. There are other countries in the world capable of contributing significantly to that, or even doing entire smaller jobs themselves. Hint, hint.
grey, this was almost funny:
[quote]
The Iraq war aside…**. Fill in the name of any other large operation you like. The world as it is needs forces capable of large-scale operations. Right now only the US is both able and willing to provide them. You might as well invite a debate over how much wood would a woodchuck chuck. But instead you’re suggesting that the US military’s size isn’t a solution but a problem. That is not a supportable statement, to be as kind as possible.
As for that fantasy condition itself, even Iraq, a single, sandflea-infested pisspot of a country with no defenses other than civilian-owned rifles and pipe bombs, is taking up essentially all of the US Army’s available combat strength. How about this for a debate topic instead: How much *more * military strength does the civilized world need than it is already providing? How about this for a subtopic? How much more should other countries contribute to that than they do? Or this for a sub-subtopic: How big should the memorial service be up there for all the American troops who have died and will die to defend Canadian interests in the world?
You aren’t even artful about denying the central topic of the linked thread.
pantom, just saw your post: It’s true as far as it goes that a large military allows large follies to be undertaken with it. But it also allows large good and justified and necessary operations.
Suppose Iraq really had had WMD’s and the willingness to use them, and really was a viable and imminent and major threat to at least its regional neighbors upon whom we depend? The large standing US and NATO military of the time of the Gulf War allowed that to be taken care of when it was the case. A smaller-scale military is only affordable if you know that no larger-scale problems requiring military responses are going to happen before you can rebuild it. I don’t see how you can ever know that, though.
The Iraq war is prima facie evidence that the military is far larger than it needs to be for our self-defense. That kind of adventurism is only undertaken when the Executive feels that it has carte blanche to do whatever it feels like doing, consequences be damned.
The conservatives have it right: limited government, free markets, and peace, as the Cato Institute (which opposed the Iraq war) says. Most conservatives, unfortunately, don’t believe their own ideology.
In a globalized world, that amounts to isolationism, and you have to be willing to allow a whole lot of shit to happen.
Genocide in the 3rd world? Can’t stop it. 1991 Gulf War? Saddam keeps Kuwait, and hopefully stops there; maybe not. We buy our oil off him and hope for fair prices. China takes Taiwan, and Japan rearms? Not our problem.
There’s a principled argument to be made that it all works out better in the end, but there’s a whole lotta wars that don’t happen because of the threat of a superpower. We certainly would have nowhere near the standard of living that a global economy enables.
But if pork-barrel is to blame, then why is the U.S. the only Western country that didn’t reduce its forces after the Cold War? Why didn’t pork-barrel politics operate the same way in the states of Western Europe? E.g., doesn’t Germany have its own arms contractors, with political influence in the capital and vested interests in a massive military establishment?
Given that military forces are just one of the tools a country uses to defend and extend its interest, ideally, any country looking out for itself would want a military capable of defeating every other miltary force in existance at the same time. Of course, this is unpractical for almost any nation, but given the US relative power in the world, I think the US military should be larger than it is now - it should be big enough to handle midsize operations like Iraq, a couple of smaller operations, and take on at least one other “great power” (China, Russia, the EU, would currently fall into this category) all at the same time.
I think the question is “Who made us the world’s policeman?” Might does not make right. It never worked for bullies in the playground and it won’t work for U.S. either in the playground of the world.
Re: your examples - When something needs fixing in the world, it needs to be done by a coalition of counties put together and managed by the by a central authority, such as the U.N.
Most of the other nations of the developed world did, when they decided to forego the ability to protect their own overseas interests.
Nice bumper sticker. If you think geopolitics has ever been governed by what is “right,” you’re a fool.
What school did you go to? In mine, bullies got away with a hell of a lot. We had to bring in someone else who was bigger and stronger to deal with them.
Except that those “coalitions” are composed of individual nations all of whom have their own interests, and act accordingly, and the UN is run by individual, unelected bureaucrats with their own agendas.
To take my examples in order: please look up the UN’s sterling record in places like Rwanda and Kosovo; consider the fact that nothing could have been done in 1991 without US forces; and ask yourself why the UNSC might have a hard time passing a resolution if China invades Taiwan. And whether it might not be a bit too late if they did.
Might doesn’t make right; but might does make reality. Dreaming of a fairyland where all the world’s problems will be solved if we trust wise men to talk it out over a conference table is foolishness.
furt, educate yourself. First of all, if you notice, that clause is in our Constitution. It’s still there. It still has the same intent it had at the time it was put there: to limit the ability of the President to have an unlimited military at his disposal.
Ditto for giving the power to declare war to the Congress, NOT the President.
Also, finally, positing that it’s isolationism vs what we have now, which is all the bad things about imperialism with none of the benefits, is wrong. Because that clause only limits the ability to field an army, and says nothing about a navy.
Because a navy, like an air force, is a legitimate defensive force. An army is of course also useful for defense, but in the event actual bodies with rifles were needed, the militia, aka the National Guard, was supposed to largely supply that. Which, by the way, was true with the exception of the Civil War all the way up to the Spanish-American War. That pretty clearly shows what the intent of the founders was, as policy followed that intent for more than a hundred years before it finally began to fall into the decay the founders, especially Benjamin Franklin, considered inevitable.
