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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 5:35 pm Post subject: Bush plans to increase size of army |
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About freaking time.
FT.com article
This came at least a year too late (more like 2-3 years but I'm feeling generous). |
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NAVFC
Joined: 10 May 2006
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| Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2006 12:43 am Post subject: |
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| Yea....Rumsfelds small mobile military vision would have devastated this country's ability to fight a large conflict, IE with North Korea or China or Russia |
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twg
Joined: 02 Nov 2006
Location: Getting some fresh air...
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| Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2006 3:42 am Post subject: |
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| So, where are they planning on getting the cannon fodder.. er, saintly fighting men and women from to go die in Iraq... oops, sorry: Bring freedom from since no one seems to want to sign up now a days? |
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Wrench
Joined: 07 Apr 2005
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| Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2006 4:30 am Post subject: |
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| Where are they gone get the recruits. Last time I checked they had a hard time filling the existing quotas. |
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Octavius Hite
Joined: 28 Jan 2004
Location: Househunting, looking for a new bunker from which to convert the world to homosexuality.
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| Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2006 6:36 am Post subject: |
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This is all just a cover. For what you ask?? 2 interesting details:
1. Bush is going to send 25-40K extra troops and launch a "Battle of Baghdad". We'll see how this goes.
2. Centcom has ordered a second aircraft carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf. Iran? Hmmmm.... |
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ben the saint
Joined: 16 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2006 7:32 am Post subject: |
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| That was not Rumsfelds idea, but Pres Clinton�s doings back in the 1990�s. Clinton reduced the size by about 15%. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2006 8:33 am Post subject: |
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| right, when Bin Laden was just starting his "campaign" and we weren't bogged down in two different spots. |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2006 5:27 pm Post subject: |
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Democracy in action.
The people speak and the administration does the opposite.
Idiocy.
The people want investment in what matters. and the administration continues to promote unparalleled military spending.
Obstinancy.
The world is disbanding the notion of "standing army" and "military confrontation" for that of international/regional dialogue, trade, cooperation Still the administration clings to an aging paradigm of nationalistic expansion. Meanwhile, the administration continues deploying troops all over the world, expanding striking ability and controlling regional interests through the military. ?????
War is about who gets what. Forget all the fanciful lies the Bush admin. is spewing about terror, safety, freedom , democracy. They are getting what through maintenance of military budgeting and expansion. This is the economy, stupid.
DD |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2006 5:30 pm Post subject: |
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PS.
I don't think they will have any problem finding people to wear the uniform. The culture , popular and proximate culture of America has become more and more militarized in mindset. We accept so much about guns, uniforms, aggression than we did even just 15 years ago. Watch TV, see how much we are inudated with this mindset. It lowers the bar and allows it to be seen as an acceptable career option.
Further, most people join the army as a way to pay the bills......and in America's poor/rich world, there are lots who will do just that. ....
DD |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2006 8:32 pm Post subject: |
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| ddeubel wrote: |
PS.
I don't think they will have any problem finding people to wear the uniform. The culture , popular and proximate culture of America has become more and more militarized in mindset. We accept so much about guns, uniforms, aggression than we did even just 15 years ago. Watch TV, see how much we are inudated with this mindset. It lowers the bar and allows it to be seen as an acceptable career option.
Further, most people join the army as a way to pay the bills......and in America's poor/rich world, there are lots who will do just that. ....
DD |
I was a boy during the '70s, post-Nam, and military was so uncool. So uncool they took GI Joe off the market because no one was buying them. It blew me away it took a single movie, Top Gun, to suddenly undo a decade of learning that said "there is nothing glorious about war". |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2006 10:01 pm Post subject: |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
| I was a boy during the '70s, post-Nam, and military was so uncool. So uncool they took GI Joe off the market because no one was buying them. It blew me away it took a single movie, Top Gun, to suddenly undo a decade of learning that said "there is nothing glorious about war". |
Decade of "teaching" would be more accurate. Does not learning occur though realization, understanding & acceptance?
Mass murder driven by EGO, greed & deception.
