John Noonan is quite right about the threat that the military bureaucracy poses to the long-term security of the United States. The situation he describe with regard to the 5th SFG in 2001 still pertains today, only the problem is more pernicious and extends well down into the chain of command. I have a friend whose son, now back from his fourth deployment to Afghanistan with the 75th Rangers, describes precisely the kind of burdensome bureaucratic regulation described by Kaplan, which Paul Fussell (in his book Wartime) so aptly described as “chickenshit”: