ID:118826
 Sep 20 2011, 8:41 am
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Why doesn't anyone in D.C. actually understand strategy? Has anyone read Sun Tzu? This is a fool's game where the only ones who win are the politicians. Spread the Army thin? The army of tomorrow will be flexible? These are bywords for weak and incapable. The national annual budget allocates next to nothing for defense and spends 50 percent on entitlements. That's a damn joke. What king ruling his land would allow his country to waste his treasury? What king would not spend most of his treasury on defense? We are fools to think that we can do otherwise merely because we are a republic. To be clear, this is not the fault of the General, but the fault of the politicians who demand a "draw down" of forces -- a stupid, flawed idea only supported by morons. Leave all at once, or win the war, those are your options.
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Tired of war we may be, I'm not disputing that. What I'm disputing is the fact that we fight a half-assed war, then we want to draw down our forces which only leaves us vulnerable, when we should be leaving all at once, or as close to all at once as we can. Leaving a few people behind to get picked over is a stupid idea. We tried that in Vietnam.
My brother is a Marine Infantry, 0311, deployed to Iraq twice, and seen his share. I go for basic training for the Army in less than 3 weeks. I'm not insulting the military, I'm responding to the article, where terms are thrown about euphemistically. We're sugar-coating the fact that we're heading back to Rumsfield-esque thinking. Remember that whole "light footprint" crap, where we would win Iraq with 3 dozen guys and no armor on our vehicles because we "go to war with the military we have, not the military we want". I'm disputing the fact that we would be so stupid as to to divide our forces and make ourselves weak. I'm disputing the fact that we spend next to nothing on defense. There is no excuse for the fact that my family armed my brother as much as the Marines, or that he was forced to buy is own MREs and uniforms. That's horseshit. Why are his barracks still full of asbestos? And there is no excuse for the entitlements. We have a convoluted government where we have figured out how to vote ourselves largesse of the treasury. Then we wonder why Keynesian economics don't work when we're all walking around in the great recession, pilfering the treasury. We may as well pay ourselves to stay home. You could be right, maybe the Iraqis and Afghanis will handle their own affairs. I doubt very much that it wont go back to being a hotbed for terrorism, but to each his own. I'll wager there's a slim possibility everything will work out just fine if we close our eyes and wish very, very hard. Of course, the same guy who found Usama bin Ladin, pushed the CIA director and then the President himself for more drone strikes to attack re-emerging Al-Qaeda terror camps in northern afghanistan where we had left, and all of this happened less than a year ago, but hey, what do I know? The fact is at every turn we have ignored basic strategy in favor of esoteric ideas. War is not esoteric, by its nature it is a straightforward affair. I'd touch on this, but it's practically a dissertation to properly address the many ways in which leadership has failed to observe the laws of strategy. Lastly, we have spent billions on these wars, but I question whether they have been "wasted" and I further question the value of billions when our president has spent well over a trillion dollars on fluff and cronyism. I'm not a dyed-in-wool Republican anymore, and haven't been for a while now. I'm all for our liberties, and I subscribe to the notion that whatever morals and values we adhere to must be universal. However, even though I now support gay mairrage and the legalization of wacky tobacky, and see the point in raising taxes when necessary, closing corporate loop holes and taxing the wealthiest 1 percent of america -- I still have a hard time seeing how the left is ever correct where justice and war are concerned. I also think kensyan economics should be too stupid a theory for any political party to subscribe to whole-heartedly. Lastly, doesn't the left believe a war is never won? Isn't that their job, to decry war, no matter it's outcome, state, or effect? Ah, but then maybe you aren't a pure lefty and I've made the same mistake you have in leaping to conclusions. Okay, so this has been a rambling, disjointed mess, but I've been working for hours. Not to mention I ran 3 miles today for exercise. Woot! I'm sure there's gratuitous grammar errors and fantastic crimes against spelling, but I'm tired. Thank you for your response, but I think you read into it in a way I did not intend, at least partially. Fucking 1:41 AM EST. | |
No problem- there are often things that aren't as clear as they should be :-) Gratz to you and your brother, though, for putting on the boots. It's tough, and, honestly, for all the talk, all the politicians and most of the people don't give a crap about the military- your example is spot on. I hope you don't have to spend time in a VA hospital and see how bad it can get. For all the flag waving, we do not take care of our vets (though the docs and nurses *do* try, there just isn't enough put into the system).
