Mitchell Zais is a retired Army brigadier general who is the president at Newberry College in South Carolina. On Nov. 9 he gave a speech at the college in which he stated that “most of our problems in Iraq stem from a flawed strategy that has been in place since the beginning of the war.” I won’t paste the ehole speech here, yoo may read it at the link, but here are his central points:

Our strategy in Iraq has been:

1) Fight the war on the cheap.

2) Ask the ground forces to perform missions that are more suitably performed by other branches of the American government.

3) Inconvenience the American people as little as possible.

4) Continue to fund the Air Force and Navy at the same levels that they have been funded at for the last 30 years while shortchanging the Army and Marines who are doing all of the fighting.

No wonder the war is not going well.

Read the whole thing.

Link to “The price of fighting a war on the cheap”

When I read this post my mind immediately remembered the book by Thomas Barnett called The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century. In that book Mr. Barnett highlights the anguish within the armed forces over preparing the U.S. armed forces for the next war. He argues that the U. S. already has air and sea superiority and without a renewed threat from Russia or China, it is very likely we can maintain this superiority with a considerably reduced budget. The Army and Marines have a different problem. The success of the invasion part of the Iraq war makes a persuasive argument that this part of the war was appropriately funded and staffed. The peace keeping portion of the Iraq war has not been successful. Using the same argument the failure of the peace keeping mission leads one to believe that this part of the mission was underfunded and under-staffed. The Army and Marines would have liked this mission to be performed by “someone” else but there isn’t someone else. The dilemma they face is that the peace keeping mission requires the increased funds and soldiers/policemen and not the invasion part. This puts pressure on the Defense Department to divert money from lower priority projects and to embrace the changes required to fight our new strategic threats. There is a lot of money and politics riding on these projects which are no longer strategic to the defense of the country. The budget warriors know that if funds are diverted from their project, they will never get the funds back. These officers are fighting for their jobs and future and hoping for a new enemy like the last one. In a way this budget battle is like a game of musical chairs with the music slowly winding down.

Since it appears that the US Ambassador to the UN will not get confirmed, the reform of the UN is a dead issue, too. Although I recognize that Bolton was a controversial selection, his selection was the middle ground. There was quite a contingent of people much smarter than me who had given up hope for UN reform and felt that we should start over. The problems at the UN drug the issue of reform from the political fringe to the mainstream. For these UN skeptics the ballgame is over. Reform is no longer on the agenda. Working with corrupt and incompetent officials is just a cost of doing business at the UN.

It is interesting to reflect on the differences between the Abramoff corruption and the Oil for Palaces scandal. In terms of money involved and loss of life, the Abramoff scandal was minor league. You can use the same rationale for the Cunningham, DeLay, Foley, and Jefferson scandals. It is ironic that Jefferson, a Democratic congressman, is seeking re-election in a year the national Democratic party is lamenting the culture of corruption in Washington. I doubt the Democratic party will find fault with the UN culture that looked the other way when genocides were committed in Bosnia, Iraq, and Rwanda. The UN legacy is hard to overlook but Democratic leaders have ignored it in the past.

I genuinely hope the Democratic leaders will be successful in leading this country out of Iraq and reducing the threat of global terrorists. The Democratic party discipline shown in this last election was successful in avoiding many self-inflicted injuries. This discipline will be necessary over the next couple of months if anything is to be accomplished in Congress. If the exit polls are correct, the key issues that got Democrats elected in 2006 will not be issues in 2008. This “big tent” has a lot of new players with different agendas. The Democrats need to accomplish something important to the voters in the next two years or they will not get re-elected. The key is working together and avoiding divisive issues. The conservative and independent voters will leave them in droves if the Democrats cannot accomplish anything because of their own party politics. I can only watch and hope for the best.

The Democrat I should have voted for is Richard Cordray for Ohio Treasurer. His experience as a county treasurer is probably the best indicator for me that he will do a good job. I am grateful that his campaign for Treasurer has had very few negative ads.

Although Ted Strickland will likely become Ohio’s next governor I am still ambivalent about him. Last week we got a heavy dose of the “courtship” political ads. These are the ads that try to woo the voters to a candidate. I saw his ad talking about his vision several times before the irony in it struck me. The words that caught my attention were “Turnaround Ohio”. The problem is that I think that Ohio has done a pretty good job economically. I know if you work for the auto industry you may have a different opinion. In fact I was surprised the economy was not mentioned more by the candidates. The national economic numbers are really quite good. It was not too long ago that economists discussed permanent unemployment and inflation rates considerably higher than today. Countries like France continue to remind us how bad an economy can get. The reality is that Ohio will continue to lose manufacturing jobs as the auto and steel industries continue their long term decline in Ohio. For the most part both parties have philosophically gotten over this problem and are looking at increasing the number of small businesses as the keystone of Ohio’s economic future. When you look at the countries in Europe, the United States has done an outstanding economic job. The people in Europe are envious of our economic growth, our flexibility, and our ability to create jobs. If you believe that Ohio has been doing a good economic job, doesn’t it follow to reason that if you turnaround Ohio that the economy will get worse? Does his plan want us to be like France?

Ted’s best characteristic is that he has a lot of political experience. I believe he is politically savvy enough to not kill the goose while pursuing partisan issues. Some of the partisan issues worry a lot of small business owners so he will have to be very careful. He needs to appease his constituents but like Bill Clinton he will remember that he was not elected because of his vision or the party loyalists. He was elected because those fickle independent voters voted his way and that his opponent’s campaign sucked. If Ted plans to win the re-election in a couple of years, he will have to convince these independent voters that a “Bill Clinton”-like governor is good for Ohio’s future.