Military Capacity (Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? Edition)
Matthew Yglesias reads David Brooks:
TPMCafe || Capacities, Anyone?: [W]e have to think in the long term. For fear of straining the armed forces, the military brass have conducted this campaign with one eye looking longingly at the exits.
And Matthew's head explodes. He writes:
To me, this is a lot like acknowledging that the real reason we haven't embarked on interstellar colonization is that our rocketships can't travel to other stars and then slamming NASA for timidity. Why shouldn't the military brass fear straining the armed forces? It's nice to point out that if America's capacities were much larger than they actually are, that if we used those capacities cleverly we could do all kinds of stuff, but what does it really mean at the end of the day? Not much, as far as I can see.
David Brooks's attempt to shove responsibility from the Bushies to the military is indeed the most idiotic thing I've seen this month.