Whatever the Constitution says or doesn’t say in a legalistic manner about the detailed organization and activities of the armed forces, it is incontrovertible that the militia system of the early Republic was deficient in providing for the common defense. This was realized on a practical level during the War of 1812; the professionalization of the military was begun after that war ended and went hand-in-hand with technical advances made possible by the Industrial Revolution.
That pesky ol' Constitution. It's not really the law of the land. Feel free to ignore/revise anything that doesn't suit you.
Today, forum members who pine for the days of naught but citizen soldiers armed with naught but small arms had best resign themselves to losing.
We're 0-5 since WWII (0-7 if you count the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty.) With 40 million illegals in our country,I'm not sure we can even call ourselves a sovereign nation. Just exactly how much losing should we resign ourselves to?
The draft ended 46 years ago. All fretting about what leaders are doing with “our sons and daughters” became irrelevant at that moment: today’s troops are not helpless children being exploited, they are adults who volunteer. Indeed, the very fact they have volunteered elevates them to a higher moral plane of adulthood than isolationists, conspiracy theorists, libertarians, and pacifists.
During the Civil War it was acceptable to pay someone to go to war for you. Today,instead of paying out of your own pocket we use tax dollars. Doesn't that make your conscience feel all warm and fuzzy. How progressive.
There is but one choice: pay in money now or pay in blood later. Choosing the second alternative brings uglier outcomes. And the final bill will be much higher.
------- and there we have the moneyshot. Would it be OK with you if we just sign over our paychecks to the thugs in DC?
“...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.