Liberals and Defense - We

Liberals and Defense - We talked last week (see the Archives) about liberals' exaggerated faith in "the Clinton Military". Another idea popped to mind this week along those lines.

Liberals are criticizing President Bush's defense budget, lambasting "programs left over from the Cold War", and crowing that the victory in Afghanistan proves that Mach 2 fighter jets and M1 Abrams tanks are obsolete - that "the wars of the future" will be won by intelligence and special forces and precision-guided bombs.

They say the military always trains to fight the last war. Whether that's true or not - let's ignore that for a moment - what's obvious is that liberals are even more prone to that tendency.

After Vietnam, liberals said the tank and the B-52 were obsolete. After the Gulf War, some liberals said special forces didn't hold a candle to the tank and the cruise missile! And now...the Green Beret is suddenly the measure of warfighting potential.

Well, indeed, in Afghanistan the Green Beret (and the British SAS trooper) indeed were the arbiter of victory. But who's to say the next war will be like Afghanistan? Who's to say they won't have an air force? The former USSR has been selling off its highly advanced aircraft and surface to air missiles for a decade now. Is the tank obsolete? Not when driving across the desert or the plains, where groups of special forces can't hold a candle to teams tanks and helicopters and close support aircraft.

Will we ever fight a war like that again? Well, the first thing to remember is that defense pundits are about as accurate, in the main, as TV weathermen.