictably incompetent ANSF; 2) unilateral abandonment of the agreed-to drawdown timeline and indefinite continuation of the presently inconclusive western-led status quo; and 3) a rapid and immediate withdrawal of all coalition forces, leaving 2015 Afghanistan both bereft of capable security forces and denied the potential security gains from 36 more months of sustained NATO counterinsurgency operations. The authors assert that their preferred course "will protect long-term U.S. security interests without a never-ending commitment of immense U.S. resources":

[W]e believe that the most prudent option for U.S. policymakers is to adhere to the Lisbon framework for transition in Afghanistan and accelerate the change in mission. By doing so, the United States and its allies will have more time and resources to support the ANSF ahead of the coming transition in 2014, increasing their capabilities and providing vital support as they take ownership of the fight.

Considering they've characterized the other options as expensive, slow failure; very expensive, very slow failure; and inexpensive, rapid failure, I don't suppose we're left with much choice.

A great deal of hay has been made over the past 48 hours of the fact that Exum was a vociferous advocate for escalation back in 2009, when the president grudgingly accepted GEN McChrystal's proposal for a so-called "fully-resourced counterinsurgency campaign." His many critics imply that Andrew should be embarrassed, should show some shame, should prostrate himself before the we-knew-better masses and ritually cleanse his analytical sins. As they would have it, he is advocating in 2011 for a transition that would've been similarly effective two years ago, and which would've saved lives (and billions) to boot.

Bollocks. The war is not the same. Afghanistan is not the same. America is not the same. I was a critic of escalation in 2009; my views are unchanged with hindsight. It simply does not follow, however, that the historical fact of escalation is irrelevant to the operational and political context of today.

That said: this should've happened two years ago.

Announcing his decision to send additional troops to Afghanistan in December 2009, the president said that those forces would "increase our ability to train competent Afghan Security Forces, and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight. And they will help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans." The Army had started deploying specially augmented brigades to Afghanistan to focus on the train-advise-assist mission. When a brigade from the 82d Airborne was tapped as the first of these, CNAS honcho John Nagl told the Washington Post that compared to previous SFA efforts, "the change couldn't be more dramatic." So one might fairly wonder why Barno, Exum, Irvine, and even Nagl are now essentially telling us that what Afghanistan needs is a fully resourced security force assistance campaign.

They know the answer, of course: COIN advocates insisted the 2009 escalation would be accompanied by a renewed commitment to generating and training capable Afghan security forces, but it didn't happen; the "surge" in combat and stability operations instead starved those efforts of the personnel, resources, and command emphasis they needed to succeed in parallel. The authors have diagnosed the problem properly, though they don't clearly state this conclusion. Instead we get this:

Evidence suggests that some ANSF units are failing today because they commonly operate in the field without embedded, continuous coalition support. Despite the importance of the security force assistance mission, no senior U.S. headquarters, organization or senior commander is currently dedicated to advising Afghan forces. (One can only observe the way in which the initial training of Afghan forces improved after the appointment of a U.S. three-star general officer in 2009 to appreciate the effect organizational changes can have on priorities -- and results.)

Another excerpt is more to the point: "Because U.S. units can execute counterinsurgency operations better and faster than their Afghan counterparts," the authors write, "they are continuing to do so despite the looming transition." Don't let the obfuscatory syntax fool you: individual units are not making this decision for themselves. ISAF has made a determination to focus on combat operations, to try make as much progress as quickly as possible, and then to transition to ANSF "lead" when the Lisbon deadline hits.

The authors can point to an improvement in initial training thanks to reorganization and re-prioritization, but that, too, came at a cost: by focusing on the rapid expansion of the ANSF to meet benchmarks on the "transition" timeline, the coalition tacitly accepted that the Afghan combat formations they stood up would be of inferior quality. The training and advisory effort became a sideshow, a supporting line of operation to the main effort of Western-led counterinsurgency: ISAF leadership knew that "showing progress in the training mission" would be essential to sustaining political support for the campaign, and that 350,000 mediocre troops brief better than 100,000 capable ones. Combine that with the reality that even exceptionally capable host-nation forces would still require the combat support provided by American enablers -- aviation, precision fires, communications, medical support, and so on -- and it's easy to see why quality and competence were sacrificed to rapid expansion. But let there be no doubt: that's what happened.

