Sam, it is quite clear that you’re willing to lump virtually everyone you consider liberal into being some degree of anti military. I get it. You don’t need to repeat it to me. Check out my first post in this thread, #31, and you’ll see that I agree that the problem raised by Moto isn’t with the military, its with liberals.
On the troop levels, you know damn well that the US could well have fielded a heck of a lot more troops than just the 4th ID that failed to make it through Turkey. It’s been well covered that the warplans rejected by Rumsfeld were substantially larger than simply one additional division. And so the idea that liberals are to blame for a shortage of troops in Iraq is a dishonest argument, and frankly, given your knowledge of military matters, you should know better.
In regards to Kerry, I did not think he was some kind of amazing candidate that would appeal to the military. Kerry didn’t relate to ANYONE well. I’m sure that there’d be a lot more votes in the military for a centrist, pro-military Democrat than for a Massachusetts liberal. Honestly, why should I, or anyone else, be surprised that a blue-blooded, Vietnam-war protesting, mealy-mouthed billionaire wasn’t well-liked by current members of the armed forces? Do you even have a point to prove here?
And on the armor thing, here’s the real source of the problem: when we went to war in Iraq in March 2003, the Pentgon planned on having body armor available for only front-line units. As it became clear that all our troops were being shot at, the Pentagon belatedly decided to issue the body armor to eveyone in theater.
You might call it 20-20 hindsight, but it should be clear to everyone that all troops should have been issued body armor from the outset. I do not know who is personally responsible for saying that only front-line units should have body armor – whether it was Franks, Myers, Rumsfeld, or Bush – but they all have the responsibility for the decision that was made, because any one of them had the authority to order otherwise. The idea that darned libruls are to blame for this is known as “passing the buck” and failing to take responsibility for the decisions one is supposed to make, which I can guarantee you is not some kind of pro military virtue.
Yes, I’m describing ALL liberals. Which is why I said,
There are some great liberals who were also great soldiers and great supporters of the military. Bob Kerrey, for example. And as I myself pointed out a couple of messages ago, 41% of veterans supported Kerry, as did 18% of active duty personell.
I just figured it goes without saying that in a thread about the general characteristics of two populations, any comments about ‘liberals’ vs ‘conservatives’ would be taken to be generalities.
Which ones? From where?
Can you provide a cite to some of them? Also, I’m not trying to defend Rumsfeld here, or every decision made in the run-up and aftermath of the war. Since I’ve never disputed that mistakes were made, focusing on those mistakes in this thread is a straw man. In fact, the Army Times article I cited is interesting, because it shows that many members of the military believe the war was not handled perfectly, yet they support Bush anyway.
You may not have, but the Democrats sure did. It’s one of the reasons Kerry got the nomination. They thought they had the perfect candidate for the times - a guy who could attract the left with his anti-war credentials, while playing the war hero to attract the right and the military. That was a terrible miscalculation, and the root of it, IMO, is a perfect example of how the left doesn’t understand the military or those who support it. It’s not enough to be a hero. And it was horribly bad judgement for Kerry to brag about it - a judgement, I’m sure, which came from the liberal political advisors around him who thought that this was the way to win the ‘pro military’ vote.
I think this is hindsight. I think a lot of people thought that Kerry WOULD appeal to the military. The thinking went like this: “Who’s a military guy going to vote for? Someone who won a Silver Star on the rivers of Vietnam, or a guy who used Daddy’s influence to dodge the fighting?”
You’re right - it is hindsight. If you believe this, then wouldn’t that be true for every war? Is there some reason why soldiers don’t have body armor as standard kit, and why Humvees typically aren’t that heavily armored? Could it be that the military looked at the tradeoff between armor and mobility, and decided that it was better to be more mobile?
By the way, armor isn’t a panacea - a lot of deaths in Iraq have been vehicle accidents, and one of the contributing factors has been the heavy retrofitted armor plate, which makes the vehicles more difficult to control.
Did I say it was the liberals to blame for a lack of armor? I just wrote a message that I thought was pretty clear - decisions were made to wait for a new design, there were inter-service rivalries, supply problems, etc. The closest you can come up with for my saying it was the liberals’ fault was a direct quote from the article which said that part of the problem was the inability of armories to ramp up production because of decades of budget cuts.
