Goodbye F-22, Hello Protracted Counter-Insurgencies!

It appears that President Obama and Secretary Gates have successfully killed the F-22 fighter plane (with help from Senators McCain and Levin). As a famous Secretary of State once observed, I don't have a dog in that particular fight, but I do think this interpretation from Democracy Arsenal's Max Bergmann seems about right:

But this fight was more than just about the F-22. It was also about whether the Pentagon would be able to institutionalize the lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan and finally move out of the Cold War strategic mindset that still dominates. Gates has sought to institute a strategic shift within the Pentagon, focusing on developing a more balanced force that is not only capable of fighting conventional wars, but is capable of doing the full spectrum of operations. The military has begun to transition toward this new outlook - moving out of the mindset that labeled stability operations as "operations other than war" and that has focused on big ticket conventional items.

Here's what I can't understand: Obama ran for president based partly on his opposition to the Iraq war. It was this opposition that rallied many self-styled national security progressives to his side. Now President Obama is proposing to reposition America's armed forces to better fight future Iraq style wars.

This seems to me to misread the lessons of Iraq. If the U.S. had heeded Obama's advice in 2003 and not invaded and occupied Iraq, then very few of the strains that have bedeviled America's ground forces would have occurred. We would still be worrying about "full spectrum operations" in the context of Afghanistan, but I suspect with not nearly the urgency we do today.

There may be plenty of good reasons to dump the F-22, but doing so as part of a broader effort to get the U.S. better equipped at waging counter-insurgencies in Muslim lands strikes me as a misguided use of our resources. It's particularly bizarre to hear Obama supporters champion this: how many other countries are they interested in invading and occupying?

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An Iraqi Army tank patrols Baghdad. Photo credit: AP Photos