Andrew Bacevich Is To Appear on Bill Moyers' Journal

Historian Andrew Bacevich is scheduled to appear on Bill Moyers' Journal tonight. This one is very likely to be worth watching, either on TV or the Webcast.Bacevich has adapted a portion of his latest book, The Limits of Power, into an essay (part 2 of 2) at TomDispatch: Is Perpetual War Our Future? Learning the Wrong Lessons from the Bush Era 08/14/08

As Bacevich describes it, the officer corps is tending to draw three lessons from the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. One is, the future will contain more "Iraqs" and "Afghanistans". Counterinsurgency warfare (aka, low-intensity warfare in military-speak) will become "frequent, protracted, perhaps perpetual".Another is the stab-in-the-back. Or, as Bacevich describes it:

According to this alternative view, echoing a similar complaint during the Vietnam era, the shortcomings of U.S. policy in Iraq and Afghanistan have little to do with the actual performance of American forces in the field and everything to do with the meddling of bumbling civilians back in Washington. In its simplest form, fault lies not with the troops themselves, nor with their commanders, but with the likes of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, who prevented the troops from doing their jobs.