Andrew Bacevich, a retired Colonel who commanded my first unit in the Army -- the famed 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, former guardians of the Fulda Gap in Germany -- recently gave an interesting speech at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago, IL. Here are the links to the entire speech - each part is about 15 minutes long:
In the first few minutes of Part 3, he rather lengthily (if inadvertently) invokes Godwin's Law -- much to my amusement.
Notable quote from Part 1: "To choose war is to leap into the dark, entrusting the nation's fate to forces beyond human control." How very Clausewitzian.
A bit of a disclaimer: Bacevich was the first Colonel whom I ever met when I was a young Solider. While we were deployed to Doha, Kuwait in the months after the first Gulf War, a unit in our Regiment suffered an ammunition cook-off accident in a motor pool, which caused over $40 million in damage and, eventually, at least three American lives. (We who were there affectionately referred to the incident as the Doha Dash. My take on that day is here.) Bacevich lost his command and was forced to retire very shortly thereafter -- thereby becoming one of the very few 11th ACR commanders who did not see flag rank. His successor was then-Col. William Scott Wallace, who went on to be a 4-star General and commanded TRADOC. I once wrote about an encounter with him in Kuwait, more recently.
Anyway, Bacevich is a prolific writer and has been a vociferous critic of our foreign policy -- especially in the last 10 years. If you are interested in this sort of thing, he is worth your time if for nothing else but another perspective on the military.
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