“We are the enemy, because our public appears incapable of supporting the wars that we engage in.”
Why should we? It’s all politics. We often don’t even know the real reasons we went in, until years later.
I’ll always support the troops, but they shouldn’t be out there fighting other people’s wars.
All wars are political. decided by politicians. But fought by the young of the society.
It does no matter that you or someone else in the citizenry does not agree with the politics that decided the entry into a armed conflict. Once decided, it is not optional. It becomes a duty.
What has happened since Korea is that duty in the popular media is now a relative term, that seems to only apply until another feeling or intuition takes it’s place as being the thinking of “the American people”. So a previous war or engagement by the previous government becomes the past and there is no continuity as politics change.
Now, for the first time, we have the current administration actually blaming failures of government continuity on the previous administration.
The continuity problem has been around since the end of WWII (Eisenhower) in my understanding. Prior to that some modicum of effort was standard fare in succeeding administrations to continue or finish the commitments of the prior one.. But now it’s not done at all!
This cannot continue.
If it does, the United States of America, a formerly successful experiment, has completed it’s journey and will end..
No young person, unless utterly ignorant, would work voluntarily for a government that screws them at some point. In fact I have advised against enlisting in the US military since Obama was elected for his first term.
Would have done that sooner but Reagan had repaired my lost confidence in my country. Only to be dashed by events after his term was over..
I never believed that any young man or woman should ever experience what we went through during and post Vietnam.
Yet they have and are experiencing a very similar trauma.
As I said, it cannot continue this way. One day the nation will need it’s warriors again, and few will answer the call, and frankly speaking, nobody should.