Is the US military that good...

Factual Questions
21

The effectiveness of any nation in war is not just its succesful prosecution but wether the objectives were fulfilled in the longer term.

WWI is a classic case. Millions died and Germany was defeated but the objective as far as Britain was concerned was to eliminate a potential threat to its world power, hence the arms race in the years preceding that war.
Despite emerging victorious the true victors were the US. Britain went into a long decline ,and Germany, far from being less threatening, became a much greater problem and there is a pretty strong case to be made that the Treaty of Versailles was instrumental in that.

Another measure ,I would have thought, is the percentage of troops killed or wounded.
During the US civil war the North deployed far more resources, and even if you concede that it lost more men, the percentage losses were far less .

The US was able to develop its industry before it became involved in WWII by supplying the allies with materiele. This gave it a massive technical boost.By the time an effective US force had been deployed the Germans were already being driven back by the Russians whose contribution cannot be overstated.

Courage and ability can make a huge differance but faced with a massive technical and industrial superiority any nation trying to take on the US would be very foolish.
There are other ways of winning a war too, such as economic warfare.The Eastern bloc and China used proxy wars and even won in Vietnam, but the the time that US troops bought with their lives allowed the economic might of the US to crush all its opponents.

So if ,in evaluating wether the US military are that good, you take into account that it has enabled the US to dominate the latter half of the 20thC you would be forced to conclude that it really is *that good[/].

22

I take polite exception to the idea that we have had inferior artillery.

1)Throughout American history, the US Army has produced consistantly excellent artillerymen. In fact, during WW2, captured German prisoners would beg to be permitted to see the “automatic artillery pieces”. There were none; merely fabously well-trained crews.

Some of the equipment has been poor, but the American Artilleryman is outstanding.

  1. Many armies must assign junoir commissioned officers to do the work that non-coms do in the US military. Most sergeants in most armies are elevated grunts. We provide advanced training, & therefore get remarkable results.

  2. Our combat engineering units have, historically; been very good, also.

“There is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail; nor no railing in a known discreet man, though he do nothing but reprove.”
Countess Olivia to Malvolio; William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 5.

23

It’s easy to win when you hand-pick your enemy. Notice that we aren’t doing anything about Chechnya, nor about Taiwan.

However, I think we really kicked butt during WWII, partly because the entire country got behind the war effort, and I wonder if we’re really capable of that kind of thing anymore.