Liberals are not serving in the military enough. What ought to be done?

Great Debates
81

The Republicans have had a majority in Congress for pretty much the last eleven-twelve years. This could have a small effect towards skewing appointments to the service academies - or exaggerate the existing tendencies in the candidate pool. Obviously this cannot be a major factor given the discrepancy.

You note that the discrepancy is in the college educated officer corps, which for no good reason I am assuming does not necessarily include former enlisteds. What proportion of the ROTC - educated officers receive scholarships? (I know there are other military scholarship type programs but I think ROTC is by far the largest).

82

But if you’re in the military, why would you want to be liberal. I mean, if most liberals have this point of view:

then they’d only be hurting themselves. Less pay, less benefits, less people to do the job, less equipment.

83

Gee, what an accurate caricature.

84

… To add something to that, saying that military spending is perhaps absurdly high does not mean you’re advocating underpaying soldiers or giving them insufficient equipment.

In fact, I could swear people are saying they are underpaid and underprotected NOW.

85

Frankly, the way that the Bush administration has willfully shafted members of the military, one has to wonder why they continue to ride his rod so hard. Some sort of battered wife syndrome?

86

I don’t know what you mean by “rock-star” lifestyle. Plenty of conservatives dream of getting rich by doing nothing. They get MBAs. (Entrepreneurs are another story.)

Reminds me of when a friend told me that Hannity and Colmes were easy to tell apart because one looked liberal and the other conservative. Not knowing what they looked like I looked it up on the web. I saw Hannity and thought “he’s wrong. I’d guess maybe conservative but plenty liberals dress in a suit and a tie.” Then I saw Colmes :wink:

Point being, plenty of liberals, at least in my mind, are button-down and service-oriented enough that it’s hard to tell who’s who just because they don’t look like some stoner dreaming of a big star who played a mean guitar and always ate at the steak bar.

And anyway, judging from the stereotypical predilection for academia liberals have, versus the supposed conservative leaning toward business, I’d say it’s the conservatives who are afraid of long hours with little pay :wink:

87

Hey, don’t forget about all those conservatives who whole-heartedly support the Paris Hilton tax cut. Nothing harder working than a heir or heiress.

88

See, this is what liberals don’t get about the military. They think Bush is ‘shafting’ them by sending them to Iraq, by not giving them enough armor, whatever.

But what military people care about is being allowed to DO THEIR JOB. They SUPPORT the war. They want to stay and win it. What they appreciate about Bush is that he doesn’t try to micro-manage the war. When asked about strategy in Iraq, Bush repeatedly says, “Ask my military commanders.” When asked when the troops will come home, Bush says, “When my commanders say they should.” That’s music to a soldier’s ears, and it’s something they rarely hear from Liberals. They also ‘get’ that Bush really likes military people, respects them, and listens to them.

They like that Bush doesn’t turn every funeral or hospital visit into a photo-op. Bush visits soldiers in hospitals all the time - it’s just that these visits are ‘off the record’ as they should be.

When Liberals say they ‘support the military’ by wanting to bring them home where they are safe, they don’t understand that they are doing the opposite of supporting the military. Because the military isn’t about being home and safe, it’s about going out and doing the hard things required to protect the country. And once they are doing it, all they want from their leaders is to make sure they get funding and equipment and most of all to stay out of their hair and to let them complete their job. What they don’t want is to have politically-driven rules of engagement designed to protect a politician’s popularity at home, or to be pulled out of a conflict before they’ve achieved victory because the leader at home has cold feet. They don’t want their sacrifices used by politicians.

I just don’t think the average liberal ‘gets’ the average soldier. They don’t understand them. They don’t know what motivates them.

Here in Canada, our military has been severely damaged by liberals. It started with ‘force unification’, when liberal bean counters looked at the duplication of effort caused by having separate services like air force, army, and navy. Their bright idea was to create one big ‘armed force’, under one command, with everyone wearing the same uniforms and working together. To a liberal, this sounds great. Harmony, efficiency, an end to divisiveness in the forces and turf battles between commanders. Who could argue with that?

Well, pretty much every soldier. What our Liberals didn’t get is that military people thrive on inter-service rivalries. They work harder, and have more esprit de corps when they can organize into their own units and fight for the honor of the unit and of the service they are in. Each service has its traditions that are taken very seriously. Soldiers climb over the wall into gunfire because they are holding up their comrades and the traditions of their unit. They do it because it would be unthinkable for a soldier in the best damned unit of the best damned service in the best damned country to NOT go over the wall. Pierre Trudeau thought force unification would create a ‘modern’ military, but what it did was destroy morale.

