Check out Tom Barnett’s op-ed on The Command Post. He’s not overly kind to Rumsfeld, but gives him his due; at a minimum, Barnett aptly cuts to the core of the debate between air and ground power and the need to maintain both for differing purposes. This part resonated:
The trajectory of combat across the 1990s hadn’t served the Army and Marines well in Pentagon debates. While the Air Force was winning wars “all by itself” in Iraq, the Balkans, and later-Afghanistan, the Army and Marines were left holding the bag in such crappy situations as Somalia and Haiti. Within the Pentagon, Military Operations Other Than War (MOOTW) was strongly perceived-and is still perceived in many quarters today-as a form of war that the American public can’t stomach in terms of losses incurred (“body-bag syndrome”), longevity (America’s SADD: strategic attention deficit disorder), immoral acts (e.g., atrocities like Abu Ghraib and beheadings of hostages), and demand for resources (Senator So-and-So: “We spend more money in Iraq by breakfast than we’ve spent all year on [name his or her favorite cause]”).