Letters to the Editor
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The War Party is Alive and Well ...
Mark Benjamin has exposed our Presidents to be for what they are , Imperialists ...
People talk about reinstating the draft . Is there any doubt that Bush would have used the draft to shore up Iraq and then attack Iran.
People say a draft would keep America out of War ... Ya mean like Viet Nam ?
Just look at the votes in the Senate and the House condemning Iran today ...
Our Founding Fathers understood the dangers of a standing Army . The bigger that Army gets, the more trouble we get into ...
To date we have 800 military bases overseas , and we are building more ... What happened to the base closure iniatives ? Well , we close them here and open 'em there.
As Chalmers Johnson wrote in 'Nemesis' , Both the Soviet Union and the United States lost the 'Cold War' . The Soviet Union just lost more ...
And now we , the United States , are headed down that road to ruin.
Yep , how many more soldiers do we need ?
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Reorganizing and restructuring the US Army (every thing old is new again…)
Respectfully, the US AIr Force, General 'shock and awe' Chuck Horner and his crowd should frankly be largely excluded from any discussion regarding the restructuring of the US Army and Marine Corps. Air superiority and coordinated close air support are critical to the success of ground forces, and while the US Marine Corps brings its embedded air operations to a theater, the US Army is largely dependent upon the US Air Force not only for fixed wing close air support, and large scale lift capability, but also for the establishment of a protective air cover.
But, the US Air Force seems determined to boost the concept that air power alone can decisively engage and defeat any enemy, a ridiculous and repeatedly repudiated concept. The Army, while it requires some specialized forces adapted to counterinsurgency missions and allied training requirements needs desperately to return to the pre-Rumsfeld days and recognize and honor decades of proven force-structure doctrine. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and President Bush are responsible for the near destruction of the Army I knew as both and enlisted man and officer. The first public sign of the impending disaster was the cancellation of the Crusader weapons platform by Rumsfeld, followed by a restructuring plan the eliminated Corps and Division headquarters, heavy infantry and mechanized troops, air cavalry assets and other critically needed combat elements.
Anyone who say this restructuring effort unfold before we launched attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq could clearly seem the impending doom. These characters, reasonably characterized as war criminals by some, could not possibly have managed these conflicts given the boundaries they established by ignoring decades of doctrine, attacking with insufficient troops, the wrong collection of combat elements, and an almost utter lack units such as military police and air cavalry dedicated to rear area support tasks. Civil affairs units were brought in too late, in clearly insufficient numbers. The outcome of this disaster should have been obvious to any experienced Army officer, warrant officer or noncommissioned officer.
The Department of Defense needs to halt the race to the bottom by suspending the current force restructuring efforts, and return to a concept of Corps control over ten to thirteen active combat divisions, including airborne, air assault, armored, artillery, mechanized, cavalry and light divisions, supported by additional light, medium and heavy infantry, artillery and armored divisions from our reserve components. To this, can be added the required battalion and brigade strength training elements and special forces troops necessary to support counterinsurgency and early stabilization efforts.
It's pretty simple stuff, really - look at what work well for decades, and fine tune the force to meet the emerging challenges of this century, including stateless and state-supported terrorist elements. Only those as maniacally stupid as Bush, Cheney and Rumsfled could have possibly screwed this all up so badly.
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Kinda drafty in here
So, the range of opinions are adding more troops, or a lot more troops? Wow, this is what every great power did in its time, and what inevitably doomed them. I'm reminded of historian Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, where he says "Military and naval endeavors may not always have been the raison d'être of the new nations-states, but it certainly was their most expensive and pressing activity" -- he held that continued deficit spending and particularly military build-up was the most important reason for the decline of any Great Power. We're well along our way, sadly...
"If we really want to be a revolutionary power and export democracy around the world, then we need a pretty good-sized Army," explained Crane. "If we are just about maintaining stability, maybe we don't need as much.
The above quote from Mr. Benjamin's piece is haunting, revealing the problem we're in. Do people really believe democracy is exportable at the point of a bayonet? Or is democracy just whatever America says it is, and anybody who says differently gets shot? And given the current world situation, is "stability" really what we should be after? One choice seems delusional and/or cynical, and the latter choice is no better.
And, as I've written before, our already-vast military spending at the time didn't prevent 9/11 from happening -- what's more, we could spent 90% of our GDP on the Pentagon, could draft every able-bodied American, could create our own roving death squads combing the globe bumping off enemies at will, and it still wouldn't prevent terrorism, wouldn't make us any safer. What price do we really want to pay as a country for this madness? And for what, precisely? To feel powerful? Safer? Righteous?
We're paying for it now, and generations in the future will be paying for it, as we spend ourselves into cultural, political, and economic oblivion, until, what, we have a military coup, because that's the only surviving institution remaining in America, the only thing uniting the United States?
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The Only Way the Presidential Candidates Are Going to Get What They Want
There is only two ways the Presidentials candidate can realize their ambitious increases in the Army and Marines. One is a full-scale attack on US soil by Islamist militants. The other is bringing back the draft.
Which candidate will be the first to call for the return of conscription? My guess is, none of them. The American voters will not hear a hint about a draft until the next President is elected. And then what?