Posted on 07/04/2009 7:13:20 AM PDT by Flavius
MICHÈLE A. FLOURNOY, one of the highest-ranking women in the history of the Pentagon, did not have a childhood that would immediately suggest a future as a defense policy intellectual who is rethinking how America fights its wars.
Her mother was an actress and singer who performed at the Copacabana, the legendary New York nightclub, and was the understudy to Vivian Blaine in “Oklahoma!” on Broadway. Her father was a cinematography director in television at Paramount Studios. She is a 1979 graduate of Beverly Hills High School who spent her summers playing, she said, “a lot of beach volleyball.”
But Ms. Flournoy, who went on to Harvard and then Balliol College at Oxford (“I majored in rowing”), has spent her entire professional life immersed in the theory and practice of war, from the arms control debate of the 1980s to the counterinsurgency doctrine of today.
Now one of the most senior officials at the Pentagon, with the title of under secretary of defense for policy, she holds the job considered the “brains” of the building. Her portfolio includes matters like Iraq and Afghanistan and pirates off the Horn of Africa, but her immediate task is the sweeping military strategy reassessment, called the Quadrennial Defense Review, which the Pentagon is required by Congress to produce every four years.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Quadrennial Defense Review. The one 0bama wants to gut the US Military.
The good ideas were common sense. Gee, maybe we ought to protect our data grid as well as our power grid. Duh.
The other crap is just typical liberal feel-good crap that the NYT is trying to wrap in an American flag.
But the idea she gave Obammie the Commie (develop Afghanistan as well as implement a surge) is as idiotic as Obammie the Commie's idea of implementing economic “reform” while pretending to initiate economic “recovery.”
No less a leftist than John Keynes politely called FDR a fool for trying to implement reform before the recovery was completed.
Trying to rebuild a nation while we are still doing battle there may make this CA liberal nitwit feel good, but it is wasted time and money until we destroy the enemy, which should be objective number 1 on the list of anyone in our Pentagon.
This is scary, it really is.
Since the Reagan buildup peaked in 1986 (or so), the Miltary has been obsessed with doing more with less: light, lean, and lethal. Initially, this was good. It resulted in a greater emphasis on Intelligence, Surveillance, and Recon (ISR) and precision guided munitions like the JDAM. I can tell you that the US Miliary got a lot smarter too.
However, it also resulted in some funny ideas. Like we can do airpower exclusively with UAVs and shed ships, planes, and tanks with abandon. At some point, you can only do less with less. I think we are there and have been for some time. It still stuns me that we actually reduced forces after 9/11. The emphasis on being light and lean almost cost us Iraq. We have also gutted a good part of the Military Industrial complex.
The moral of the story here is that I think we are making a big mistake by ignoring larger adversaries like China and Russia. One day (soon) we will need our “outdated Cold War” force, and it won’t be there. Then we will rue the day.
We will pay for our mistakes in our children’s and our grandchildren’s blood. It has ever so been and it ever shall be.
bj.
Waaaaugh. Re-e-e-e-e-etch.
Yeah, that approach worked out well for the Russians, too.
(This whack job, Michèle, is probably as bad as CNN's infamously arrogant "soo-ZAHN" Malveaux -- maybe worse!)
Those guys in Afghanistan are remarkably ungrateul and difficult to live with.
It's a nice country crying out to be repopulated with more agreeable people.
... she’s what you’d charitably refer to as “a gifted amateur”, they type that makes military officers roll their eyes.
I like to read about things military, particularly history & strategy. I try to understand the enduring principles of it all. Kind of what you’d call an ‘armchair general’. I guess the difference between me & her is her Ivy League education makes her ‘an expert’.
“has spent her entire professional life immersed in the theory and practice of war, from the arms control debate of the 1980s to the counterinsurgency doctrine of today.”
Yes...the practice of war. She knows it by...well, she has...umm, I guess if her husband spending time in the Navy (and not on the line, I surmise, since you don’t rise politically in Washington by sailing ships) counts, then MAYBE she has immersed herself in the practice of war.
War isn’t a game, nor is it an intellectual pursuit. If it had been, McNamara would have been a good SecDef.
““One of the things we’ve learned over the past eight years is that some of the greatest demands, the most difficult challenges, are sustaining operations over time,” Ms. Flournoy, 48, said...”
Girl, have you ever heard of Korea? And I spent about half of my life in the 90s in Saudi or Turkey - BEFORE 9/11.
This is where I get bitter. These policy wonks mistake talk for understanding, and concern for capacity. And it wasn’t muh better under Bush. The military has great people trying to overcome the obstacles imposed by damned, butt-kissing political operatives chit-chatting on the DC social circuit.
““We’re trying to recognize that warfare may come in a lot of different flavors in the future,” Ms. Flournoy said.”
Only an idiot ever thought otherwise. However, what she is really saying is, “There will be no big wars, only “a complex mix of conventional battles, insurgencies and cyber threats.”
I guarantee you - what will fall out of the QDR is the ability to fight conventional battles. Only insurgencies and ‘cyber threats’ can be faced on the predetermined budget that Obama imposes.
Afghanistan was made for the neutron bomb...
I suppose one could be excused for thinking this way, because this is pretty much all we have seen since Vietnam. IOW's it's true until it isn't true anymore. It is an intellectual trap to assume the future is a simple extrapolation of the recent past.
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