Is this article a joke or is the author really that stupid?
Our freedoms are "Written into law", are they?
I'm sure that would have meant a lot to these guys:
Posted on 02/10/2004 12:55:47 PM PST by dixiepatriot
Is this article a joke or is the author really that stupid?
Our freedoms are "Written into law", are they?
I'm sure that would have meant a lot to these guys:
Replace our military with rent-a-cops...........hmmm, what a novel idea ;-)
Yes, I agree. The INTENT was to prevent standing armies - a bane of contention. Unfortunately, the clause as written is easily circumvented.
Really? Didn't know they had done that. I still think it's better to have your support people still be under military discipline and be part of the same "green machine" (or blue as the case may be) team. Some, maybe even most, contractors are just fine (I'm one myself, but not on base) but I suspect you end up paying more than if you just used military troops. Of course that's assuming you can get recruits for those sorts of jobs, and retain them after you train them. Then there is problem of keeping them on, with still larger $$$ when the shooting starts and the "rear areas" aren't so rear after all. If you hire locals, you have the loyalty problem we are seeing with interpreters in Iraq, and that we saw in Vietnam, where the gal who cleaned your hooch was likely to be VC. I seem to recall that use of non Roman troops eventually came to bite the Romans in their Roman rumps.
Actually the ships would send press gangs ashore. So just being near the water was enough.
I guess every one could have moved inland. Of course my ancestors all ready were living there and wouldn't have been to pleased to see you. And without the US Army and it's forts we would have picked you off one at a time.
I guess they would have to hide under their bed. Of course it is going to get awful cold and hungry under there pretty soon....:)
While this nitwits target is the US military he seems to have it in for the Army, a standing Navy he admits is quite proper even by his reading. I have an idea. We can disband the army and reform it as the Second Marine Corps. The Marines after all, are part of the Navy. And we'll rename the Air Force, the Navel Air Corp. Problem solved!
Sure many, no most, contractor personell are just as loyal as the troops, but in the end they are in it for the money, sometimes big bucks compared to what they could get for the same sort of work "back home". For example I heard on the local San Antonio radio just last weekend that Halliburton was hiring blue collar types, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, HVAC installation and repair types and so forth for work in Iraq at 3-4 times the rate for the same jobs in Houston.
So while "mercenary" is often used in a negative context, the fact is that no one joins the military for the money, or at least not just for the money, which isn't that great, although much better than most countries. But lots of folks will do those support tasks, even in a hostile environment, for enough bucks, thus their prime motivation is a mercenary one. Not that there is anything wrong with wanting to make money.
"I should have little trouble to prove, for the ruin of Italy has been caused by nothing else than by resting all her hopes for many years on mercenaries,........The mercenary captains are either capable men or they are not; if they are, you cannot trust them, because they always aspire to their own greatness, either by oppressing you, who are their master, or others contrary to your intentions; but if the captain is not skilful, you are ruined in the usual way.".......Nicolo Machiavelli
The Swiss are probably even more xenophobic than you, but they are in their own way truer to a federal system with real Constitutional restriction than the U.S. is since their cantons have real power, unlike America's neutered states. The U.S. Articles of Confederation (1781) were based on the Swiss model of a confederation of 13 sovereign states bound loosely in a "league of friendship," just as the U.S. Constitution of 1787 served as the model for the Swiss Constitution of 1848.
And it's too bad that you think the notion of an armed society is a bad one, but no surprise, given your company on this thread, that you would think that compelling evidence of the evils of the Swiss nation to them.
I'm sure I will be vilified for saying it, but I'm sorry if you think that the U.S. should sneer at the Swiss, and I think it's certainly more likely the Founders would hang their heads at a comparison of what their posterity has wrought. The Swiss were during the founding of THIS republic one of only a few others that gave ours even a history to support our then-radical government, and I don't think many on this board, even on this thread, would deny the republican nature of the U.S. government has been significantly reduced since its founding.
Well, the British press-gangs, IIRC, operated on US soil. I'd like to see this guy's force structure and concept of operations for defending this nation on $40 billion a year.
How would a Const. Amendment fix this? What are you talking about?
This is banality at its zenith. The average 4 engine transport can deposit 200 paratroops on our soil in 24 hours from china, an insurance company that pays doctors 8 bucks per patient visit is going to maintain satellites and missile defense, please return to the Psych ward.
I didn't say there was anything wrong with an armed society. I just stated a fact, a fact that many capital-L's cite when making the case that the USA should be more like Switzerland. The flawed thinking is that if civil defense was made part of American culture, there would be no reason to export American troops all over the globe. However, such people mistakenly attribute the Nazis' willingness to leave Switzerland alone to their arms in every home.