The paper's authors' bemoan the fact that the American military lacks "the institutional roots to support specialized combat advisor capabilities," as if this is the reason ISAF chose to emphasize initial training over embedded mentoring and assistance. Even if directed at general purpose forces (and ignoring SOF), it's a misleading and inaccurate suggestion: the Army and especially the Marine Corps may be resistant to specialization, but recent U.S. experience in Iraq forced the institutions to adapt. It is patently false that "neither service has devoted a portion of its U.S.-based force structure to training, organizing, equipping, or championing the delivery of dedicated advise and assist capabilities to Afghanistan." The Army dedicated U.S.-based force structure to training combat advisors in 2007; that function has been institutionalized and continues to this day. The 162nd Infantry Training Brigade (and before that, 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division) has prepared individuals for deployment as part of Military Transition Teams and with dedicated advisory brigades (called Advise and Assist Brigades in Iraq and Modular Brigades Augmented for Security Force Assistance -- a tellingly short-lived designation -- in Afghanistan). Upon the transfer of SFA training mission (pdf) from Ft. Riley to Ft. Polk in 2009, the commander of its new home even remarked that the Army sought to avoid "let[ting] the good functions and training and art and science of this task atrophy and die out like we did after Vietnam -- the last time we made a concerted effort to train combat advisors." Much of this "art and science" was codified in doctrine with the Army's publication in May 2009 of FM 3-07.1 Security Force Assistance (pdf), an imperfect manual that nonetheless provided tactical guidance both to AABs and to individual combat advisors. This institutional commitment of more than two years ago looks very much like the one Barno, Exum, and Irvine would like the Army to make today.

The purported institutional shortcomings highlighted in the paper -- such as a failure to offer sufficient promotion and assignment incentives to encourage the most capable officers to volunteer for advisory roles -- were considered and addressed years ago, when the U.S. military first had this conversation with itself during the Iraq war. Most were discarded as unworkable or counterproductive, as was the transformational fantasy of a permanent advisor corps. (Consider the budget and force structure debate currently taking place in Washington, but imagine it's happening in a world where the Army's end-strength includes the equivalent of two-dozen infantry battalions dedicated solely to training and advising foreign military forces -- a task they're not even legally permitted to perform outside of war zones and other exceptional circumstances. Who do you think is first on the chopping block?) The Marine Corps has continued to provide capable personnel for MTTs, while the Army has supported the training and advisory mission through the creation and deployment of MB-SFAs.

This is not a service problem. This is a combatant command problem. It's not a matter of force generation, but force employment. When things went bad in the Arghandab River Valley as the president was finalizing plans for escalation, U.S. commanders threw 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment into the breach to replace Harry Tunnel's Stryker brigade and sustain counterinsurgency operations. Back to COIN for 2/508 -- one of the battalions of the 82d's SFA brigade, whose deployment for the train-advise-assist mission John Nagl had lauded mere months before.

Recognizing that a continuation of the status quo was unsustainable and unlikely to be effective, the U.S. faced very much the same set of questions in Afghanistan in 2009 as it had in Iraq in 2006. Was it still possible to accomplish American objectives? Could more troops or a new concept of operations improve the situation? Would precipitous transition to host-nation lead be too dangerous, risking the collapse of indigenous forces and jeopardizing U.S. interests? In 2006, a very serious and intelligent man wrote a memo for the president entitled "Transitioning to an Indirect Approach in Iraq" (pdf) in which he argued that success was still attainable if lead security responsibility were transferred to Iraqi forces. I want to share with you the meat of his argument, so I hope you'll forgive me quoting at length.