When the tories came into power, they reversed some of this, giving each service its own distinct uniforms again, for example. I was in the enlisted mess at CFB Namao when the first airman walked in in his new reissued blues. You should have heard the cheering.

In the 1990s, our forces suffered a real setback when a few bad apples in our airborne regiment tortured and killed a Somali suspect. How did the Liberals respond? Not by just punishing those responsible. No, they had to launch investigations into the ‘culture that promoted this kind of behaviour’, smearing and tarnishing the entire forces, and eventually disbanding our entire airborne regiment - a regiment with a glorious martial history going back to WWII. With the stroke of a pen, the Liberals destroyed a major piece of Canada’s martial tradition, just because it didn’t match their touchy-feely impression of how people should be.

The Liberals did the same thing in Afghanistan. The U.S. wanted to award a few of our soldiers bronze stars for bravery, but the Canadian government refused to let it happen for political reasons. To make matters worse, one of these soldiers (a sniper) was actually court-martialed for telling a chaplain to go screw himself after getting a lecture on the morality of shooting people from two kilometers away - which was his freaking job.

And of course, our Liberal government has cut our military to the bone, often for political reasons. For example, our Sea-King helicopters are totally out of date, and Mulroney had ordered replacements for them all. That year, the Liberals ran on a platform of cutting military spending, including the Sea King replacements. And so they did, and they paid a 500 million dollar penalty to get ouf of the contract. It didn’t even occur to them that perhaps there was a good reason for replacing these helicopters - it was all politics. Now they’re having to buy the things anyway, so that 500 million was just money thrown away. In the interim, our soldiers were forced to fly helicopters that were needlessly dangerous because they were old and mechanically unsound.

The same thing happens in the U.S. Liberals claim to support the military, but they opposed most of the systems the military uses so successfully today. The cruise missile, the B2 bomber, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, etc. There’s lots of handwringing among liberals today that Bush went to war without enough troops. Well, guess why? Go back and look at who supported force reduction in the 1990’s, and who opposed it. As Rumsfeld has said, you go to war with the army you have, not the one you wish you had. And the army the U.S. has is the size it is because liberals demanded massive cutbacks in the size of the forces in the 1990’s. Of course, some Republicans did too, and some Democrats opposed the cuts. But in general, when you see a debate about cutting the military or de-funding a weapons system, you can bet that on one side you’ll find a preponderance of liberals, and on the other a preponderance of conservatives.

I could go on. Take, for example, the liberal reaction to U.S. force projection. When the U.S. won Grenada, the liberals denigrated the victory by saying, “oh, whoop de do! Wow, we can take a little island full of construction workers.” Then when the U.S. military faces a foe that fights hard, suddenly the liberals are all talking about quagmire, how the war can’t be won, it’s a losing cause, might as well pull out now and give up.

None of this is lost on military people. They know where their support comes from. It comes from the red states, from middle America, from a generally conservative population. They know where their opposition comes from - Berkeley, Seattle, LA, New York, etc. You can see it by just looking at who joins the military, and it’s why the military is mostly Republican and still supports the war in Iraq more than the general U.S. population does.

And by the way, the ‘lack of armor’ issue is an almost total fabrication by liberals to smear the Bush administration. Armor was being produced as fast as the factories that make it could turn it out. There was a lag in up-armoring humvees simply because it was a field modification for the conditions on the ground, and it takes time to do. No one was intentionally shafting the soldiers.

89

No, and yes, respectively. (I’m left of center for America, I guess.)

90

Well, I was more thinking about pay, benefits, health care and armor, whatever. The rest of your post is itself uninformed opinion. I’m very sure you have no more of a handle on the opinion of members of the military than any other rabid reader of rightwing blogs. The 101st Fighting Keyboarders, Canadian Division.

91

Uh, you know those military commanders you said were so highly respected by the troops? They wanted more troops. A politician – Donald Rumsfeld – rejected the war plans drawn up by the brass until it had the number of troops Rumsfeld preferred. Your attempt to blame this on liberals – or perhaps you were simply targeting Clinton for the military cuts proposed by GHW Bush? – is demonstrably false, and you should know it.

