I've decided that the political context is such that the only way reform will finally come about in the Russian military is that the deterioration goes beyond the point to which these old generals can stand up there and resist it. ↗
In fact, it struck me when we invaded last year that if we did it without European and East Asian support, we were risking losing our alliance in Europe in exchange for Iraq, and that is a very undesirable exchange. ↗
In World War II in Germany, we had a ration for one U.S. soldier, or one allied soldier for every twenty inhabitants. The ratio in Iraq is about one for a hundred and sixty. ↗
It was, however, in the interest of Osama bin Laden for us to destroy a secular Arab leader; it was very much in the interest of the Iranians because they wanted revenge against Saddam Hussein for Iraq's invasion in 1980. ↗
Military officers from different countries, when they meet each other, tend to sort of fall in love, become mutual admiration societies, at the expense of realities. ↗
So the idea that you could put Kurds, Shiite Arabs, and Sunni Arabs in a nice, liberal, federal system in Iraq in a short amount of time, six months or a year, boggles the mind. ↗