And, no I am not a lefty. Nor a righty. I pretty much despise political dogma in general as I see it as an obstacle to problem solving. And, boy, do we have alot of problems! The wars are a perfect example. Ever since Korea, we have launched these political based wars on foreign soil that rarely have clear cut goals and generally suppose an idealogical enemy (IE fighting Communism or terrorism). You cannot win that type of war and trying to apply conventional warfare strategy doesn't really help because you've already designed it to fail. Add into it massive corruption and money funnelling to miltary contractors (instead of properly funding your actual forces) and it turns into a mess. The problems in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. have never been our troops (who have proven to be effective despite the absurd limitations put on them) but our political leaders and the population itself. The politicians bring in the esoteric ideas because they are trying to cover for their own failings. These are wars that never should have started in the first place or should have been much smaller and defined in scope because without clear goals (IE remove the ruling regime and kill their top leaders then withdraw) it just becomes an aimless occupation where we start becoming targets. And to expect that we can somehow "fix" the people in these backwards regions is folly. At best they will tolerate our meddling at worst we forcefully colonize them as the British did in India. However, history has shown that the former doesn't happen to often and the latter is not politically viable. As to domestic spending, here's the problem. Much of it is already promised out. When Social Security was created, it was a system where you paid in and then got the benefit when you retired. So self funding. Sometime in the 60's they made the genius decision to move the Social Security Fund into the general fund and basically loot it. So now, it is a system where current workers pay in to fund payments due. Problem is our biggest generation is getting old. What *should* be happening is that there is a fund that has collected interest to pay them with. What is happening instead is their are fewer workers paying in and a massive increase in payments due. And there is no easy fix because it got screwed up 50 years ago. It's also somewhat deceptive when SS is included in general budget figures- it's not discretionary. Other entitlement saw massive reductions in the 80's under Reagan and again in the 90's under Clinton. Again, the problem is that aging population. And military spending does amaount for a huge amount for the deficit. Confusing? Not really- it's just that most of it doesn't make its way to the troops. Check it out: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_Ek1QPFXmY80/TUrvM8_c3JI/ AAAAAAAAGLY/Z8whPNW_4c4/FY2011-budget.jpg | |
You raise some excellent points!
I completely agree with the lack of clearly defined objectives. War is, after all, merely a way to accomplish a certain set of objectives. I don't expect that we can "fix" the Afghanis or Iraqis, I just worry that blowing everything up and then leaving might not be a good long-term idea. After the Russians invaded Afghanistan, for instance, it created the environment necessary for Usama bin Ladin. Sun Tzu lays out 2 possibilities for successfully winning a war of occupation: either we win hearts and minds, or we crush the enemy so thoroughly there is no one left to fight. The problems with achieving these ends are many, but to start with we should have spent much more on defeating this enemy, and should have "surged" from the beginning. We needed many more boots on the ground with a much larger budget to really tackle Iraq and Afghanistan. Even a draft may have helped, but that would have been politically unsavory. I will say that in war we should worry much less about hearts-and-minds and much more about crushing the enemy utterly. Rules of Engagement where shooting is made difficult, and convoys made dangerous (as in, for a while, cars could cut in between convoys my brother was in and they weren't allowed to do anything about it, despite the fact that one of them could have been a VBED). As for SS, it needs to go away. It's a flawed system and it costs a pretty penny, if we can find a reasonable alternative, like what you propose, that would be much better than this inverted pyramid scheme we got going on. My grandmother depends on SS, so I don't say this easily, I say this out of pragmatism. As for the last part, that's just another way leadership has failed. It's much easier to invest in something shiny and fast then it is to buy new weapons, gear, and Humvees for our troops. But then we can't make a plane without having it made in 42 of the 50 states anyway, thanks to our lovely politicians trying to bring home the vote, further driving up the cost. | |
And military expenditure is a a major portion of federal expenditure and a huge factor in the balloning of the federal budget. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars drained billions.
As for your insults to our military, our armed forces are well trained and equipped. They are very versatile and neither weak nor incapable. The US military stands near the apex of national militaries in every area. We have kept them drug out on two far flung fronts for a decade fighting in the sand- it's about time we bring them home. The Afghans and Iraquis can handle their own affairs.