Posted on 12/15/2014 10:06:12 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
I think that the decision is rather fundamental: do we accept a state that has the power to do this to young citizens in a time of non-national-emergency? My personal belief is that in principle this is wrong, that the philosophy of the relationship of government and citizen reflected in the Constitution does not permit it.
I do not, however, deny the potential benefits to the underlying society of this action, and I think the article points them out: a military that is less divorced from the general run of citizens and whose members act as a control against policies of over-employment as a means of effecting national policy. But does the first consideration allow us to do this to those members against their will? Or, put another way, do we accept the negative consequences of refusing ourselves the ability to direct the lives of young citizens, or do we accept the negative consequences of allowing it? Because either way there are negative consequences.
It isn't always the case that a too-rigid adherence to a single principle to the exclusion of others is the course of wisdom, because principles conflict and you can't build a country around only those that do not. My personal preference in this case is in favor of the liberty of the individuals involved but I fully understand people whose preference runs the other way.
why stop there, why not every single American becoming state property for life
I believe that we are short on manpower, so short that we have to take the men’s sisters and girlfriends to make up the shortage.
It got so bad in recent years, that we started accepting grandmothers in their 40s.
We have been exhausting our troops with our current limited needs and fighting a major war with losses in the tens of thousands, or having to fight on two fronts, seems a little daunting right now.
Eventually this house of cards falls apart, as the military becomes 50% female, becomes risk averse and focused on quality of life issues and garrison life, and pay and benefits hungry, and comes to resemble a federal career job rather than a male bastion of a war fighting machine.
Chainmail—”28 years of active duty in the Marines, including combat in Vietnam.””
You fought the comrades in the war that I enlisted during, and served in the Cold war that I served in, and now you have what appears to be a childlike a non vet, mocking you as “comrade”.
The mocking sounds so childish, that it is embarrassing to see it on FR pages.
I haven’t mocked any freeper.
I do mock the notion that forced servitude to the government is somehow “service to the country”
I never mix up my country with the government. They are two totally different things.
In Nam, fragging of officers by their men was almost entirely a black-on-white phenomenon.
You don't read that in the MSM.
Make sense?
3 is writer’s opinion, not mine.
Don’t call warriors who fought and opposed the communists, “comrades” as you mock them, especially since you sat at home, I imagine.
You come off as a childish troll on this topic of national defense and the draft and the military, and our war fighting capabilities.
See your post 2, you didn’t even read the article or care what it was about, you just leaped in with a dishonest hijacking post.
The precedent was our revolution - our militias were our citizen soldiers. Very nearly every able-bodied male was on tap for combat. Those that weren't available were either conscientious objectors like Quakers of Dunker Germans or they were Tory enemies.
We have lost the ethos of shared responsibilities for our country's defense. We had it in spades during WW II as we should have. Our current world situation is almost as bad or possibly worse - we need to go back to all of our citizens involved with our own safety.
GeronL makes the false argument that this is "for the state/government". It isn't: it's for our people's survival into the future.
>>> Part of it is because the American public in general is completely disconnected from the realities of what is occurring beyond our borders. <<<
Hell, a good portion of the public is disconnected from the realities occurring *within* our borders.
Interesting article, thanks.
The point is that the American public and political leadership is growing detached from the military. Because of that, the political pressures that would normally restrain from war are no longer having the same restraining effects.
- Political and economic elites no longer serve. Their kids have no risk. The military is increasingly a small subculture, with less than one percent serving, and those come disproportionally from the South, Mountain West, blacks and military families.
- Few Congressmen have any military experience, and their constituents are overwhelmingly detached from the effects of war, so there is relatively little pressure for accountability.
- Congress increasingly defers decisions to the President and military - they just lay back and take cheap shots for their political benefit
- Contractors are increasingly used to staff war efforts - a huge increase from just the Gulf War.
- Accountability for the costs of war has diminished greatly, by just adding to the deficit, and the public is no longer shocked by debt.
So wars can drag on without much less accountability.
My comment - This will probably be even more dramatically the case as robots take over more of the fighting.
As I said, WW II was an exception, as was the Civil War. Where US volunteers excelled was in the Mexican War, Sp. American War (despite inferior weapons), even the War of 1812 after a year's worth of training.
Where are you getting your history?
1. After some initial setbacks (Kasserine, Attu ) the army kicked German and Japanese butt and took names. Sicily? Normandy? New Guinea? The repulse of the Bulge? Luzon? Our infantry wasn’t second to anybody. The Germans and Japanese lost, right?
2. We did fine in the Mexican War and the Spanish-American War - but other than Andrew Jackson at New Orleans, we lost almost every battle during the 1812 war. Ever heard of Bladensburg? The only thing that saved us during that 1812 war were our privateers wrecking British commercial insurance rates.
Really sick of Germanophiles on our Freerepublic: the Nazis were lousy - the only thing they excelled at was killing helpless prisoners.
2350 Corps Info. Message: ‘The following was announced over radio
Berlin:
“Our troops are again on the march. We shall present the Fuhrer with Antwerp by Christmas.”
(William L. Howard)
At 0530 XLVII Corps began a 30 minute preparation which was not as effective as desired in that it stopped while the infantry was still well short of the American positions. Because his wire was shot out by the German preparation, Colonel Harvey Fuller, commander of the 110th, could not reach either of his battalions; Field Artillery radios, however, continued to function. However, first word of the German attack reached Colonel Fuller’s headquarters at 0615. He was able to get a warning message to division headquarters by about 0900.
As the morning passed German strength west of the Our River increased. Despite this, in many places, soldiers of the 110th Infantry held their positions in the towns and villages. Several counter attacks were executed by elements of the 110th Infantry and the attached 707th Tank Battalion. The skillful defence, both position and mobile, slowed the German attack. In no place did it reach the objectives set for the first day.
