Instapundit linked up this very interesting critique of the Pentagon, special forces, and why we seemed to be incapable of taking out bin Laden years ago.

In preparation for some upcoming writing, I've been researching Pentagon behavior for the past sixty years. The turf wars, backbiting, glacial resistance to change, and risk-aversion this article describes have been an integral part of the "five-sided monument to Murphy's law" for pretty much the entire organization's existence. People with new ideas or warriors who don't tow the line hate the place with a passion, and it hates them right back. It became depressingly repetitive, book after book after book describing destructive pettiness that allowed soldiers to get killed simply to protect a career, a darling weapon that didn't work, or just turf and power. Nowadays one of my litmus tests for whether a military "insider" is a poser or should be taken seriously is whether or not they hate "the building."

Everything in the article tracks with what I've read, not only in histories and biographies, but in various news accounts. Many right-wingers blame the Clinton administration for all the various problems in the military. In my opinion, and I think this article backs it up, this is an oversimplification.

The Clinton administration wanted to be tough with bad guys and have a good military organization just like previous administrations, but because Clinton was widely perceived as not having "the bona fides", his administration allowed the Pentagon to run the show without question. The result was expensive toys like the F-22 fighter, the Comanche helicopter, the Seawolf submarine, and the V-22 Osprey transport getting the green light while good pay, good housing, realistic training, and adequate force levels were allowed to slide into obscurity*.

I used to think Rumsfeld was a bomb-throwing maniac intent on destroying our military. I've come to realize this image is almost certainly a construct built by the extremely media-savvy Pentagon insiders he is antagonizing. I still think he's a grade-A ass, but after reading the experience of people like David Hackworth and John Boyd, I've come to the conclusion he's doing God's work. Anything that angers, scares, or frustrates the Building is IMO a good thing.