In the final analysis, the war is not just a battle to unseat a dictator. It is a giant experiment to determine what forces might be most useful in the future.

--New York Times


A retired general who served under President Bush's father in the first Persian Gulf war ... predicted that these difficult first two weeks would harm the nation's standing as a military force.

"What's troublesome is the loss of deterrent value," the retired general said. "A month ago everybody in the world looked at the U.S. military as being 10 feet tall. We're not 10 feet tall."

--New York Times

Just try to imagine what the reaction would have been from the GOP, from talk radio, from Fox News, if the defense secretary of President Clinton -- or President Gore, or even a Democratic president who was a combat veteran, Kerry or McCaffrey or Clark -- had used a war like this as an opportunity to do test-marketing of a new military theory, with the result that American troops felt short-staffed and besieged and unnecessarily endangered, all while warnings of a loss of U.S. prestige hung in the air. Just try to imagine. Do you think Republicans would wait until the war was over to call for the resignation -- or impeachment -- of the defense secretary, and probably the president as well? Do you think the fine, upstanding patriots who push books like this onto the best-seller list would hold their tongues?