Given Iraq's unsettled politics, it is highly unlikely that American forces, even with growing Iraqi security force assistance, will be able to defeat the insurgency within the next 2-3 years. The current level of insurgency, moreover, is likely to be insensitive across a wide range of force levels. The assertion by many critics that more troops in 2003 could have nipped this insurgency in the bud or fundamentally altered its course are not credible. Likewise, increading the number of U.S. troops now is highly unlikely to be decisive. The insurgents will still control the initiative, and they can always temporarily decline to fight. Insufficient intelligence and continued strong support for the insurgency among the Sunni population will limit the strategic success of any near-term efforts. As long as the political grievances fueling the insurgency remain, the insurgency will remain.

Because of the direct approach's inability to produce decisive near-term results and its increasing cost, the longer we stay with it, the more we place our long-term goals in Iraq at risk. Continuing with this approach, moreover, does not play to American strengths. The insurgents and the states supporting them (i.e., Iran and Syria) retain the strategic initiative in Iraq, while we suffer from significantly reduced strategic freedom of action.

It is imperative that we accelerate our shift to an indirect approach, with Iraqis in the lead and Americans in support. Transitioning to an indirect approach will require that we begin and continue the drawdown of U.S. forces while the insurgency is still raging. It will require additional resources for Iraqi security forces. Most importantly, we must make our stated "main effort" our actual main effort.

Mike Vickers was not alone in his analysis, but the president disagreed. How much of the improvement in Iraq is attributable to his decision to escalate is and will continue to be a matter of debate. Perhaps the indirect approach, too, would have succeeded, but we can't know.

The same is now true in Afghanistan. The "change of mission" advocated by Barno, Exum, and Irvine might have been successful in 2009, with five years to take hold and show progress. (It seems unlikely to me, but I'm skeptical about our "strategy" and the no-safe-havens approach to antiterterrorism.) Or perhaps the course the president did choose for Iraq would have been similarly successful in Afghanistan had it been implemented with the "surge": a comprehensive foreign internal defense campaign that included elements of U.S.-led counterinsurgency and stability operations, SFA, and broad based nation assistance that cemented the authority of the legitimate civilian government and helped enable the exercise of that authority. (I doubt that, too, but it's a thought.) Instead what we got was a shadow of that, a mockery, an example of what happens when military leaders commit wholesale to a mission their government is too afraid to definitively refuse.

U.S. commanders are reaping what their predecessors have sown: giving short shrift to the essential enabling efforts that should have been a key part of their campaign plans, trying to "move the needle," show progress, and convince an indifferent public, an unimpressed president, and perhaps themselves that a war without a plausible strategic rationale is worth waging into infinity. SFA will not save us now. It is likely to be less effective than it would have been if comprehensively administered in 2009 by embedding advisors along with the troop surge, as this would've allowed the U.S.-ANA relationship to proceed along roughly the same path as the U.S.-IA relationship did before: first with U.S. units leading operations and owning battlespace, supported by host nation units with embedded American advisors; then partnered operations, where a more capable host nation unit with U.S. advisors owns its own battlespace and functions as part of a combined operation with U.S. forces; then eventually to host nation lead, where U.S. combat formations no longer operate independently and American advisors really live up to their name -- advising their foreign counterparts in independent operations as opposed to teaching and coaching them. This model may be followed to good effect in a few key districts, but reduced operational tempo with the beginning of the troop withdrawal makes it an unlikely template for the entire country.

Just the same: no matter how capable Afghan security forces may be today or in 2014 or in 2024, there will come a day where the western world forgets that it once seemed normal to spend billions of dollars sustaining an army in a place where a dead terrorist used to live. This day can perhaps be delayed, but it can't be avoided.

All of this may sound like I disagree with the paper's bottom line, but I don't. "By continuing to place its forces in the lead in counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan, the United States is ultimately working against its long-term security interests." This is almost certainly true. Look back at what Vickers wrote to the president five years ago: "Because of the direct approach's inability to produce decisive near-term results and its increasing cost, the longer we stay with it, the more we place our long-term goals in Iraq at risk." Combat operations in Afghanistan are costing a fortune, depleting our force, wearing out equipment, and reducing our strategic flexibility to little evident effect. Anything that constitutes a step away from that -- even if it's still expensive and unlikely to succeed -- is something I can get behind.

