FlyJSH

I have been re-watching Danger UXB.

It occurred to me that, unlike my father or grand father, I never lived in a time when the world would be at war and my homeland might be overthrown. Yes, I lived in a time when there might be WWIII, but it would have been mostly over in an hour and a half (a volley from the USSR, and we retaliate). But when all was said and done in that war, everyone would have been blasted back into the stone age, and we would have faced a time of rebuilding.


I, as many of you, have served. But we never faced the bad guys taking over our homeland. I have a hard time imagining that. Can you?

I think in a strange way it's sad. When I served it was to insure the first volley would come from us and insure more of us would survive. I took my service (minor as it was) as a brick in the wall that protected us, and was a bastion of liberty.

Today, in my observations, it seems far too few of us are willing to serve and protect our ideals (imperfect though they may be, but better than the rest). How many are willing to sign a declaration that would get them hanged (our founding fathers) or refuse to give up their seat on the bus (Rosa Parks). How many of the under 40 somethings would actually fight, take a beating, and perhaps lay down their lives to make things right?

Am I alone in wondering if our people are willing to fight to the death for what's right? Or am I just an old coot?

Grumble

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."

-James Madison.

jungle

Interesting post, as you mentioned the nuclear option has made war on a world wide scale impossible. That has not stopped more than a half century of war by proxy.

The question now is: Who are the bad guys? What is right?

Lately most of the war has been devoted to removing oppressors, through ouside action or internal action. In the end it remains a struggle for individual justice and rights.

It is really the human monster that presents the greatest threat, and that threat may appear anytime and in any place.




“Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.”
― Heraclitus

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower

FlightGear

Very thought provoking... I wonder if perhaps the nonchalance we observe in youth today is a form of rebelling against Boomers and Gen X. As a generation Xer I was all about all things new in the 70s-80s. My parents dug classic European autos. I loved trans-ams. My father was all about classic firearms with wooden furniture, I lusted after 'that back rifle'. The super connie was a poster on my dads den wall, the 727 on mine....
Although kids today act as though they don't give two hoots about society in general we keep seeing images like Marine Sergeant Thomas putting himself in between OWS protesters and NYPD officers. A great many of militia personnel attending Occupy protests as protesters are young also.
I embrace my cranky old coot status

UAL T38 Phlyer

About a year ago, I saw an article in Time or Newsweek, which was later made into a news spot on TV. During WWII, about 8% of the US population served directly in the military; another 20% served indirectly by working in a defense-related industry.

Congress had a siginificant percentage of former military, and the Presidency usually did too.

Today, we have the lowest percentage of former military in government office ever.

The crux of the article was that with an all-volunteer force, the military has become unrepresentative of US society as a whole...or vice-versa. America is defended by one-half a percent of her people.

Military training used to be a rite of passage for many. The rules and discipline of boot camp, as well as military life in general, was the frequent point of complaints, but it gave the recruits a life-long pattern for discipline, decision-making, and problem solving.

In a way, it made one grow up and be self-sufficient.

With such an early influence lacking today, many miss the "grow up" part. Like most children, when confronted with difficult tasks, they whine to their parents to fix it.

That "parent" is the government, and since few of them have benefitted from this lesson, fall into the same trap.

chrisreedrules

I call today's generation coming of age the "gold collar generation"... they all want to have flat screen TV's, drive nice cars, wear designer clothes, and spend money frivolously... but they live with their parents.

They all have a sense of entitlement and feel that everything should be handed to them without ever really having to work for it. They work at cushy jobs and complain about the pay/work environment. They think they are special and unique and that they are "1 in a million"... well guess what? That still makes you about 1 in 7,000 in this world. You ain't $hit.

American youth are one of the most detesting things on this planet. I'm 25 and I'm saying this.

jungle

We don't have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression. ~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club



This quote was attributed to Socrates by Plato:

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they allow disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children now are tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

BackintheLPA

My own observation of war in general leads me to conclude that "show me a war worth fighting and young people will rise to meet the threat".

I've deployed 4 times to Afghanistan and I still can't see anything more than futile effort. The tragic irony of spreading "liberal democracy" is that the economic and physical bleeding that happened to the Russians is not much different than what will eventually happen to the U.S.
Terrorism, in the simplest terms, is a tactic designed to provoke a response. They intended to damage the country economically and they have done a fine job with our own help. Politicans and the Pentagon have weakened this country by pushing technology as the future of warfare. How many F-22s and F-35s have flown a single sortie in Afghanistan?
How many contractors who donate to these same politicans and employ the retired flag officers benefit by pushing unneeded technology? Mean while the same fools want to get rid of the A-10, which is the one tool needed to fight the type of wars that we will see in the future.

