Take off your right wing myopic glasses, TN.
I'm either myopic, or I've been working in and around the IC since 87, and walked into work today in uniform with a fancy looking badge past 4 layers of security. Your pick; I'm going with the latter.
You're partially right ... the more elected officials want to micromanage the military, the less effective we are. That includes the repeal of DADT (and DOMA in the near future), the government shutdown debacle, slashing defense to fund entitlements, privatizing whole sectors of defense to give jobs to unions and boot career military people into a crummy hiring market. Yeah, those little distractions are far more damaging to the effectiveness of the professionals than Cheney and Rumsfeld's work; they hampered operations on the forward lines, true. But the current admin is hamstringing the individual servicemember.
Wouldn't be suprised at all to learn that the young wife of the SEAL who shot UBL is a stay at home Mom with 2 kids, trying to keep a family together and pay the bills, with little contact with her husband, and she probably freaked out in early April when her LES only went to 8 April. Might be wondering how they're going to keep up with $4.30 a gal gas on base, and the current admins threats to close the NEX, Commissary, Fleet & Family Support Services, raise prices at the CDC, and premiums for TriCare medical. She's probably torn between begging her husband not to reenlist just so they could be together, and begging him to reenlist so that they can have steady income for 4 more years ... if his rate isnt pulled in the current Perform To Serve hack and slash to cut 3K sailors.