One of my favorite science fiction writers and pundits, David Brin, has an interesting post which, in addition to vehicle design for the military and his annoyance with gerrymandering, talks about the purging of the officer corps in the modern military. It’s worth a peek. I haven’t been seeing many examples of this purging, but that may be because I’ve been actively avoiding the news of late.

But if the upper echelons of our military are being purged of competent officers, well, then, that explains why the Balkans and Afghanistan were fairly successful while Iraq seems to be much longer and more drawn out than had been expected.