And it is decadent for a democracy to carry a large military. There is no surer route to first, imperialism, and then penury and tyranny.
I was addressing the issues the OP raised. “How big does the military need to be” is a very different question from “is our current military structure what the founding fathers had in mind.” I agree that it’s not, but it’s not the OP’s question.
Okay, and I have never thought otherwise. Why are you telling me this?
I’ ll ask you to please to respond to what I actaully say, not what you *want * me to say.
FWIW, I agree that we can cut our ground troops back more, as Rumsfeld and others have suggested. I don’t think that you can entirely eliminate them for several reasons. The first is that the nature of modern warfare means that at times you will want/need to get a regiment or two somewhere much faster than having to call up reserves allows (e.g Desert Shield 1991). The second is that much of modern warfare calls for intense training. With all due respect to the NG, training on an M1 Abrams by working on it “just one weekend a month and two weeks a year” isn’t the same thing as doing it fulltime. In Iraq right now, US troops have absurdly good casualty ratios; 20 to 1 and the like. I like that, and a lot of it comes largely of training. And while you are correct that a large standing army invites adventurism, I do not think we ought to go completely without one.
If you’d like to discuss the OP, I’m willing to do so; provided you can avoid making assumptions about what you think I think.
You are aware that something like 40% of the troops currently in Iraq, attaining that 20 to 1 kill ratio, are National Guard?
But upholding their competence - which is merely expected - isn’t my point. My point, and it is related to the OP, is that if you have a large military, as in a standing army, instantly available for action wherever the President decides, that automatically creates a fait accompli, as we have seen with Iraq, where the President can move those forces into the theatre of combat, and then go before the Congress and say, in effect, “Are you going to support these troops in their mission or not?”
Very few representatives are going to be able to resist that kind of demagogic rhetoric, which is of course precisely what our current President did in this situation, and what he depended on.
Either you want the President to be dictator for four years or you don’t. I don’t.
Nice try, furt, but the US was already on a war footing at the time that vote was taken.
What was actually happening on Oct 11, the day of the resolution?
In short, very large parts of what is already an enormous armed force were either already in the Persian Gulf or on their way on October 11, 2002. Everyone who voted for that resolution knew, or should have known, that significant forces were already there or were on their way there, and that this would appreciably shorten the time between the passage of the resolution and the start of hostilities. That puts enormous pressure on them to support the troops already there, and to support the movements of troops and material into the region that were already occurring on the day the resolution was passed. That CNN didn’t know until December is not exactly surprising.
All of this is only possible because the continued maintenance of a large, standing, professional army makes it possible. It was the Founders’ worst nightmare, and it was so for a very good reason.
Nice try, furt, but the US was already on a war footing at the time that vote was taken.
What was actually happening on Oct 11, the day of the resolution?
In short, very large parts of what is already an enormous armed force were either already in the Persian Gulf or on their way on October 11, 2002. Everyone who voted for that resolution knew, or should have known, that significant forces were already there or were on their way there, and that this would appreciably shorten the time between the passage of the resolution and the start of hostilities. That puts enormous pressure on them to support the troops already there, and to support the movements of troops and material into the region that were already occurring on the day the resolution was passed. That CNN didn’t know until December is not exactly surprising.
All of this is only possible because the continued maintenance of a large, standing, professional army makes it possible. It was the Founders’ worst nightmare, and it was so for a very good reason.
Pantom, you have to understand, the naval component of that example you posted cannot be interpreted solely as a run up to war.
First of all, the naval component of Central Command, COMUSNAVCENT, is “dual-hatted” as commander of the United States 5th Fleet. That headquarters is located in Bahrain, and has been located there since 1993.
Second, mere presence of a carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf isn’t uncommon. It is a frequent area of operations for carrier battle groups undergoing both Mediterrenean deployments and Western Pacific and Indian Ocean deployments, especially since the Gulf War.
The same, incidentally, goes for the Marines. Their Central Command headquarters is also in Bahrain. They also have Amphibious Ready Groups, which are groups of amphibious ships carrying Marines. These frequently deploy, and usually deploy near the Persian Gulf.
It’s no secret that war preparations were being made in October. Not doing so would have been, in my mind, a needless risk to the lives of servicemen and women, so I do not mind this. But many of the things on your list were just business as usual in the Gulf region.
Mr Moto: that’s precisely my objection, from one angle. When you look at the size of what was already there, it boggles the mind.
Point being, yes, the Persian Gulf is important because of the oil. But the oil will flow to wherever it’s needed, if you believe in the power of the market to deliver the goods, and that will be true regardless of who nominally “controls” the oil. Making the opposing argument amounts to advocating a kind of “oil mercantilism”, in which oil needs to be secured in order to be sure that it will be available.
As has been observed, most of those things you named are S.O.P, not anything like a “war footing.” All of which is incidental to the point: things were nowhere near being so far along that Congress couldn’t have stopped it. By a large majority, they chose not to.
If you want to spell out what you think is a suitable force structure for the US military, please do so.