New Yorker article. Franks initially proposed 4 Army divisions, and was rejected by Rumsfeld. This is also well covered in “Bush at War” by Woodward. And you are the one (in post #88) who blamed liberals for limiting the number of troops available for Iraq through budget cutting in the 1990s. My rebutting your erroneous argument can only be called a “straw man” as a tactic of trying to change the question from a demonstrably false point you have made. If you didn’t want to debate the point, you shouldn’t have brought it up.
Then those Democrats can join in this discussion. If you’re not going to defend Bush’s mistakes, I’m not going to defend Kerry’s, either.
Look, uparmoring Humvees is a patch, not a solution, and everyone who knows anything will say the same. Things like the Stryker are clearly needed if your going to have something between a Humvee and a an M-2.
But wait! Rumsfeld tried to cut the Stryker, too! Cite.
You did, however, in post 88, blame liberals for just about evrything that has gone wrong in the military since the 1990s.
And I didn’t quote anyone. You must have confused me with someone else. I read the same article you did, about the study on armor which began in March 2003, and stated that the real problem wasn’t the troubles in production in the summer and fall of 2003, but the decisions that were made prior to March 2003. You’re talking about efforts to fix the problem after it was recognized, I’m saying that someone ought to be held responsible for the problems in the first place. Isn’t accountability a good thing?
George McGovern was a decorated fighter pilot in World War II. Walter Mondale was an Army Sargeant in the Korean War, a horrendous conflict. Jimmy Carter graduated from Anapolis and was one of the first nuclear submarine commanders under the late Hyman Rickover. Even Ted Kennedy was in the service. Liberals are very patriotic (yet misguided) people.
Your cite, while interesting, doesn’t quite support your op.
It is true that
Note also these numbers are based on things like surveys of subscribers to a military newspaper and WAGs. Hardly reliable data.
That said, it would not surprise me. Military service will always tend to be more attractive to people who find themselves saying “My country, right or wrong” and who believe in the aggressive use of military force in pursuit of American self-interests, than it is to people who argue for a smaller emphasis on military options and more on multi-lateral diplomocy and on shifting a larger proportion of our tax dollars to social programs than to a strong defense. In civilian life you expect to see liberals to be more likely to be in war protest movements than conservatives.
Why do you think it is so desirable to have more liberals in the military, anyway? Consevatives don’t make good soldiers?
All right, what you’ve said here goes to teh heart of why this liberal distrusts the military. There’s an argument often made that we should support the troops because they’re only doing the bidding of the civilian leadership – just following orders, as we may say. And yet, I’ve never felt that was true, and you, as a conservative, apparently don’t feel it’s true either. You say, I think correctly, that the military supports the war. Well, why *should *they support the war? Why shouldn’t they be assailed with the same doubts that we civilians are? The truth is, the military is institutionally disposed in favor of war, and institutionally opposed to “politically-driven rules of engagement.” They want to leave the moral ambiguities to someone else, and just do what they do – which, is not to put too fine a point on it, kill people. As the T-shirt says, “Kill 'em all, and let God sort it out.”
Even if I take this at face value, here’s the issue: is Canada less safe now? Does Canada even have any enemies, besides Quebec? Should Canada really be spending vast sums of money in order to maintain Canada’s “glorious martial history”? This liberal again says no.
Just one btw comment as to that perception that military people “support war” … it seems to me that Presidents and leaders who have served in war are less likely to opt for the use of military force than those who have not. Eisenhower got us out of Korea and then only used military force again once briefly (in Lebanon). Carter served and avoided war. Neither Clinton or Bush served and both had no qualms about using the military option. In the Bush administration Powell was the voice for avoiding military options if possible. (Kennedy seems to have been a notable exception - serving well but creeping us into Viet Nam.)
I do not think that many who have served would agree with Sam that you support our troops by sending them into battle when other options exist or when their service is to no meaningful end.
This is the argument that has been used by liberals over and over again. Who were America’s enemies in 1990? The cold war was over. Everything was peace and harmony. Ain’t gonna study war no more! And the U.S. found itself in two wars within the next 12 years.
WWI was ‘the war to end all wars’. Afterwards, some people felt that war had been ‘outlawed’, and there were plenty of calls by pacifists to dismantle the U.S. military. And in fact, the U.S. entered WWII with sub-standard planes, tanks, trucks, you name it. After WWII, the U.S. cut its military force so dramatically that it had a hard time fielding an army in Korea.