I find it hard to believe that a rational person truely believes that it is possible to build a State in Afghanistan. The only reason the State exists is to provide order. The Karzai government is unable to do that because of rampant corruption, plan and simple. On the other hand, the Taliban CAN provide order. It may not be the kind of 1st world order we prefer, but you will not have to pay a bribe to get someone to handle a crime. Afghanistan(if there is such a place) will tolerate our presence as long as the money continues to flow in copious amounts. When it stops they will turn on the US like they have done to every outsider since Alexander the Great.

The wars of the future will not be fought with F-22s and F-35s against the Chinese. Nor will there be conventional armies and tank formations waiting for Russians to come through the Folda Gap. The wars of the future will be centered around the legitamacy of the State and the State's ability to provide order. It will resemble low-level civil war at its worst, centered around adversaries that no longer hold allegiance to the State. The groundswell is beginning to manifest and intensify around cultural and immigrant asimilation. The current and future economic malaise will only accelarate the problem as the general public finally wakes up to fact that government is incapable of providing order. Syria, Egypt, and Libya are a preview of what will dominant warfare in the 21st century.

Until this country adopts a defensive grand strategy and addresses the failed state on our southern border, this country will continue to get it wrong. I seriously doubt that this will happen due to the profit motive of war and this type of warfare has proved to not provide the same type of margins to contractors.

With that said, Could you encourage someone to sign up to expose themselves to this kind of risk?

rickair7777

AFG was initially a response to 9/11 (legitimate in casus belli and scope IMO). We ran the al-queda supporting taliban out of their comfortable position of power. Mission accomplished. Where things got hard was when we felt obligated to stay and keep the taliban at bay and attempt to "save" the locals. Obviously a much harder proposition (ask the brits or rooskies), but it's kind of in our nature to try to clean up messes we make.

Also, BTW our future defense planning is moving away from COIN in favor of low-intensity special operations and other asymmetric methods (cyber, etc).

Economics alone dictate that there are less-than-even odds of open conflict with china. But the balance of POTENTIAL military power in the pacific will likely dictate how forward leaning china is as it attempts to expand and consolidate it's regional power. If we leave a vacuum, they will fill it, and it will be by force or implied threat of force (favorable access to resources and trade deals).

The wild-card you're forgetting is oil supply and demand. If we don't PRO-ACTIVELY establish alternative energy/fuel infrastructure before oil prices begin their peak-oil climb to infinity, there will be open conflict of some sort during the ensuing catastrophic global economic collapse.

I say keep the F-22, they're paid for. CANX the F-35 IMMEDIATELY, buy advanced hornets and eagles for interim air superiority through 2030 and roll the F-35 technology and lessons learned into a clean-sheet, less-capable but still 5th gen fighter that is designed from the ground-up for affordability. But that's not going to happen unless we have another economic collapse.

Probably true for the third-world, but I wouldn't entirely write off open state vs. state conflict either. It's hard right now because US/UN/NATO/EU won't let it happen but if the western powers get distracted by serious economic or social problems there are still people who will take advantage of such an opportunity.

Mexico sucks no doubt, but I don't think it requires a military solution. We just need to tighten the border to control who gets in and allow a practical, documented guest worker program to accommodate the workers we so obviously have a need for. At legal wages. A far as the ultimate solution down there? Hope they sort out their corruption issues through technology-enabled transparency and social communication. An invasion or even low-intensity ops is politically out of the question. That's one crusade we can't fight.

We have a fair number of fine young people who have recently served or are currently serving. Given a worthy cause I think we can still assemble a capable military force.

jungle

Excellent and interesting post. History will tell us the downfall of the Soviets was not from battle, but from loss of control in the economy and the government. The Soviets made war against the rights and property of their own people while conducting wars abroad, they even felt the need to fence the population in to make sure all would participate.

Maybe we are already in a World War and don't recognize it as such?
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Courtesy of Bill Buckler, author of The Privateer

If It Doesn’t Work - Keep Trying It Until It Does:

Those running the big investment banks and trading floors today bear an uncanny resemblance to the generals on both sides of the conflict in WWI. There is an old military saying about the folly of fighting the “next” war by the methods of the last war. In modern times, the best illustration of the truth of that adage is what happened on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918.

