Drones in Pakistan, drones at the Pentagon

The ever-interesting Bill Lind writes in the September issue of The American Conservative on the subject of Predator drones. Worth a read, but if you only have ten minutes, here are the concluding paragraphs:

The Pentagon’s financially self-serving belief that technology wins wars has come to grief in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, just as it did in Vietnam. In the early days of that war, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was interviewed by the French journalist Régis Debray, who asked him what the French experience in Vietnam meant for the Americans. McNamara replied that what had happened to the French could never happen to the Americans. It was not a matter of bravery, he said, but of technology.

In contrast, John Boyd argued that for winning wars, people are most important, ideas come second, and hardware comes third. The Pentagon stints our people to feed its hardware programs, while the pursuit of technological solutions to every problem stifles creative thinking about tactics and doctrine. The American military promotion system washes out the combat leaders, who tend to have rough edges, in favor of bureaucrats and managers who can run big weapons programs and testify smoothly before Congress. In pursuit of the foxfire of victory through technology, America has forgotten the basics of war.

While the Predator and other drones in the air are killing Taliban, the drones in the Pentagon are killing us.

To start from the beginning, click here. Blue skies! – Dan Ford