From the New York Times war blog, an outstanding bit of writing and thinking. From an Army wife who knows what she’s talking about. Her main point is that it’s nice to see so many people so happy and so bound together by happiness. But they haven’t been around so much for the past ten years, leaving the soldiers and their families to do the real work, at home and on the battlefields.
Two lines come to my mind. The first comes, as so often in our house, from the Marines (you know, the ones the president called the “Marine Corpse”): “The Marines are fighting the war, America is at the mall.”
And the second is Machiavelli’s immortal “when you are victorious, the people always judge the means you used to have been appropriate.”
Read it, please.
thanks for posting the link.
regards
A full and sobering picture of those who are actually involved, and clearly different in experience from the “we” who stay home and cast the votes for posturing politicians, hardly any of which have shared such experiences.
bin laden was captured, in large part, because of the soldiers on the ground
there is something unsettling for our enemies when divisions of marines, airbourne, armored, infantry, etc,. are allowed, even with two hands behind their backs, to operate
one could only imagine what could happen if our armed forces were allowed to take off the gloves
The sad fact is that our military forces no longer are charged with the mission of ‘winning’ wars. The resources of our military are used exclusively for global law enforcement and nation building….contrary to any definition of the constitutions intent for the military uses. The reorganization of our military into a smaller ‘striker force’ has over extended our troops, exhausted our troops and worn out our equipment while no end of military engagements is remotely in sight….all at a time when our government is, by definition, bankrupt.
If a real and formidable enemy (Russia, China, North Korea) were to pose or suck us into a real ground threat militarily, our nation is screwed with this new reorganized striker force military! If satellites were destroyed or jammed, our ‘heavy’ reliance on technology over manpower would leave severally crippled and disfunctional in a real land war…and yes, there is a weaponry platform of directed energy weapons that can do just that!
But the real question is, does the generally disconnected American society even give two hoots that out country and our new military designed by politicians and military bureaucrats is so vulnerable in the rreal world of reality?
There is no genuine respect for our military anymore. They’ve just become expendable tools for the reason stated above.
God bless our poor troops and their families!
Success has a thousand fathers, failure is an orphan.