Joel Mathis

A few weeks ago I pondered what America would look like if Andrew Bacevich ran the country . Though Bacevich rejects the term "isolationism" to describe his worldview, it's a term that'll do in a pinch: He essentially envisions the United States divesting itself of overseas military commitments and bringing troops home so that A) the defense establishment can concentrate on defending the United States, instead of projecting power around the world and B) the United States can start to live, fiscally, within its means. Turns out Bacevich's vision has some fans inside military circles. The latest issue of Military Review -- one of the Army's intellectual journals, published at Fort Leavenworth -- contains an article retired Navy Commander John Kuehn , an associate professor of military history at the Army's Command and General Staff College for rising career officers at Leavnworth. His piece references and echoes Bacevich. Prior to the outbreak of World W

I'm trying to imagine what the world would look like if Andrew Bacevich ran the United States. Every couple of years, Bacevich -- a retired Army colonel who is now a history professor at Boston U -- releases a new book that goes something like this: America is overextended and entirely too militarized. We need to live within our means, bring the troops home and start practicing a citizenship where all of us (and not just the one-half of one percent of us) serve as citizen soldiers, devoted to the common defense of our nation instead of power projection around the world. " Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War " is another one of these books; Bacevich is a bit of a one-note Johnny -- but it's an interesting, angry, erudite note, and so I keep returning to him. Instead of rooting him on, though, it might be good to ponder how things change if anybody in power took Bacevich's views seriously. So what does the world look like if America took Bace