When 1914 dawned, Europe had not seen a continental war for a century. Most of the generals and the vast majority of their political masters on both sides had not noticed that the years since the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 had seen what was and remains the greatest technological revolution in the history of the world. Both sides had seen the US Civil War of 1861-65, a war which proved beyond all shadow of a doubt that a frontal assault on an established defensive position was almost guaranteed to fail. Both sides completely ignored the lesson. The literal “cannon fodder” on both sides paid a gruesome price.

The result of this stubborn ignorance, as the history books so voluminously recount, was the antithesis of “bliss”. It was mass carnage. When an attack by 50,000 men proved impotent to the task, the numbers were raised to 100,000 and then 250,000. When an hour of preliminary shelling of the target proved insufficient, it was raised to an entire morning and then to a day and then to the best part of a week. The “big” battalions got bigger and Bigger and BIGGER. The trenches proliferated. The barbed wire proliferated. The casualties proliferated. The destruction proliferated.

The men on the firing line on both sides quickly realised the futility of what those who commanded them were attempting to do. But there was no escape for them. They died in their millions while the generals and the politicians clung tenaciously to the goal of trying to make the unworkable “work”. Any suggestion of a deviation from the frontal assault was fiercely resisted. On the few occasions when it was actually tried, such as the Cambrai offensive with its use of tanks and no preliminary bombardment, it was done over protest and the means supplied were intentionally insufficient to the task. The end came as it was always going to come, with exhaustion.

Four Years Of False Dawns

WWI lasted 51 months, from August 1914 until November 1918. If we go back 51 months from the present, we reach late March 2008 - six months before the Lehman crisis hit. From that day to this, has there been ANY more deviation from the “approved” method of extracting the world from its financial morass than was shown by the WWI commanders in extracting themselves from their military morass?

The answer is crystal clear. There has been NO such deviation. There has simply been more of the same. When half a $US TRILLION in annual deficits proved insufficient to the task, the number was raised to $US 1 TRILLION and then the best part of $US 2 TRILLION. When central bank interest rates equalling the lowest in history didn’t work, interest rates were eradicated altogether. When existing methods of bailing out insolvent banks proved insufficient to the task, new methods were invented in an ever increasing stream. When the results of the inevitable financial carnage became too big to ignore, the figures which reported it were adulterated or simply suppressed completely.

With every new year that has dawned since 2008, the powers that be everywhere have announced that THIS TIME, the recovery is “real”. In March 2012, French President Sarkozy was announcing that: “Today, the problem is solved!” Christine Lagarde over at the IMF proclaimed that: “Economic spring is in the air.” Not to be outdone, President Obama was telling his fellow Americans that: “The recovery is accelerating, America is coming back!” The same songbook was followed in 2009, 2010 and 2011.

It was followed in WWI too, long after the contrast with the REAL situation had gone far beyond the grotesque. Today, there is only ONE place left in the world which still clings to its long-fostered stubborn ignorance. That place is the financial markets. They STILL believe in the BIGGER batallions.

The One “Good” Thing About A Big War:

A “big” war becomes the almost exclusive centre of attention to all those engaged in it, whether on the front or keeping the “home fires burning”. It is impossible to pretend that it is not happening and equally impossible to cover up the devastation in lives and property which it causes. Many people don’t come home from BIG wars, leaving those left behind with agonising and very REAL losses. War causes destruction which is immediate and visible. It is not something that can be swept under the carpet.

Today, we are in the midst of a financial debacle which is more truly global than any world war. There are no lines of trenches, no shattered towns and cities, no casualty lists in the papers and no “we regret to inform you” telegrams being delivered. The carnage is real but it is invisible. No lives have been lost. All that has happened is that the living of life has become more difficult and the ability to rely on the fruits of past efforts for future comfort and “security” has been all but extinguished. The vast majority of the people are cannon fodder in this financial debacle. Like the real thing in the trenches of the Western Front, they have long since realised the futility of the efforts of their “generals”. They know that the “recession” is not over. They are starting to realise that it will never be over as long as the same methods which produced it are being used to get out from under it. But most see no escape, having become used to looking to those same “generals” to tell them what to do.

To an extent which goes far beyond even the politicians and the bankers, the “market makers” want to fight this new financial war with the methods of the old ones. In WWI, the generals held to the end that if your shelling made a big enough noise, the danger of an attack would go away. The “market makers” figure that if they stuff enough new freshly-printed money in their ears, they won’t have to hear the sound of the economy falling away from underneath them. “Less Talk - More Stimulus?” That is a message that the generals of WWI would have understood very well. It didn’t work then. It won’t work now.