Like he had many friends hiding in caves in Tora Bora – where the U.S. should have finished him off.

Rumsfeld realized the paradigm of war has shifted to terrorism and attacks by enemies that we will have a hard time blaming on any one nation.

Huh? This was about overthrowing a regime in a country of 27 million. Re-read the sentence.

Yes, the “paradigm of war” has shifted. That’s precisely why the Mutual Assured Destruction doctrine of military strategy is not being refurbished. Nullifying terror cells and combating proliferation – excuse the hokum – Takes a World.

Then pose a hypothetical.

I doubt he’ll use pre-emption the way Bush did, nor indulge notions of invincibility.

I used the Soviet Union because I was trying to compare American influence and standing during a time when there was another world superpower.

And I replied it’s fundamentally incomparable; the United States could crush any foe, quickly and at little cost.

I disagree. There was doubt in many quarters that the U.S. could crush any significant foe after Vietnam, and we rarely used military force to solve problems. In any event, I thought the point of this discussion was to evaluate U.S. economic and aid-related influence, not its military influence.

Unaccountably, we launched an invasion with barely a third of the force we had used during Desert Storm to push Iraq out of Kuwait.

We did that because Rumsfeld realized the paradigm of war has shifted to terrorism and attacks by enemies that we will have a hard time blaming on any one nation. He also realized it is unlikely the U.S. will ever have a draft again, which means the U.S. will fight every war with a relatively small volunteer military force.

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars proved the U.S. military can win wars with small, fast responses from troops on hand, and that we don’t have to mobilize 500K troops over a 12-month time period. The surge proved we can win the peace, too. If those two things hadn’t occurred, instead of discussing the Bush Doctrine, we would be discussing why the U.S. military will never be used again except as a defensive force to protect the mainland.

Once Saddam fell, Dick Cheney promised Tim Russert, “a good part of the world, especially our allies, will come around to our way of thinking.”

Did it?

Absolutely. Terrorists have far fewer friends in the capitals of the world than they had before 9/11. Being Osama bin Laden’s friend is a lonely job in today’s world.

steve – You still haven’t answered any questions related to your expectations related to the Obama Administration’s policy on the use of American military force. Why are you dodging when you expect others to answer your questions?

Geez steve, I thought a bunch of people were planning an invasion of Afghanistan.

After the NIE warning he was “intent on attacking” America? Yeah, I’d have to think so. There was there no NIE or any other sweeping strategic assessment on al-Qaeda between 1997 and 9/11. Bush should have sacked Tenet, not given him a medal.

The initial burst of activity after 9/11, gallingly, was arranging exit flights for various Saudi royals.