A prominent underpinning of the American style of warfare is a persistent faith in the power of technology to overcome most problems encountered on the battlefield. It is a faith shaken neither by the contrary lessons derived from a close reading of military history, for which few of the managerial technocrats who run the U.S.  military have the time or inclination, nor by defeat in Vietnam at the hands of a technologically inferior adversary, a defeat that many Americans in uniform still ascribe mainly to unwarranted political intrusion on the conduct of the war.