At the turn of the 20th century, the world looked fairly peaceful, at least from a global war standpoint. But within 40 years there were two world wars.
Back to Canada - if Canada is safe today, it’s only because we live under the umbrella of the U.S. military. But we are doing so as parasites. We are not meeting our NATO commitments, and in fact I believe we spend less on our military as a percentage of GDP than any other member of NATO. And it’s foolish for any country to put its safety and sovereignity in the hands of an ally, no matter how trusted.
You need to maintain a strong military in times of peace for several reasons. For one, it helps discourage aggression, and therefore helps prevent situations in which that army might have to be used. As the old saying goes, no country was ever attacked because its military was too strong, but plenty have been attacked because it looked weak. In the modern world, Canada probably doesn’t face a military attack, but there are plenty of other ways our military weakness hurts us. For example, we had virtually no say in the run-up to the Iraq war, simply because we had nothing of value to offer. Britain, on the other hand, managed to get all kinds of concessions from the U.S. A few decades ago, Canada’s military was dramatically bigger, and as a result Canada had a significant influence on the world stage, which helped us promote our country’s values. Now we might as well be Luxembourg for all the influence we have.
The other reason to maintain an effective military in times of peace is that it takes time to build a military when you need one. Just ask Iraq. To build an effective, standalone military capable of defending a country takes decades. And once you have a really good one, it’s ridiculous to dismantle it because you think there are no more threats in the world. Canada’s military was, man for man, one of the best in the world. It still is, it’s just much, much smaller and less capable. But Canada had a strong martial tradition. We took part in the world-changing events of the 20th century with honor and distinction. This helped bind Canadians together and gave us shared pride. It helped inspire our children. It gave us role models and heros. It made us a better country. We’ve lost most of that now, to our great detriment.
You see Sam, Iraq was a situation where military force was not yet required nor the best option at the time (accepting at the time that there were WMDs), and is now accomplishing little meaningful end other than trying to clean up a mess that we’ve helped create. So when you say
I would say that you are claiming that putting them in harm’s way for insufficient cause and leaving them there without accomplishing much good is “supporting” them. I disagree.
Dammit, you did it in the OP! Again, where is your support for the statement “And the facts don’t really seem to be in dispute either.” Your claim is about liberals. Your cite is about Democrats. The conflation started in post #1.
It suits you to assume Democrats are liberal when you like, and not liberal when you want to chastize people for not serving. I say you are talking about personality traits, and there is no reason why a group of people with a particular personality trait “ought” to be in the military, in the arts, in government service, in the bakery business or in swimsuit modeling.
As far as I am concerned, you only win this argument by conflating “liberal” with “non-conformist” or “pacifist.” What makes me a liberal? I thought it was my belief that what is good for the most people is the right thing to do. That might include serving in the military.
Sam, without attacking your post point by point, I think it’s sufficient to say that liberals and conservatives have a very different reading of history as it concerns the military. To take one example, you say, “You need to maintain a strong military in times of peace for several reasons. For one, it helps discourage aggression, and therefore helps prevent situations in which that army might have to be used.” I completely disagree, and I think the First World War is a good example. Having a strong military makes other countries think they need a strong military, and then military thinking – such as focusing on your country’s glorious martial history – begins to take over, on all sides. I think we’ve reached a point in human history where we need to move beyond that. Certainly this is the realization that other countries – Canada, for one – are coming to.
It was conservatives not liberals who wanted the armed forces reduced after World War I and World War II. It was based on a combination of two conservative principles, “cut government spending” and “keep out of foreign problems”. It was the liberals who wanted a standing army and defensive alliances. And it was generally liberals who push for modernizing equipment while conservatives, in and out of the military, insist that if cavalry and battleships were good enough fifty years ago they’re still good enough now.
And at the turn of the 20th century, pretty much every country expected a major war in the near future. Europe was locked in an arms race with everyone trying to build a bigger army and navy in time for the “big one”. Every western power was looking for new colonies and they were running out of ones that weren’t already claimed. Established powers like the Russian Empire, the Habsburg Empire, and the Ottoman Empire were obviously falling apart and everybody suspected their eventual demises would lead to war.