The problems we have is that American men lost their sense of duty and the American people have no concept what our position in the world requires.
Ever since Vietnam, the vast majority of young men see military duty and the risking of lives as “somebody elses problem”. They have better things to do. It’s left to the bare 1% to suffer through the training, the deployments, and sometimes, death.
We are a “superpower” which means that everyone else wants what we have and would only be to happy to see us obliterated. We have to fight people in crappy places so we don’t have to fight them here. Wars, particularly wars where we are trying to protect innocent bystanders take years, decades to win. We are still hanging around Japan and Germany 70 years after WWII because even full-time general wars take a long time to finish.
Now we have 99% of our men that don’t have military skills, don’t know how to fight as a team, and worst, don’t know if they had what it takes.
I agree. When I reported for induction into the USN on December 14, 1967 for four years of active duty, most of the guys were going into the army—maybe a couple of hundred— and there were only 50 of us headed to Navy boot camps. At zero eight hundred, a hidden door opened behind a partition and a humongous black gunnery sarge with shiny bald head bellowed “Listen up! When I come out to you army guys, I’ll tap every other one of you and you are going to be U.S. Marines.” Guys were urinating in their bell bottoms and I said a silent prayer that I had signed up for four instead of letting the chips fall for only two.
None of us really liked it but we just did it. Because our male ancestors had fought. Some of our fathers, uncles, brothers, cousins. We did it because we were citizens of the USA and with all the blessings that conferred, there were also the responsibilities. I bet not a one of us even gave a thought to getting the G.I. Bill to pay for college after (and if) we made it through or getting a VA guaranteed mortgage or VA health care. From what I hear from the younger generations, it’s not so much like that any more.