The Democrat Free Zone
The E-Wing, 3rd floor. No Democrats need apply for the following:
- Secretary of Defense (Robert Gates I)
- Deputy Secretary of Defense (Gordon England II)
- Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (James Clapper III)
- Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (Eric Edelman III)
- Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (John Young II)
- Secretary of the Army (Preston Geren II)
- Secretary of the Air Force (Vacant II)
- Secretary of the Navy (Donald Winter II)
- Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (David Chu III)
- Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) (Tina Jonas III)
- Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology (James Finley III)
- Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and Deputy (Michael Dominguez IV)
The Plum Book has twenty pages of political appointments in the Department of Defense. The likelihood of staffing the DoD with people who are profoundly prudent and reflective on the issue of use of force while the civilian leadership remains profoundly imprudent and non-reflective on that issue is left as an exercise for the reader.
Would you want to risk the next eight years of your policy making life somewhere between E and A knowing that the Special Ops koolaid clowns are still running the show, and every hideously bad idea, from the missile defense "multiple kill vehicle" program to the reliable replacement warhead program and the robust nuclear earth penetrator program, were still sucking up resources and preventing any meaningful reform?
Not only no prosecutions, but no lessons learned, and no reform necessary, because ... its all be so utterly wonderful and success is in the air!
Foreach congressional district with an outcome significant military and allied demographic, foreach Republican incumbent or Republican challenger, the candidate, the campaign, and the RNCC can message in 2010 that there were lessons to be learned from the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld disaster and that the Democrats haven't learned those lessons and are just muddling on when radical reforms and bright Republicans are what's really needed.
Keeping Gates means we get creamed in a bunch of districts in two years, districts we should pick up because the whole "agile unguided spear thingee" was brain-dead from get-go, and it keeps the myth going that Dems can't find safety, the purpose of defense, now or ever, and the "peace wing" of the Party can just go back to Russia.