A word on the inexorable eastward shift in the global military balance

The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies released its annual Military Balance report yesterday to some fanfare in the British press. (And unless you want to spend ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-EIGHT POUNDS to download the actual pdf, you'll have to depend on media reports and the Institute's own press release to summarize the contents.) In a representative example, Reuters' write-up is headlined "East-West military gap rapidly shrinking: report."

Western cuts and swiftly rising defense spending in emerging economies are redrawing the global strategic map, a leading think-tank said on Tuesday, with the danger of conflicts between states also rising.

In its annual Global Military Balance report, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said the shift in economic power was already beginning to have a real military effect and closing any strategic gap.

"Western states' defense budgets are under pressure and their military procurement is constrained," said IISS director general John Chipman. "But in other regions -- notably Asia and the Middle East -- military spending and arms acquisitions are booming. There is persuasive evidence that a global redistribution of military power is under way."

The Drudge Report later tweeted the Reuters piece, but otherwise the report's release made barely a ripple in the American media. This comes as a bit of a surprise to me, seeing as the Retuers headline alone seems such perfect fodder for the defense defenders.

What of it, then? Are you persuaded by Chipman's "persuasive evidence that a global redistribution of military power is under way"? If so, should we be worried?

Before we get to discussions of "military power," we ought to talk about the raw numbers: spending. Should we be spooked that western defense budgets are continuing their steady decline in most cases, while those of China and several other developing countries are increasing? Well, for one thing, we can't treat "the west and the rest" as differentiated, analytically meaningful groups. Most people are going to focus on China, and that's fair enough. But several of the other big spenders cited in the report -- India, Singapore, South Korea, Brazil, Colombia, and the GCC countries, for example -- are U.S. allies or partners. Furthermore, a significant share of the cash they're pouring into military modernization will end up in the coffers of western defense industries, helping to sustain the industrial base necessary to field equipment to the U.S. military in a relatively expeditious and cost-effective (meh, ok, not really) manner. We ought to keep some perspective on this when considering the "shifting East-West military gap."

As for China: we see a lot of talk about threatening annual growth in Chinese defense spending, with estimates ranging from sustained yearly increases of perhaps 7% to over 12%. I'd suggest this is only natural and concommitant with the broader growth of China's economy and national aspirations (particularly those associated with efforts to sustain the supply of natural resources helping to fuel that economic growth). But, dude, they're a developing country. Double-digit increases in growth are impressive, no doubt, whether you're talking about economic growth or budget growth. I'm hesitant to draw an imperfect parallel from another putatively communist country almost a century ago, but I'm going to do so anyway. You know where else I've seen double-digit economic growth over the course of a decade? During the first couple Soviet Five-Year Plans. They grew their economy by 12 or 13% a year through much of the 1930s. And you know where they were at the end of that? Still an economic midget compared to the U.S. Why? Because it's pretty simple to create growth by aggressively industrializing and modernizing a largely agrarian economy, one that was starting out on a pretty low rung of the ol' economic development ladder. The same is roughly true of modernizing a massive, reasonably unsophisticated "people's army" (especially as of 1989, when spending increases really jumped). Like I said, Soviet economic growth is an imperfect parallel for China's military spending, but I think there's a lesson here: you can throw a whole bunch of money at mud huts and show dramatic, impressive "growth," but I'll still take the city with the glass and steel skyscrapers chugging along at zero real growth.

But let's stipulate for a second that aggressive spending plans are significant to the discussion, and that we ought to care about tanks and planes and submarines. What exactly is military power, and how do the numbers figure in? Chipman doesn't give his own definition, but we can presume that any assessments based on a reading of what the press release calls "an increasingly detailed record of the numerical indicators of the military strength of an expanding number of states" will be necessarily quantitative in nature.

Thus, using The Military Balance, it is possible to make time-series comparisons over many years of states’ defence spending, military personnel numbers, and equipment holdings. But it is entirely valid to ask how much this tells us about real military capabilities: the ability of states to deter potential adversaries and, if necessary, to deploy and use military force effectively.