How pray tell is war "glorious"?  |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2006 10:18 pm Post subject: |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
| It blew me away it took a single movie...to suddenly undo a decade of learning that said "there is nothing glorious about war". |
Americans fear that liberalism is going to far with divorce, abortion, drugs, et al.;
The Yom Kippur War and oil embargos and crises;
The Shah falls; Khomeini seizes the U.S. embassy and Delta's op fails; Somoza falls; the Soviets' Red Army moves into Afghanistan, apparently, at the time, to project Russian power in the Persian Gulf; multiple insurgencies arise all over the Third-World -- not to mention a confusing but potentially dangerous fight between Communists in Southeast Asia;
America's position in world affairs appears in steep decline, not only post-Vietnam isolationism, but Moscow also develops and deploys aircraft carriers, a strategic air- and sea-lift capability, expands its overseas bases the first time ever as detente withers and dies; Castro deploys ground forces in Africa;
Polish affairs heat up to the boiling point; and
Castro and the Nicaraguan Sandinistas begin supporting El Salvadoran Communist insurgents.
All of this between 1973 and 1980.
Do you really believe it is fair to reduce the Reagan-era militarization to Top Gun or worse: Rambo -- which, in any case, were almost certainly symptoms and not causes? or that it was unreasonable? or, as Igotthisguitar and Ddeubel allege, that it was based on deception and lies to cover its "true," corrupt purposes?
People do this -- reduce all U.S. foreign policy -- from the Spanish-American War (It's all about sugar!) to the First World War (It's all about coporate loans to Britain!) to the Korean War (It's all about selling NSC 68!) to the War on Terror (It's all about oil!). It will truly never end.
But the problem with alleging that everything the United States govt does relates to a few greedy, corporate interests and that such things as Pleiku, the Soviets in Afghanistan, or 9/11 are mere "pretexts," is that such an accusation fails to account for one, important thing: these things actually occur on their own. That there are indeed enemies out there. And it is reasonable, then, to respond to them with an interventionist foreign policy backed, at times, by armed forces based on an expanded military budget.
Last edited by Gopher on Thu Dec 21, 2006 11:48 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2006 11:43 pm Post subject: |
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I'm with bucheon bum on this one. When we are in two wars at once, and are using the National Guard to supplement the regular army, it makes sense to beef up the regular military.
But overall, I favor Clinton's reduction. There are no states or combination of states out there that can threaten the US. We don't need a large military. In part, the existence of a potent military made Bush's choice to invade Iraq possible. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 7:56 am Post subject: |
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| Right. I understand Rumsfeld's vision but it fails when it comes to the type of action Iraq and Afghanistan require; in fact it is useless when it comes to nation-building support.. It is better at swooping in, eliminating a threat, then swooping out. Pretty ideal for going after small threats such as Al-Qaeda (small in #s I mean). |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 10:16 am Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
| Rumsfeld's vision... |
As the Cold War was winding down, and Senate leaders like Sam Nunn were complaining to H.W. Bush, "your threat-board is empty" and others were demanding a "peace dividend" to get back into New Deal/Great Society-like social spending, Powell proposed cutting the armed forces down 25% -- his so-called "base force" concept. (Cheney was against any reduction, by the way.)
This leaner military would focus on the threats "rogue states" posed, and also possibly humanitarian missions (think Somalia and Haiti, which came up at the time). And if actual war occurred, we would build on the base force and fully rearm.
By the end of the Clinton Administration, however, the Pentagon had started sacrificing readiness, training, and equipment maintenance to keep several high-tech projects in the pipeline as well.
And starting in the mid- to late-1990s, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz's think tank/lobby group -- what were they called? something like "the New American Century Project" or "America's Next Century Project"? -- proposed their so-called revolution in military affairs. They believed that we could shift to a much smaller, highly-mobile, fast-acting force structure. Very high-tech weaponry would allow the Pentagon to skip the preliminaries and go directly to check-mate in any war.
This explains why, once in office, Rumsfeld declined to follow the base force concept and expand the military once it went to war.
Clearly this was bad thinking. I think Bucheon says above that it fails to account for the aftermath of such wars as Iraq. This should certainly be obvious from today's perspective.
My own opinion has always been that if we were going to go into Afghanistan and Iraq, to project power in the entire region to basically create and enforce a Pax Americana there, then we needed to reinstitute the draft, raise a million-man army, and dominate the Middle East on the ground. And if such a thing was politically impossible, then we should not have gone to war. Because, in any case, one or two hundred thousand troops, not all of whom are even shooters, plus a sexy, "shock and awe" fireworks campaign, will not make the cut.
American policymakers from Eisenhower to W. Bush have been looking to get war on-the-cheap for decades. But we cannot have this. It is costly. Either do it or do not do it. These half-measures are disatrous.
Last edited by Gopher on Fri Dec 22, 2006 12:12 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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