Free Republic
Browse · Search
Smoky Backroom
Topics · Post Article

To: 2ndDivisionVet

Truthfully, the wave of the future is to limit the use of the US military to real and important missions. Better for them, far cheaper and more sensible for all of us.

The way to do this is to create a foreign legion, somewhat like the French Foreign Legion, but privately owned and operated offshore of the US. Think by a US loyal company like Blackwater, owned and operated by US veterans.

Importantly, this organization would perform some of the most mundane, expensive, and erosive missions the US military is saddled with, yet nationally give us *more* military flexibility around the world.

1) Peacekeeping, humanitarian and disaster relief missions. For the US military to do these “stand around with a rifle and feed people” missions costs billions, uses expensive supplies, and diverts combat oriented commands away from where they should be. And they can drag on for months or years.

2) Conventional African missions. Americans just plain do not want to send our sons and daughters to Africa. We correctly see the place as a pest hole filled with nasty diseases and no, zero compelling national interest.

Importantly, the French learned long ago that such forces must be kept offshore, because in country there are just too many temptations for mischief, from just about everyone. So likely we would put them on a Caribbean island, and when they had signed on to a mission, voluntarily, the US military would provide them with transport and logistics.

Being offshore as well, they could recruit the best and the brightest from around the world, as long as their senior NCOs and officers were US citizens.

Being a private organization, the US could also offer their services to American allies, and unlike with our own people, would have no problem with them being under foreign control.

The use of such private armies was very successful in Europe for over a thousand years, and kept the price of military services far lower than with standing armies. Only when Napoleon created an enormous “grand armee” of a million men was it realized that such a mass could only be opposed by other mass armies. But if such massive numbers are not in question, private armies are much more economical.


20 posted on 01/07/2011 7:58:33 PM PST by yefragetuwrabrumuy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]


To: yefragetuwrabrumuy

Does America Need A Foreign Legion?
http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/new/article056.html

An American Foreign Legion
http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,Defensewatch_012104_Foreign,00.html


25 posted on 01/07/2011 8:28:06 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet (Please donate to FreeRepublic, sanity in a world gone mad!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies ]

To: yefragetuwrabrumuy

Big ideas but they would never work for Americans. Mogadishu Somalia in 93 was commanded by a frog general and all he did was get a bunch of rangers killed. He didn’t have a clue. Frog culture is good for frogs, not us. If it hadn’t been for the reaction of other Rangers and Marines with their choppers it would have been a lot worse. It does not seem to me that you have any military experience at all. There are a million jokes about the French military running away. They are well deserved. Can you name a successful campaign in the last hundred years that they were responsible for?
And now you want to make the most effective military in the world just like theirs.
Don’t think so.


26 posted on 01/07/2011 8:30:55 PM PST by oldenuff2no (Rangers lead the way...... Delta, the original European home land security)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Smoky Backroom
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson