What’s he got to do with it? I was talking about the political administration.
I’m no fan of Nixon’s, but, to be fair, US casualties in Vietnam began to drop immediately after he took office and right up until he withdrew all US forces. They had been rising steadily each year after Kennedy and Johnson got us into the mess.
Eisenhower was a Republican and certainly had a lot to do with not losing WWII (pre-presidentially, obviously).
TL;DR: Not a helpful or accurate observation.
Disagree.
Nixon lost Vietnam. He sabotaged the peace talks, and then Watergate and the reaction to it, made it politically impossible for the US to help the South Vietnamese when the peace broke down in 1975. That one is squarely on the republicans.
Eisenhower, for all his military skill, was a replaceable functionary. There were dozens of officers who could have been slotted into his place, and done as well. Roosevelt was irreplaceable.
If you want to argue over the Vietnam War, could you do so in another thread?
We’ll know something is up if Tramp starts withdrawing troops from Korea, the Mideast, and Europe, for stateside duty. Violate the Posse Comitatus act? We’ll see how this SCOTUS responds. Empower Kim and Putin? Ignore that.
And that’s exactly how the military is being used here too. But we have the National Guard to do that. By statute they have a dual civil and military role. The other difference is that the US is huge. Here in New Jersey things are bad. The National Guard is doing a lot. Setting up and running testing sites, setting up and running field hospitals etc. locally many activated medics were put into a veterans retirement home because of staffing issues.
In a place like Wyoming that’s not going to be needed.
The US has laws in place to keep the active military from being involved civil actions. Using the active military in that way will cause more trouble than it would be worth. People are distrustful of martial law. They don’t want the military to be in charge. Someone from Spain should understand that given your history.
What are the labor bottlenecks which hold down production/servicing rates? I.e.: “Right now we could do twice as much of this activity/widget if only we had more people doing this specific step”
Which items are shortest? Could military personnel make them?
Why not just hire all of the unemployed people to do that?
Thread: Why isn’t Covid handled like a War?
Because a foreign power has not invaded the US. We’ve seen other so-called wars. War on Drugs. War on Terror. War on Poverty. War on Fuel Inefficiency. Those haven’t worked out so well. Who expects a War on COVID to work?
First of all do we want to expose the military to getting the virus? They need to be quarantined too.
Second of all, too often we are simply reading about NYC. There are many areas that are managing well with their case numbers and not overwhelmed.
Third, we can’t simply move doctors from one area to NYC or other hard hit areas, because they may be needed back at their homes because of a local flair up of the virus.
It really is a mater of logistics. You have NYC which was not ready, now needing more, but other areas not willing to give them everything they want. And this in part correct, you can’t move supplies and people in case they are needed, nor should you punish areas that had well thought out plans or ask them to risk their community to help one that did not.
It’s cruel, but one does not give away all their pocket money the homeless at the expense of their children, which is what this question is leading to.
Finally give a thought to those people who do set up field hospitals (for example) and those that will go largely unused. Do you think a year from now, they will be thanked? Hardly they will be on the mark for wasting resources.
This is an unfortunate thing, but it’s no one’s fault and it would have happend, no matter who was in charge, despite what anyone is saying.
It reminds me of Winston Churchill when he spoke of the unfortunate choices he had to make when the British could read the Enigma code (used by Germans) but he would have to chose to ignore the information and let Brits (and other allies) die because to otherwise would expose the fact the British could read the code.
You’re right.
Because it’s a Pandemic.
American politicians love to suggest they are solving a problem by calling it a War.
As has been mentioned earlier, the ‘War on Drugs’ has been going for decades, cost many billions of dollars and has achieved … nothing.
Now if the US took this crisis as a chance to reform its medical system - that would be worthwhile.