The military's independence still holds

OP-ED: "How To Surge The Taliban," by Max Boot, Frederick Kagan and Kimberly Kagan, New York Times, 13 March 2009.

Sensible stuff from a trio of respected thinkers.

What I find interesting: the trip to Afghanistan is arranged by Petraeus, meaning he generates his own public policy proponents from outside the government.

That tells you something about how independent our military has become as a result of the Long War: they field their own when it comes to op-ed conflicts.

One of the great ironies of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld: they came into office convinced that Clinton had let the military get too independent. In the end, they left it more independent than ever.

I mean, it really marks this era's American military as being different from other militaries, as well as different from previous American militaries--with perhaps the odd exception of MacArthur.