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I found this news snippet to be intriguing:

In a historic but little-noticed change in policy, the Army is allowing scores of husband-and-wife soldiers to live and sleep together in the war zone – a move aimed at preserving marriages, boosting morale and perhaps bolstering re-enlistment rates at a time when the military is struggling to fill its ranks five years into the fighting.

“It makes a lot of things easier,” said Frazier, 33, a helicopter maintenance supervisor in the 3rd Infantry Division. “It really adds a lot of stress, being separated. Now you can sit face-to-face and try to work out things and comfort each other.”

Throughout history, civilized societies have basically fielded armies with three different orientations: caste, professionals and citizen-soldiers.  The United States opted with the switch to the All-Volunteer Force under the Nixon administration to abandon conscription and adopt a professional ethos. The above policy of the U.S. Army is essentially a humane, on-the-spot, accomodation to demographic changes in the force and the exigencies of war in Iraq; but it also highlights an incipent trend toward the emergence of a military caste within American society.

Much like universities, the American military, as women have been gradually integrated into the services in ever wider roles, has become a social filter bringing men and women of prime marriageable age together. It should be no surprise that some of them, sharing similar values and career interests, are indeed marrying and raising families within the context of military culture. We would need many generations for this practice to play out in order to discern the results, but it would stand to reason that such a policy, if institutionalized, would accelerate the cultural divergence between members of the U.S. military and the mainstream of American society at large to the detriment of both.

The U.S. military as a caste apart, would not be, in my view, an ideal result. Obviously, the answer is not to further burden military personnel already serving in combat zones under the most difficult of circumstances. Instead, other policies should promulgated to narrow the “culture gap” by encouraging greater volunteerism among the civilian population, perhaps by a wider range of military service options and to give career military personnel increased time working in “para-civilian” roles, increasing their “Sys Admin” skill-sets which can later be brought to bear on the spectrum of missions the U.S. military is forced to handle.

My apologies if anyone had difficulties getting to Zenpundit earlier today. There was a technical issue at Siteground that hopefully has been resolved.

Thanks to Sean Meade for a timely alert.

A quickie:

On managing our Return On Attention (ROA): John Robb discusses filtering obstacles and Ross Mayfield pushes a particular platform.

Abu Muqawama -“Thoughts About This article From the Observer”

Points for amusing sarcasm and an accurate evaluation of the character of Left-wing Brit newspapers

Thomas P.M. Barnett -“China’s capitalism isn’t so foreign”

Happened to have a number of conversations this weekend about the business culture in China: one from a newbie buyer back from her first overseas trip to Shanghai and the other from a part owner of a sizable export-import company just returned from Shenzhen. The latter compared the Chinese “hunger” to do business very favorably to the redtape climate he experiences in India.

That’s it!

I noticed this morning that last month I hit the five year mark as a blogger. Last week, at some point, I went over 250,000 hits. The interesting thing is that it took me almost five years to accumulate 200,000 hits but only five months to rack up the next 50,000+ .  A good trend in my view, for which I would like to thank my readers and commenters – it is your interest and stimulating feedback that makes Zenpundit worth doing.

In honor of this anniversary, I’m taking the day off and will return to blogging Sunday night. Have a great weekend everyone and thanks!

Jeremy Young, primus inter pares of Progressive Historians , had breakfast with noted military writer, Iraq war critic and professor, Colonel Andrew Bacevich and has a a review of Bacevich’s lecture at Indiana University:

Generally, one doesn’t think of columnists as being engaging speakers, so I was pleasantly surprised when Bacevich proved the exception to the rule. He held forth for about forty-five minutes before a crowd of about 200 people, packed into a room that seated about 75. Bacevich’s main argument was that in the aftermath of 9/11, the administration had developed what he termed the “freedom agenda,” which rested on three assumptions: that American military power was invincible, that the greater Middle East was ripe for transformation, and that it was possible for Americans to instill democracy in the region at a minimal cost. Subsequent events, of course, have proved all three of these assumptions wrong. Today, Bacevich argued, America’s military and foreign policy strategy has failed — and worse, the Bush Administration has no comprehensive, moral strategy to replace it.

….I asked Bacevich what he thought our future defense spending priorities should be. His response was that we should focus on beefing up our navy, and secondarily on maintaining our air superiority, while cutting budgets for the army and marines. For those of you who read this blog, that’s suggesting a combined 2GW/3GW force to meet a 4GW threat — a clear no-no in strategic theory. When one of my fellow grad students pressed Bacevich on the navy question, he admitted to being a Mahanian and said we needed a strong navy to deter pirates!

Read the rest here.

Bacevich has a sense of humor. Multibillion dollar platforms to take out jerry-rigged Somali and Indonesian gunboats manned by illiterate tribesmen?