The Pentagon's Short Memory

Concerning lessons learned from the last war, the Pentagon frequently forgets that it needs a strong Army. This is even more disturbing since we are still in major land combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. From the Slate:

Do the Pentagon chiefs pay any attention to the lessons they say they've learned? Judging from reports coming out of the Defense Department's current budget and policy reviews, the answer can only be: No. One lesson of the Iraq war, accepted by nearly everyone now, is that the U.S. military, especially the Army, doesn't have enough troops to occupy a country for very long while fighting off insurgents and trying to establish order...

And yet, according to a story by Tom Bowman in the Dec. 21 Baltimore Sun, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is planning to cut the Army's forces by 34,000 troops. That would entail eliminating one active-duty brigade and six National Guard brigades.

So we end up in a future war "with the army we have", and our troops suffer for it.