Letters to the Editor
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The Importance of Military Experience
The Kagan opposition to the Webb proposal for more downtime is outrageous because wihout a large enough military the country has to be realitistic about what our servicemen and women can do. However, I am not sure that Mr. Greenwald really wants to say only those with military experience should have a say in military matters.
General Petraeus has more military experience than does Mr. Greenwald, I presume, he wants to continue the surge. Does Mr. Greenwald mean that General Petraeue should be given more creedence than those who oppose it but never served?
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Daniel Gree
General Petraeus has more military experience than does Mr. Greenwald, I presume, he wants to continue the surge. Does Mr. Greenwald mean that General Petraeue should be given more creedence than those who oppose it but never served?
I already explained this -
It is true, as I've argued many times, that all Americans - those who served and those who haven't -- have the right and even obligation to form opinions about whether we ought to go to war. And I reject the idea that there is something inherently wrong about advocating a war without serving in it (the vast, vast majority of the country did that with Afghanistan, and with the 1991 Persian Gulf War, for instance).
But when it comes to arguments about how much strain troops can endure in combat, one's experience in war is absolutely relevant to whether the argument should be given more weight. THAT is why it is relevant TO THIS ISSUE that Webb is a war hero - because the issue here requires a knowledge of war and the strain it puts on troops, and Webb is someone who, due to his experiences, has particular credibility.
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The administratively 'difficult' thing is a non-starter
in my opinion. My father got combat pay for combat, and less pay for his down time in Korea. If the National Guard could track the wereabouts of troops without the aid of transistors never mind semi conductors almost sixty years ago, couldn't tracking soldiers' locations be done today?
Another thing. Even Bush has stopped asking for 'victory', now the word is 'sucess'. Kagan needs to update his vocab and his viewpoint of the president's goals.
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ImpotentWadshooter
I suppose there are at least two ways to accomplish something like what Webb proposes. First, wipe out the concept of unit. No consistency, no history, no relationships, no personal chain of command. Base group membership solely on time in the field. Interestingly that could completely pull out experienced people and substitute huge amounts of novices in one fell swoop. Oh yeah, that'll be messy.--shooter
As always, you don't know what you're talking about. My brother was in the Navy during Vietnam. He was in Vietnam on a Destroyer when his time of enlistment ended. His fellow crewmen stayed on board ship as he was flown out by helicopter. That's the way it is. They don't all sign up at the same time. They don't all leave at the same time. A simple line of reasoning would tell you that much.
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Indeed
I suppose there are at least two ways to accomplish something like what Webb proposes. First, wipe out the concept of unit. No consistency, no history, no relationships, no personal chain of command. Base group membership solely on time in the field.
Indeed, that was a key failing of personnel policy during Vietnam. Every unit had their share of FNGs (fucking new guys) who had to be brought up to speed on everything and many of whom wound up real dead real fast.
The military learned its lesson from that and since the mid-70s has had a firm unit-based personnel system. You're assigned to a unit, you live with it, train with, deploy with it, for years. It makes for tremendous unit cohesion and comraderie.
By the way, one reason we have today's brutal deployment schedule is that everyone, but primarily Democrats, cut the US military almost by 50% with the fall of the Soviet Union. Everyone was braying about the so-called "peace dividend" and how we could save all this money. Turns out they were seriously wrong, and we have today's undermanned military that has to rely on reserves and National Guard units to fulfill its mission.
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You are challenged, alright! And, not just in math.
So let's hypothetically have a force of ten units with ten troops each. I'm mathematically challenged, but if I recall correctly that's 10 to the 10th power of possible combinations of troops with an additional doubling of states for in field and out.
- shooter242
Why would you start your argument with a supposition you know absolutely nothing about? Oh wait! You've been doing it eversince you got here.
Well, since this one involves an exact science it can be readily shown for how false it is:
The number you are after is called "the 10!" (ten factorial = 10x9x8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1). Ten to the power of ten is a huge number- a one with eleven zeros in front of it. It's even bigger than a Bush national debt and few people can count that high.
In any case, units, even battalions, get deployed and rotated as units not by individual soldiers. Duh!
P.S. You do realize you are no match around here intellectually. Most people just kick you around while they wait for someone to post something interesting. But, it's good entertainment. You are kind of the USO of our discussions, a bozo for our breaks.
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Kitt
Your example is irrelevant, because the same is true of even combat units in the Army and Marines; when your EAS is up, you leave. But that is different from wholesale switching around of people within a unit, especially while in combat.
We're not talking about the odd guy leaving here and there. In Vietnam you'd sometimes have a 40% turnover in a unit in as little as six months. That's no way to build a cohesive fighting force.
Also, I don't remember too many Navy destroyers being in heavy combat in Vietnam, although those sailors certainly served honorably.
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Shooter's concern for Iraqis
Are you interested in lives of the Iraqis or just the Americans. If just the Americans why not go isolationist? Inquiring minds want to know.
Would that be "an interest" in the lives of the majority of Iraqis that want us to leave, and approve of attacks on their American occupiers?
Apparently, the lesson you learned from Vietnam is that sometimes we must destroy a country in order to "save" it.