"The Military Decline Since Desert Storm Is Both ..." Topic

…Physical and Mental

"Operation Desert Storm in 1991 was the high-water mark of U.S. military power. Precision missiles such as the Tomahawk proved devastating. A combination of electronic warfare and superior defensive avionics made Air Force and naval aircraft virtually invulnerable against the once-vaunted Soviet manufactured Iraqi air defense system. The M-1 Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles far outclassed the Iraqi T-72 tanks and BMP fighting vehicles of Saddam Hussein's Army. The Marine Corps was robust enough to field two corps-sized formations and a brigade-sized amphibious corps capable of an amphibious diversion that tied down several of Iraq's best divisions. The newly developed Patriot missile largely negated Iraq's SCUD threat. The result was a blitzkrieg victory that was accomplished quickly and with amazingly few casualties.

The hubris that resulted from that victory became a curse because it resulted in several assumptions that became conventional wisdom among politicians, the military, and society in general. Those false assumptions have directly resulted in the quagmire of Iran today. (RELATED: Trump Cannot End the Iran War by Simply Declaring Victory)

The first false assumption was that future wars would be quick and relatively bloodless from an American standpoint. The second was that the peace dividend from the fall of the Soviet Union would allow us to deconstruct much of the military-industrial capacity that had characterized the Cold War. A final assumption was that the Goldwater-Nichols military reform legislation of the late 1980s had contributed to the victory and was an unqualified success…"

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Armand