Posted on 09/10/2020 3:27:05 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
There’s a statue of General Hooker outside the MA statehouse.
I think a lot of pols sneak out that entrance.
Central - you’re normally pretty rational - where is this weird and illogical neoisolationism coming from?
Trump does this to make the enemy reveal their hand.
It always works out in the end.
That’s been my observation.
He is Teflon Donald.
I am for a strong navy. The standing army was always been a controversial issue at least since the revolutionary war ended.
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The American ideal was to have the standing army abolished and state militias to conduct combat as needed, decentralizing power in the hands of the national government.
Two things threw that ideal out the window:
1. The miserable performance of militias in combat. Militia "leaders" were usually elected on popularity, not training or competence, the actual military training was minimal to nonexistent, and logistic support was impossible: too many calibers, too few sources of food. You only have to look at the performance of American militias in the War of 1812 to see how ineffective militias were.
2. The rest of the world advanced military technologies and techniques. By the late 1800s, steam propulsion and armored warships made the water barriers around us less effective and made invasion much more likely and profitable. Since then, the threats became far more deadly - can you imagine what would have happened to us if we didn't have a very powerful standing army and an effective logistical network while the Nazis and the Japanese threatened us?
Things are much worse today and we are under a much greater threat than ever. China has even put out thought pieces on taking America for themselves to give themselves more room for their population.
Any idea how long a militia would last in combat with them?
Building an effective army requires lengthy and expensive training and the continuous development of the technologies needed to overcome the world threats.
Anything less, and you might as well start learning Chinese (or if we are defended by just militias, Spanish - since it is a short walk north).
Yeah, he did.
Fortunately, Roosevelt had learned this lesson and brought in George Marshall who also knew this lesson who brought it Eisenhower, kept MacArthur, and brought in Patton, folks who had been colonels before the war started. The Navy had to do the same thing. And even the Army Air Corps had to clear out a lot of dead wood, e.g. colonel, George Kinney who was assigned to MacArthur and commanded the Air Forces for MacArthur.
The submarine force had to fire an entire generation of COs and XOs and find fighting commanders. It's just the way of the world.
Kennedy wasn't going to fight in Viet Nam. MacArthur among others told him not to. Johnson did not start firing from the top down to appoint people who could actually fight. Instead the war was run by careerists from inside the five-sided insane asylum.
Absolutely. One of the pressing problems was that a battleship mentality still prevailed, that the enlisted were manual labor for the war machine and in peacetime could be used for menial tasks because they had nothing to do.
The problem was that our ships and aircraft had become technically sophisticed machines and a full complement of technically skilled enlisted were needed for maintenance ashore and maintenance and operations at sea. You had electronic technicians, radar technicians, nuclear welders and such who had far more technical understanding than the captains and admirals who ran the place. It was a huge culture shift for the Navy.
What we are witnessing is the divide between folks who know how to do stuff and folks who glory in careers writing policy white papers while basking in goods made offshore because we taught foreigners how to do stuff.
And as LBJ said, politics is the art of the 51%. Take bold moves that piss off enough people and you will stay stuck at Romney’s 48%. And we all know what Romney is besides another inveterate LIAR. He is a LOSER.
I recently linked an (older) article that listed every General/top brass commander that 0bama purged.
I agree...Pres Trump must do the same, with these unpatriotic leftist commanders.
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