Romney's MBA Approach To The War on Terror; Fixing The General Officer Corps

Did Mitt Romney really say it? Yes. In speaking of Osama Bin Laden, Mr. MBA said "it's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."

What is wrong with this man?! It certainly hasn't been worth spending hundreds of billions of dollars (and more than 3000 lost lives) to invade and occupy a country that posed no real threat to the U.S., wasn't harboring terrorists and served as a counterweight to Iranian nationalism. We'd like to see Romney come out and clearly denounce the Iraq war as an idiotic mistake and say how he'd remedy it.

But it is worth spending billions of dollars to track down and eliminate a man who orchestrated the death of 3000 American civilians in the most outrageous terrorist attack ever in the world, who we know is responsible for other attacks, and who undoubtedly is, at this moment plotting additional attacks.

Try this on for size Mr. Romney: it's not worth spending millions of dollars to have the Secret Service protect just one man--you--from the possibility that some nut with a gun, easily obtained due to the policies of your newfound hunting buddies at the NRA, might take a shot at him. Why don't you volunteer to give up your SS protection as a sign of your commitment to MBA-style government.

While we're on Iraq, here's an interesting analysis of the failures of our war leadership by the generals, rather than the politicians, in the Armed Forces Journal (thanks to Dave A. for alerting us). We think the failures of our civilian leaders--Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith and many others--are pretty obvious. What this analysis does is point out the failures of the generals, both to prepare for wars of the future and to inform the civilian leadership--and if necessary, the public in general--of the true military needs in Iraq.

The author's (a Lt. Col.) larger point is that the system for selecting and promoting generals is broken, resulting in "mild-mannered team players" who ironically "blame their recent lack of candor [in making public the shortcomings of the war planning effort] on the intimidating management style of their civilian masters." He calls on Congress to create a system that rewards qualities of "moral courage" and "creative intelligence" in the general officer corps. (More officers like Gen. David Petraeous, brought in too late with too little support.)