Last summer Bush declared the 'surge' so successful that he was ending the 15 month army deployments... six months after he left office.

The argument you make is that since the surge was not successful in achieving it's political goal, we should remain at full strength, (however that is calculated) until conditions improve, or the civil war resumes. The contrary argument is that the longer we continue to overcommit an exhausted force, the less force we'll have, and the greater our reliance on indirect fire/heavy weapons. Not the hammer of choice for COIN.

You featured a pic of 'Hustling Heinz' Guderian last week. The "Panzer Leader" was clueless about the broader points of honor, duty, and not too particular about who he was willing to follow to war. But he did write about the necessity of having combat troops in reserve.

With nearly a divisions worth of stop-loss vets, and 15 month deployments, we've had NO infantry reserve since Jan 07. The closest we have to a geared up and manned reserve regiment right now is the option to redeploy from Anbar. That is essentially the 3rd quarter plan, as brigades previously slated for '09 rotation to Iraq will instead go to Afghanistan.

One way or another, the bills all come due.

Tom, keep waiting for a more coherent vision of the future for American power and strategy. All the plates have shifted - especially about the financing. If he can place a "stop loss" on the drafts on the Treasury in defense against that deadly enemy "financial instability" while the New American Strategy is hatched, then....

Secretary Gates may be earning all the praise that is due.