I hate it. Really...

...you know, what they've done to my Army...

...The original vision of a light and highly mobile force that could do with less armor because it would have more advanced information about enemy movements is more suitable to battles against recognizable, conventional forces on relatively open terrain than in the new world ushered in by 9/11 and the war in Iraq.

The United States entered that era with Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon wedded to the concept of deploying military forces rapidly, winning swiftly with technological wizardry and then departing just as rapidly. Instead, the Iraq war has turned into an indefinitely prolonged campaign against hit-and-run insurgents who melt in and out of cities and villages and fire rocket-propelled grenades that make armored vehicles a life-and-death need. This kind of combat seems far more likely to characterize America's wars than set-piece battles like those of the 1991 Gulf war or the first three weeks of the Iraq invasion. The Army needs more armor, not less. Greater mobility and highly advanced radio networks are fine, but not at the cost of leaving American soldiers more exposed to lethal dangers.

More armored transport. More body armor. More troops, dammit, before entering a war that every reasonable military authority knew would involve extended pacification and occupation efforts before withdrawal could begin.

But Rummy wanted to play out his philosophic musings on things military with real infantrymen as pawns. Now, having deployed everything but the Junior Birdmen, a combination of factors like growing fatality rates in Iraq, VA cuts at home and mission uncertainty everywhere has put the additional troop strength we desperately need even for a relatively safe staged withdrawal apparently out of reach. Recruiters are trolling malls with huge cash bounties to award and a requirement standard that seems to be declining as rapidly as the pool of available trainees.

Do I feel a draft?

It's time to drop what the NY Times calls the 'science fiction' aspects of Rumsfeld's military fantasies and rebuild our conventional forces. I don't think that's possible until the mission is clear - to support an orderly, staged and complete withdrawal from the Iraqi theater.