THE INFINITY WAR. We say we’re a peaceful nation. Why do our leaders always keep us at war?

Washington Post ^ | Dec 13 2019 | Samuel Moyn and Stephen Wertheim

[Magnum44]

What a nonsensical response. The industry responds to the govt demand. Going into WWII, industry leaders were called into the White House and asked what it would take to defeat the axis powers. Those industry leaders like Ford and others told the leadership what it would cost, and then they went out and delivered. It wasn’t cheap. Were they criminals?

Dirty politicians can corrupt any part of government. Why do you subscribe to the ‘military industrial complex’ propaganda that implies its any worse than the rest of government? I would argue the opposite. The military and most contractors work in a mostly low profit margin and high (financially) risky environment. They PRODUCE the means to let our soldiers go win wars with the highest probability of killing the enemy so they can safely come home to their families. Many of those in the industry were former soldiers, sailors, and airmen themselves.

It should give you comfort that this industry is actually providing for the countries defense, and doing so with the worlds best tech, when China, Russia, and other adversaries are developing weapons to defeat us.

Point your accusatory fingers at corrupt elected officials. American workers don’t need your ignorant talking point accusations.

[schurmann]

“...That pesky ol’ Constitution. It’s not really the law of the land...” [SanchoP, post 39]

To borrow some words from an observer whose name I cannot recall, the US Constitution is not a suicide pact. Neither is it Holy Writ.

“...0-5 since WWII (0-7 if you count the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty.)...not sure we can even call ourselves a sovereign nation...how much losing should we resign ourselves to?...” [SanchoP, post 39]

Wrong in the count, and in the overarching concept. Also less than honest.

To take my last objection first: the “Wars” on Poverty and Drugs cannot be on the list. Placing the word “war” in the title was a bit of word magic on the part of the Progressive Left, who admitted they wanted “the moral equivalent of war,” not the real thing. They cooked up the moral-equivalent phrasing after the First World War. Contending that such domestic policies really do have some resemblance to actual armed conflict is not honest.

To address my first objection further: the adventure in Southeast Asia wasn’t a loss. Not in a military sense. It was something the USA walked away from, after public opinion soured. The North Vietnamese deserve full credit for discerning the weak points in our open society and playing on them. The American public was not savvy enough to figure that out. The result does indeed suggest that the people are sovereign, but says nothing flattering about our store of wisdom.

Concerning the conceptual error: the United States hast not been losing since 1945 because senior officials have been failing to comply with certain legal formulations. We haven’t prevailed because other powers arose in the world. Leaders judged the risks of stepping up our efforts ran too many risks and so backed away. Outcomes have lacked the moral clarity of victory in WW2, proving less than satisfying to the public.

Times change. Conditions change. The nation is no longer the fifth-rate agricultural experiment that it was in the 1790s.

The militia concept as initially applied in our national defense was defunct by the first decade of the 19th century. We are today benefitting from extraordinary luck that the nation got off so lightly during the War of 1812. We were lucky in additional ways, in that military and civilian leaders saw enough of the light and revamped the military establishment accordingly.

The chief lesson of World War One is that foot troops unaided aren’t much more than targets. The logic of armed conflict points away from away from manpower-intensive notions (the current wisdom of 1790) toward greater technological capability, .

Is all the technology expensive? You bet. The alternative is costlier still.