p.27 Strategic
analyst David Lonsdale observes that America’s strategic culture stresses "technological fixes to strategic problems"
and "the increasing removal of humans from the sharp end of war," resulting in postmodern warfare "in which precise, distant
bombardment dispenses with the need to deploy ground forces in a combat role and thereby relegates them to a constabulary
function." He warns that "these notions are not only astrategic and ignore the paradoxical logic of strategy; they
also implicitly rely on unrealistically effective operations, and thereby seemingly ignore the presence of friction."
p.27 To effect regime change, US forces must be positively in control of the enemy’s
territory and population as rapidly and continuously as possible... Too much focus on the perfection of military means can cause the user to lose sight of the political purpose
on behalf of which those means are being employed.