We now know the Swiss cooperated with the Nazis more than anyone had imagined.
I'm sure I will be vilified for saying it, but I'm sorry if you think that the U.S. should sneer at the Swiss, and I think it's certainly more likely the Founders would hang their heads at a comparison of what their posterity has wrought. The Swiss were during the founding of THIS republic one of only a few others that gave ours even a history to support our then-radical government, and I don't think many on this board, even on this thread, would deny the republican nature of the U.S. government has been significantly reduced since its founding.
I could go on forever about the irritating habit libertarians have of turning the framers of the Constitution into demigods, and of defending obscenity, nudity, and hedonism as signs of a healthy society rather than a sick one. Instead, I will save us both a lot of time and head straight for the bottom line.
To paraphrase Lee Iacocca: AMERICA! If you can find a better country, live in it!
Ah, so you were saying that in tandem with all the negative comments you made about Switzerland so that you sounded like a capital-L. Uh huh. We'll just go on as if you made that 'mistake' in your sentence accidentally, that it didn't at all show your feelings about guns...right.
"We now know the Swiss cooperated with the Nazis more than anyone had imagined."
And? So did the French and the Czechs and the Austrians and the Germans. Only the Swiss were still a free nation throughout the whole war. I am pretty sure that having a resistance like that posed by the Swiss waiting for them made the Germans a little less eager to bother, and the fact that the Swiss actually considered the Germans not particularly a threat to their nation probably made them more friendly.
"I could go on forever about the irritating habit libertarians have of turning the framers of the Constitution into demigods,
I'm sorry--where did I talk about the Framers as demigods? They were just better men than you are, and smart enough to realize that any standing army will always pose a threat to the republic just as Caesar's did. Nobody's crossed the Rubicon in the U.S., yet.
...and of defending obscenity, nudity, and hedonism as signs of a healthy society rather than a sick one."
And I don't recall defending obscenity, nudity or hedonism here, either, Mr. Guilt-By-Association. But I know you needed a diversion, since you can't claim your authority in the Constitution, and you know that you can't throw it out outright. But geez, stop claiming you're conservative, at least, when you want to ignore the past and act like it doesn't exist. Shouldn't you be proud you're an interventionist and working against the Constitution as is, if it's such a great thing to have a standing army that gets involved in overseas fights at the drop of a foreign democracy's hat? Stop acting like a Clinton, say what you believe and stand up for it, instead of acting like you care about a silly old piece of paper! It'll save us both a lot of lip service and 'save us both a lot of time and head straight for the bottom line.'
"Instead, I will save us both a lot of time and head straight for the bottom line. To paraphrase Lee Iacocca: AMERICA! If you can find a better country, live in it!"
Ah, the last refuge of the elocutionist extraordinaire, the 'I can't win so you leave' tactic. To crib a little more from your buddy Iacocca, you're shipping a lot of crap. I ain't Johnny Depp. I love my country, and while I have left it, I'm eager to come back and have all our countrymen there to meet me, too, unlike you, who are eager to make our soldiers leave it. You're for foreign aid and pork pure and simple, because every international corporation and overseas trader gets a free ride from the U.S. protection of "freedom of the seas," but the American people pay for it.
Nutcases are attracted to Lew Rockwell (and the LP) like flies to sh/t.
Uh-huh. Great. There's no budget for training, no organization, no line of authority...just a bunch of AK-47s. No air component, so the enemy gets control of the air.
If I were the ChiComs, I'd simply build up lots of shipping, an infantry-heavy army of occupation, lots of nukes, and arrive off the coast after detonating a nuke in orbit over North America.
No means of electronic communication equals no means of marshling forces--or even knowing where the enemy is until he drives up to your front door.
In each locality, the PLA commander would notify the public (via leaflet drops and other means) that the first act of armed resistance would be dealt with by withdrawing the occupation troops, followed by liberal use of enhanced radiation warheads on all human habitation within fifty miles of the point of resistance, plus the nearest major city...and then carry out the threat if anything happens.
This would be followed by a levy of indentured labor to salvage in the strike zones sans radiation protection.
After the first employment of one of those AK-47s kills several million Americans, I would make sure that the notice includes lots of pictures of the aftermath of said strikes.
I imagine that there would still be resistance activities in that case. But with one side having communications, organization, and (very quickly) an enormous manpower advantage as the American population base is reduced by several million per incident of shooting, it would be containable in short order.
Either that isn't his idea...or this guy's a bigger idiot than I imagined.
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