All in all, despite a handful of valid points (that there is a problem among the more liberal that there is a general lack of awareness of anything military related) you have provided a excellent example of why it is desirable to have a diversity of political viewpoints in the military. When serious debates within the Pentagon come up, we shouldn’t have a bunch of conservative generals simply slapping each other on the back, blaming the liberal boogeyman for problems in the military, and congratulating themselves on their latest anti-liberal screed.

And when informed liberals talk about shafting the military, I think we’d not so much point to sending troops to Iraq, necessarily, as Bush’s boneheaded gaffe of approving a warplan that counted on the okay of Turkey, and not even trying to get that okay until it was too late. There’s also the matters of his attempts to cut combat pay, his proposals that would have left out many families from increased compensation should a soldier die while in service, the consistent short-changing of veterans health care by billions of dollars, his opposition to increasing various compensation to veterans and the National Guard, and so on. If you’d like to argue that these policies are actually good for the military, as opposed to bad for it, then have at it.

92

I see. My post is ‘uninformed opinion’, despite the fact that I’ve spent a good chunk of my life surrounded by military people, worked with them on a military base for several years, and have military friends with whom I’ve spent many a beer call discussing these very issues. Your opinion, the other hand, is a model of enlightenment and intuition, based on your wide-ranging experience with the military, right?

And note that two messages after mine once again defined ‘support of the military’ in a typical liberal way - benefits, pay, health coverage, etc. The welfare state as extended to the military. And while these things are important, they are not part of the core of what motivates a soldier. It’s not why they join up, and it’s not why they fight.

As for the ‘101st fighting keyboarders’ - kindly go and screw yourself. I’m sick and tired of this particular slander. It’s meaingless and insulting, it’s ad-hominem, and it doesn’t belong in Great Debates. It’s always the sign of a losing argument when you have to trot out crap like this. Since you do it so often, perhaps it’s indicative of your general ability to win an intelligent debate.

One last thing - it’s easy to support the military at a time when their mission is widely popular, such as right after the attack on the World Trade Center or during WWII. The real test of how much you support the military comes during a time of peace, when the military is struggling to maintain its readiness yet there are no immediate threats. It’s during these times that the liberals abandon the military.

Another way the left shows disdain for the military is the way they infantilize them for political reasons. When they are dying, suddenly they are ‘kids’ or ‘children’, and the ultimate moral authorities suddenly become their mothers. Politicians are asked if they will ‘send their kids to war’, as if these soldiers aren’t adults who made their own decisions for their own reasons.

*I went into a public-‘ouse to get a pint o’beer,
The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here.”
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:

O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
But it’s Thank you, Mister Atkins,'' when the band begins to play, The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play, O it's Thank you, Mr. Atkins,’’ when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn’t none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-‘alls,
But when it comes to fightin’, Lord! they’ll shove me in the stalls!

For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, wait outside”;
But it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide,
The troopship’s on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide,
O it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide.

Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;
An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.

Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy how’s yer soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of 'eroes” when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it’s “Thin red line of 'eroes” when the drums begin to roll.

We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints:
Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;

While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind,”
But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind,
There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind.

You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires an’ all:
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.

For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of 'is country,” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
But Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool - you bet that Tommy sees!
*

  • Rudyard Kipling
93

Oh, the irony is delicious.

94

Were more troops available? The 4th infantry was refused entry from Turkey, which threw a bit of a wrench in the plans. You can certainly criticise the leaders for taking the risk that Turkey would allow the troops to come through. No one ever said Republicans are perfect. But since they didn’t get through, where were these other troops supposed to come from?

It’s the job of the civilian leadership to decide who to fight, and when. It’s then the job of the military to carry out the mission.

Absolutely. It would be wonderful if there was more balance in the military. It just isn’t going to happen.

I’m not talking about specific bad decisions. Leaders both Liberal and Conservative can make bad decisions. I’m talking about a difference in attitudes, a fundamental difference in thinking between conservatives and liberals which tends to make liberals somewhat alien to military culture. I could give you examples all day.

95

Really? Do explain.

96

On the contrary, it’s the very essence of the free market.

There are certainly intangibles that many overlook, from a patriotic perspective. There are also intangibles that many overlook that might get more liberals to serve, such as picking better missions, such as early intervention in genocides rather than late intervention in ousting evil dictators who happen to have oil.

You say this, yet conservatives, at least the current administration, aren’t exactly doing a bang-up job “supporting” our troops with stupid tactical military decisions. If I were in the military, I’d rather forego the supposed moral support in favor of more armor and better pay.

