clipped from fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com

Our military apparatus consistently provides professional, smooth execution of bad strategy.   We do the wrong thing, but brilliantly.

America seems now to have taken this German error and extended it. The present American way of war assumes that superiority at the tactical (or perhaps merely technical) level, manifested in high technology, will overcome massive failures at the strategic and moral levels

It would be an historical oddity if the United States, having failed to copy the Germans in what they got right, instead duplicated what they got wrong. In view of the almost lighthearted military optimism that currently prevails in Washington, one cannot help remembering Marx’s comment about history occurring as tragedy, then repeating itself as farce.

What was the contribution of money vs. force?

 More importantly and revealingly, it is a question seldom asked — as it conflicts with the dominant victory narrative.