The IISS already includes substantial qualitative analysis in The Military Balance, in order to strengthen its utility to those assessing military capability. For example, for many air forces we indicate the number of flying hours per operational pilot. We include a table showing selected major military exercises and training activities. We provide extensive narrative surveys for each region, which among other things highlight national efforts to develop military capability.

We recognise, though, that The Military Balance could more systematically take account of a fuller range of factors contributing to contemporary national military capabilities. Specifically, we plan in future editions to assess key states’ capacities in areas such as logistics and combat support, C4ISR, training, joint-service operations, and interoperability with allies. In that light, we expect to increase country-specific narrative capability assessment significantly from next year onwards. At the same time, we are reconsidering the categories of equipment that we list in the context of their contribution to military capability.

This is a very important qualifying statement, and it's heartening to see the report's authors acknowledging its qualitative limitations. In the acquisition and materiel world, people have a habit of using the word "capability" to refer to a piece of gear. It's easy to forget that a weapon system only translates into a warfighting capability when that piece of gear is nested into a comprehensive framework for its employment, one that takes into account training, doctrine, organization, and so on. (This is what the U.S. DoD refers to as the DOTMLPF construct (pronounced "DOT-muhl-pee-eff"; yes, seriously) -- for Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership and education, Personnel, and Facilities.). To put this another way, if you give two different organizations the same piece of kit, they won't necessarily be able to employ the same capability.

Why this digression? Because I think it's important when you're looking at a bunch of whiz-bang charts showing numbers of big hull ships and armored vehicles and fighter/bombers to remember that existence in the arsenal does not equal fightability. So while we can certainly say that there's a global redistribution of military spending, we should be careful not to draw unsupported conclusions about relative military power.

Let's take a gander at what I think might be the most interesting feature of the materials that were publically released (for FREE, that is) by IISS yesterday: a graphic comparing U.S. aircraft assets with those of our NATO allies.

Take a look for yourself, but let me highlight some numbers I think are significant:

Total number of heavy transport aircraft: U.S. 285; European NATO allies 16.
Total number of tankers and multi-role tanker/transport aircraft: U.S. 538; Europeans 72.
Total number of heavy transport helicopters: U.S. 632; Europeans 205.
Total number of medium transport helicopters: U.S. 2090; Europeans 633.

That's 18 times as many heavy transports, seven times as many tankers, and three and a half times as many medium and heavy lift helos. Whether you're talking about inter- or intra-theater, operational or tactical transport, the U.S. is still absolutely essential to NATO. You can obviously do a bunch of analysis with just these few numbers and draw a lot of conclusions about strategy, policy, and spending -- the Europeans don't spend enough; the Europeans are too dependent on U.S. lift assets and this highlights a flaw in both concepts and procurement strategy; the U.S. has made a good/bad decision in making itself indispensable to NATO efforts to conduct out-of-area operations; etc. -- but one thing you cannot do is take a chart like this, change the row names to "country A" and "country B" to avoid all the geopolitics inherent in this kind of hypothetical, and then assume that country A is going to kick country B's ass in a war because it's got more of X and Y.

Which brings us back to relative military power: from a strategic planning perspective, comparative measures aren't particularly useful. We should more appropriately be asking "what is X country's capability to perform this particular mission?" Frankly, it doesn't matter one damn bit whether China achieves parity in global military power with the U.S. next year, ten years from now, in a century, or never. What does matter is when Chinese capabilities begin to meaningfully impinge upon the USG's ability to accomplish its desired ends in a particular theater, the most important of which, of course, is probably Northeast Asia/the Western Pacific. You could argue that this is already happening, and that the pace at which this is happening is accelerating. That's a much more important piece of analysis than simply projecting that Chinese defense spending will match the U.S. budget in real terms within a certain number of years.

Hopefully that's some food for thought. (Wish I didn't have to chip in three Benjamins to get more to chew on!)

CNAS action: it's FAAAAAAAAAANtastic!

(If you don't understand this post title, what the hell have you been watching on TV for the last 30 years?!)