Also, I’d feel equally condescended to by conservatives and liberals if I were in the military. Sure, the liberals might tend to think they care more about money and benefits than higher causes, but conservatives imply that you must support the current administration’s policies to “support the troops.” That implies that the military is one monolithic entity who all think alike, and overlooks the fact that many feel they are protecting people’s right to disagree politically.

I’ll agree that that does tend to be the case, for the last couple decades or so. However, if we were to get in a liberal-backed fight (such as preventing genocide) and started to sustain heavy casualties, I’d bet that, perhaps not politicians, but certainly your conservative person-on-the-street and or editorial column would start evoking infanticizing imagery right quick! (e.g. Don’t let our boys/children die for useless nation building!)

:rolleyes:To me this is a fancy way of accusing liberals of spitting in the military’s faces. I dunno how much it happened in Olde England, but I assure you rumors of liberal’s widespread violently anti-military attitudes is greatly exagerrated. What are you even trying to say by posting this? It really seems like a backhanded attack to me. The only people who act as poorly as those in the poem are ordinary folks in military towns, of all political persuasions, who think the new boys in town are a bit uppity.

97

Yeah. Not that we’ve ever seen a conservative politician use us as human props for a theatrical speech in recent times. Or taken advantage of our respect for and deference to authority to create a safe audience and manufacture the appearance of support. Oh, certainly not. And I can’t imagine that a conservative would act as a self-appointed mouthpiece for all of us, using the spectre of a monolithic, same-thinking, yet very easily discouraged military to bully his opposition into a cowed silence.

You have a good point, if not a big one. One can find a patronizing liberal middle class attitude about the military(one I shared before enlisting, by the way) similar to the one directed towards trade school students. It can be summarized as such:

“Well, if that’s the best they can do with their lives, then how very nice for them.”

But equating the neocon chickenhawks’ love affair with naked aggression and violence at a safe distance with respect for the military is a little much. The other side respects me as the person inside the uniform, not just the gun I might hold.

98

Ravenman: One more question: If Bush is so bad for the military, why did veterans vote for him by a ratio of 57-41 over John Kerry? I suspect Liberals are completely baffled by this, since Kerry was a ‘war hero’, and Bush ‘pulled strings to avoid combat’.

And after the war began and all these supposed mistakes had been made, the Army Times did a survey of active-duty military personnel, and discovered they favored Bush over Kerry by a whopping 73% to 18%!

It seems to me that this makes my point - that Liberals don’t understand the military, and by persisting on trying to evalaute their support of it based on the typical liberal principles (bring the boys home, better health care, etc), they continue to miss the point.

BTW, Kerry’s use of his medals was problematic even before the Swift Boat vets came along. Military people look down on those who brag about their exploits, and it’s considered poor form to talk about your medals. Ask a Medal of Honor winner what he did to win the medal, and he’s likely to tell you, “I forgot to duck”, or “my exuberance overcame my brains for a few minutes”, or some other crack. John McCain understands this. He’s ten times the hero Kerry ever was, and talks about it 1/10 as much. THAT is what the military respects.

Here’s another telling comment:

Heart. Character. Saying what you believe, and sticking to it. These are characteristics the military reveres, and that’s why, despite his many screw ups, the military loves Bush. This was also what they hated about Clinton. Even when he said the right things, there was suspicion that he wasn’t speaking from his heart, but from what the polls told him to say.

99

So, military people don’t care about armor? Huh. The things you learn on the internets!
From here

Well I’ll be. The things you could learn on the internets if you were more interested in learning than in making your side look good.

Or is this one of them thar cases when the “real” military people care about doing their jobs and it’s only those fakey military people in the field who care about stuff like armor?

100

Of course they care about armor. They just don’t blame Bush when they don’t have it, because it’s not his decision. Or were you under the impression that Bush sat with a requisition for armor in front of him and said, “Nah. Don’t send it. Those soldiers have enough armor already.”

And if you actually read the whole article, you can learn even more. For instance, you can learn that the factory that produces the armor was backlogged, or that the commanders had hoped that a better-armored vehicle would be available, but it was delayed. Or that there were various procurement snafus. Or that the reason the army delayed providing the armor was that they were trying to tighten the specifications to make it more effective. And that the Marines, who opted to take the armor that was available rather than wait for a better design, received it immediately. You might even read that one of the reasons the armor was slow to be delivered was because of ‘years of cost cutting’ that shrank the capabilities of the armories to ramp up production quickly, and that another delay was caused by inter-service rivalries.

NONE of this had anything at all to do with the Bush administration.