A Purge of Wrong-think

Boy, I know they weren't wild about Rumsfeld in the Army, but they were at least trying to hide it before.

FT. LEAVENWORTH, KAN. — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld may be leaving under a cloud of criticism over his handling of the Iraq war, but his invasion plan — emphasizing speed over massive troop numbers — has consistently been held up as a resounding success.

Yet with Iraq near chaos 3 1/2 years later, a key Army manual now is being rewritten in a way that rejects the Rumsfeld doctrine and counsels against using it again.

The draft version of the Army's Full Spectrum Operations field manual argues that in addition to defeating the enemy, military units must focus on providing security for the population — even during major combat.

So America is gradually abandoning the idea of war on the cheap. Good. It remains to be seen, of course, whether America will gradually abandon the idea of useless wars, or whether they'll just get spectacularly more expensively useless.