This afternoon is CNAS' big annual blowout at the Willard in downtown DC. Along with Michele Flournoy, Exum, and the other usual suspects, 80% of the Ink Spots crew will be in attendance (or alternatively, 100% of the people who actually post at Ink Spots. BURN!). I'll be trying to tweet some updates (@InkSptsGulliver), though cell service is pretty terrible down in that basement.

Say hello if you see me. I look just like the dude in the tri-corner hat on my Twitter page.

UPDATE: Oh yeah, you can watch the whole thing on the internet here.

Longer-term engagement in Haiti: Beware the Insta-Pundits

Revealing just how much our foreign policy discourse has changed over the last decade, the discussion of humanitarian relief for Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake has quickly turned to considering what if any form longer-term US engagement should take. This is a good thing, but a serious danger lurks as the denizens of security think tanks and policy shops try to quickly develop some expertise on a situation they have, for the most part, ignored. Although there are a handful of Haiti-hands scattered through-out the administration and the foreign-policy firmament, I worry that too many will succumb to the urge to fill in the gaps in their knowledge with what passes for 'received wisdom.'

What do I mean? Check out this briefing from the Center for Defense Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Not my favorite institution at the best of times, but to get this much wrong in only two and half pages is, well, remarkable. Aristide was removed in 2004, not 2006. Comparing Haiti today to Somalia in 1993 is absurd - I don't think I even have to explain why. And in claiming that the UN peacekeeping mission (aka MINUSTAH) has "been struggling to counter the activities of gangs and other armed groups—the primary power‐brokers in the embattled nation," AEI manages to simultaneously be several years out of date on the security situation, and unfairly dismissive of the UN's successes. I'm picking on AEI because Small Wars Journal linked to the article, but I suspect there are other examples out there.

Between 2005 and 2007, MINUSTAH broke the back of the gangs through intelligence-led joint military-police operations. Following a 'clear-hold-build' pattern, they expanded security bubbles into previously gang-controlled neighborhoods by targeting gang leaders for arrest, stepping up patrols, establishing new police stations and checkpoints, and introducing employment and essential services projects on the heels of security operations. While progress has been slow, the mission has also made important headway on reforming the Haitian National Police. This is not to gloss over the serious problems that persist (and there are plenty), but Haiti in 2010 is not Haiti in 2004, or 1994 for that matter.

Point is, if we want to help prevent Haiti from backsliding, we have to recognize what has changed over the last 6 years. MINUSTAH has had a hard time responding to the earthquake because it has effectively been decapitated by the collapse of its HQ and the death of a significant chunk of its senior staff. It's apparently hamstrung response is not reflective of its role over the last few years, or its potential going forward. Likewise, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Canada and CARICOM have all been seriously engaged in Haiti, and should be viewed as partners for the development of a regional strategy. While greater US engagement could be critical for re-energizing international efforts, in most cases it would be counter-productive to shoulder them aside.

Bottom line: beware the proliferation of insta-pundits peddling stale-dated information, anecdotes rather than careful assessments, and received wisdom that sounds a little too familiar. We get more than enough of all that on Afghanistan.

Why I don't work for a think tank

There are a lot of reasons, really. (One is that none of them wanted to hire me.) But this CNAS report, authored by Ethan Kapstein, reminds me of the most significant: think-tanks come up with ridiculous, impossible, never-to-be-implemented ideas all the time.

Now I understand the utility of dialogue, and that some ideas that seem ridiculous at the time eventually become mainstream. What are we to make, though, of a policy brief on defense acquisition reform when the suggestions in it basically amount to:

1. Find a way to make super-smart people work for the government instead of industry

2. Convince Congress to limit itself to an up-or-down vote on the entire defense procurement budget, thus denying itself one of the most effective vehicles for advancing profitable pork and ensuring re-election

3. Profit!

Oh yeah, and "the media, think tanks, and the administration should object strenuously when Congress channels unnecessary funds to procurement that should be going directly to our 'boots on the ground' instead." Uh, right. Problem is we've all got a different definition of "unnecessary," don't we?

I recognize that there's something to be gained from examining the lessons of other systems, and from imagining what benefit we might derive from dramatic change. But shouldn't we also consider just exactly how sodding unlikely these "reforms" are to to be implemented?