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I think Mr. Blank has made some interesting observations, but he fails to bring these observations to a useful summary. Part of what has happened with our successes in Afghanistan and now Iraq is that the US has demonstrated that force can be projected to take down regimes without the huge collateral damage to the country, the civilian population or to our own troops.

This is the opposite message from the Clinton experience in Mogadishu where the US would "cut and run" when the collateral damage got ugly. That was the great hope of Usama bin Laden and Saddam: the US doesn't have the will to stay the course... Public opinion will prevent America from projecting its power. The Arab-street will rise up... blah - blah - blah...

This inspired war-plan must send shivers down the spine of Iran, Syria, many of the other Arab kingdoms, and North Korea. While the terrorists may still feel empowered to do their terrible acts, they may start to find that the regimes that gave them aid and comfort are a bit more reluctant to continue that aid and comfort.

This war on terror will go on for decades, but the battle has been joined and our leaders have gotten us off to a good start.

Not to pick nits, but what he is talking about here is really tactics, not strategy. There is a revolution in strategy going on as well, and it involves (among a number of other things) defusing organized terrorism by striking at host states who have taken the trouble to publicly disavow any connection with the groups they covertly support. Another important element is to break the monopoly the backers of such groups have on popular communications technologies by subsidizing their oppositions - this is Radio Free Europe writ large. A third is to break up the ability of a coalition of non-democratic states to threaten the world economy through manipulation of oil prices. Real strategy tends to involve control of ground, natural resources, and lines of communication - political alignments and military operations tend to support these objectives, not supplant them.

The Army is in danger of being decimated by Sec. Rumsfeld because Rumsfeld believes it can be smaller and lighter GIVEN the precision strike capability of our air power arms in the Air Force and Navy.

Rather than argue over the force level being anything from zero to millions, the real issue is tailoring the size to fit the missions they envision the Army doing.

First, someone must come to grips with the fact that they will break the Guard & Reserve if they activate them too often. They are citizen-soldiers. If someone wants to make them soldier-citizens, then they'd better just make and announce that decision, pay them accordingly, and have them inform their civilian employers that their military career is primary and not the other way around.

Force level will be determined by missions. If the mission is to fight 2 simultaneous wars while peacekeeping in X number of locations and doing disaster relief in X number of other locations and doing border patrol from Texas to California, then they need enough people so that soldiers with families can be present with those families a reasonable amount of time each year. If you want them home at least 9 months out of the year, that will determine how many bodies you will need to man the critical missions you've identified.

I'm looking forward to the lessons learned from the battles in Iraq and Afghanistan. To my uneducated eyes, it seems that helicopters are not appropriate for close in support of ground troops. This leads me to conclude we must accellerate the implementation of the Marines' Osprey aircraft and possibly design a replacement for the A-10. Ideally, I'd like to see a VTOL version of the A-10. That would give it more flexibility, while still retaining the tough, AA resistant airframe.