The 28th Infantry Division had suffered 6,184 casualties in the Hurtgen Forest during the period 2-15 November. If we consider that the rifle companies of the division had taken 90% of those casualties then on average each had taken more than 200 casualties or more than 100% of their strength.
The soldiers who had become casualties had been replaced by soldiers delivered by the much maligned United States Army replacement system. These replacements were soldiers good enough to seriously delay the German XLVII Panzer Corps and to keep it from reaching its first day objectives. These American soldiers were the products of a replacement system that has been unfavorably compared to the German system. It appears that the system performed effectively and delivered courageous soldiers to units where they performed their duty skillfully as they had been trained to do in the United States. Generalmajor Heinz Kokott, commander of the 26th VG Division, described the situation at the end of 16 December. In no Army are the actions described by General Kokott performed by unskilled soldiers.
“At the end of the first day of the attack, the objectives contemplated by the Army and aimed for by the troops were reached nowhere. East of the Clerf River, the slopes of which should actually have been reached by the initial tank spearheads, American elements still put up a desperate battle, less for space but for time.! The lines of the 28th US Division had been pierced, their positions and strong points had been routed, the enemy had suffered heavy and bloody losses and had to give up tanks, equipment, weapons and prisoners - but what had not been expected to such an extent was the fact that the remnants of the beaten units did not give up the battle. They stayed put and continued to block the road. Fighting a delaying battle - supported by armored and other motor vehicles. Individual groups time and again confronted the assault detachments of the attacking units at dominating heights, at defiles, on both sides of gullies and on forest paths; they let the attacking parties run into their fire, engaged them in a fire duel, made evading movements with great skill and speed and then conducted unexpected counterthrusts into flanks and rear. The characteristic of the terrain presented many opportunities for a mobile, skilled and flexible opponent.
“This day had shown that, after the forward enemy positions had been smashed and a breakthrough had been made into the depth of the defence zone, a forward march - even by the infantry - would be out of the question. The infantry actually would have to “fight” its way forward. Time and again the attacker was faced with the alternative: Either to crack down the enemy by a tedious system of fire duels or else to by-pass him in wide arcs in steep, difficult and muddy terrain. Both methods would absorb much time, the former more blood, the latter incredible physical hardships.
“Decisive for the first day of fighting - and in some sense also of influence for the further developments - was the stubborn defence of Hosingen which blocked the most important road and which made difficult and rendered impossible all concentrated efforts for supply.”
The German Army had underestimated its opponent. (Jay Stone)
(Contributions also from Will O’Neil)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3237697/posts
The fact that the US won may or may not have anything to do with the quality one-on-one of the US infantry. We won largely because we built an overwhelming number of weapons, bombed the hell out of the opponent first, and usually outnumbered him. If you want a more sourced discussion, go to my book "A Patriot's History of the Modern World, vol. 1." I would like to see YOUR history and sources for any analysts of WW II who thought our infantry was superior to the Germans.
Japan is a totally different ballgame, as often it was Marines doing much of the fighting, but even when regular Army, we often were fighting units that were severely undersupplied and/or starving.
I doubt you can read any of my books and call me a "Germanophile," but the research is pretty clear---again, Col. Mansoor notwithstanding. And most admit, as do I, that the primary difference in the armies until late 1944 was training. The Germans had trained in war conditions since 1939 and some of the units were extremely veteran.
I think it’s pretty well agreed that by late 1944 the American troops had begun to catch up to the Germans. This is only natural: the Germans had since 1939 to train in wartime conditions. But I haven’t found a single scholar of WW II who thought that the replacement system was a success, by any measure. It destroyed unit cohesion and fed raw recruits into veteran units where they frequently became the first casualties. Even Col Peter Mansoor (”The G. I. Offensive in Europe”), who argues that the US infantry was the equal of the Germans, decried the replacement system.
You would have been better served reading the actual unit diaries/after-action reports of the units in the theater than "sourcing from scholars". We tend to brutally honest in our reports, so the truth is available to you.
Bottom line, we crushed them - and you would do well to make the acquaintance of a few of our diminishing supply of European theater combat vets. They were awe-inspiring. Look up "Hurtgen Forest" and "Aachen" to gain an appreciation for how damn tough our infantry really was - or just visit one of the many cemeteries in France, Belgium and Germany to seem how many we lost versus how many of them are buried there.
Writers that find some new "truth" about how lousy we were against the Nazis are a dime a dozen lately. You are wrong.
I happen to agree about the diversion of support on Market Garden, but on the other hand you could argue that had Patton, not Horrocks, been in charge of the tank units, that would have been successful as well.
And the stories of vets, while inspiring, aren't always accurate. However, "Men Against Fire," which was written by a WW II combat historian, was based extensively on those who were serving at the time, mainly so that the Army could address training problems after the war. I don't think you could call him a "Germanophile" either. I'm not wrong. Wish I was in this case.
You are mistaking after action analysis that is used to find where errors in tactics, techniques, and procedures were in specific operations - so we can improve - with unit diaries and after action reports, which record the day-by-day combat actions in detail.
All combat operations contain errors by individuals, units, commanders but in examining the record, we did very well. Objectives were attained, the speed of advance maintained, and the German defenses crumbled. For a true citizen army, it was really inspiring. As a professional officer, I am deeply proud that the US army in Western Europe was a world beater. I can easily believe that Patton and the Third Army could have driven on to Moscow.
There seems to be a cottage industry in apologia, papers and books deriding our draftee army of WWII. It’s just a fad. The truth is that they refined and perfected combined arms maneuver warfare against the best the Germans had and rolled right over them.
Success is the ultimate arbiter.
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