US military force at 80-year low, Pentagon urges ‘national call to service’

[dogs4thewin]

Gobbledygook.

What are you saying made sense to me?

 

[Desk trauma]

What are you saying made sense to me?

Your nonsensical reply unrelated to what I said about laws being a matter of force but maybe it didn’t make sense to you either, I’m not privy to your thoughts.

 

[dogs4thewin]

Your nonsensical reply unrelated to what I said about laws being a matter of force but maybe it didn’t make sense to you either, I’m not privy to your thoughts.

You said that laws were enforced at gun point and I said that in fact VERY few laws are punished by the death penalty.

 

[RDKirk]

By unarmed officers without a threat of force if resisted?

That's a different crime. That will get you killed if you're only being flagged for speeding, too.

 

[Desk trauma]

You said that laws were enforced at gun point and I said that in fact VERY few laws are punished by the death penalty.

I was not referring to capital punishment.

 

[RDKirk]

When you break it down by college graduate proportions, college-educated blacks are exactly as overrepresented as military officers as non-graduate blacks are overrepresented as military enlisted.

The problem, then, if you want to call it a problem, is in the percentage of blacks going to college. It's not a problem caused by the military.

Let me add as a sidepoint: I don't regard the overrepresentation of black people in the military as a problem for the military.

It may be a red flag for a problem existing in the civilian community that (even despite DEI, the racism and sexism before it, and the "brown-nose system" that's always existed) the military still tends to be more of a meritocracy than the civilian community.

 

[Tuur]

I deterred my boys and girls from joining the service because I didn't feel there was a purpose, maybe war fatigue.

I didn't. Many on both sides of the family have served in the military. The MEPS found a physical condition that kept me from enlisting, so I ended up working with power lines. But what deterred them was hearing from relatives in active service talking of things like adventures in moving a family.

 

[Tuur]

It could, at the very minimum, not enslave people to fill recruiting quotas.

If the draft is enslavement, then what of jury duty?

 

[Desk trauma]

If the draft is enslavement, then what of jury duty?

A Significantly less lethal form.

 

[DaisyDay]

That's a different crime. That will get you killed if you're only being flagged for speeding, too.

Or jaywalking.

 

[rturner76]

We aren't currently raping Afghanistan of natural resources. In fact, if we were doing these things I would imagine that we'd be in a much better position economically.

It's already been raped so once the poppy fields were secured it was "Mission Accomplished." Now private armies hired by US, European, and South American, cartels keep what they can secured. It had nothing to do with providing the people of Afghanistan with freedom and democracy. It had everything to do with securing natural resources for big business. It wasn't the US that was going to profit from the poppies, it was the lobbyist's business that would profit. Lining the pockets of the right politicians will give you the ability to use the military resources of the US to carry out your your hostile takeovers in other countries.

We didn't win WW2 over 2 major powers and fully industrialized nations because we were fighting for freedom or democracy. We won because there were no war crimes...not really. Not for the winning side. These were existential threats and after the horrors of WW1 (arguably the worst war to be in) we were deeply isolationist. The near fall of Great Britain was the deciding factor.

If the British fell (and because Ireland had agreed with the nazis to not fight) the German war machine would have only had 1 front to fight on....the eastern one with Russia (who did far more than the US in defeating Germany). With all their attention turned to Russia, it's entirely possible that Germany could have solidly controlled all of modern Europe. With the Japanese as allies...they could have patiently waited for the best time to end the US. Our entry into WW2 could have began on US soil.

The point though....is that the rules of war were written by the victors, as they are now despite our imagination telling us otherwise. Iran can't fight us openly...so they arm and direct terrorists who they can claim they have no control over. Why? Because these terrorists are attacking non-military targets. They go after commercial ships that both hurt us economically and help Iran. This is how Iran gets around "war crimes" that we like to pretend mean something but they don't. How many Taliban leaders are currently facing a tribunal for war crimes?

We bombed German cities into dust...and the non-combatant citizens with them. People begin to reconsider surrender as an option whenever they are about to lose everything....their people, their culture, their land....everything. We dropped atomic bombs on Japan...and around the same time, they lost their gains in Manchuria. Their military had plans to make the fight as long and as difficult as possible to get a better deal when they finally surrendered. When it became apparent no reinforcement from mainland Asia would be arriving and the second atomic bomb proved we could continue making and dropping them....they suddenly had to consider they would lose everything. They surrendered.

I don't disagree with any of this. IMO dropping A-bombs on private citizens is a war crime as well as firebombing the citizens of Berlin. I believe the US wanted to send the message that if you don't give up we might just kill every man, woman, and child in your country.

Why did ISIS take over Iraq so quickly after we left? Because they were a threat to everyone and they weren't leaving. Women and children weren't safe....and surrender was a better option at the time.

So we probably should declare war on ISIS and throw our whole military at their extermination. Instead, we try to police their actions rather than eliminate the leadership of the organization. If you are fighting a letteral "war" on terror, get the military involved, not just the FBI and CIA (though the CIA does have it's own private army).

So I don't think we disagree very much on this issue. I think what we disagree on is what constitutes a littoral war.

 

[rturner76]

Well, a good number of Americans are dumb, or I think naive would describe it better.

 

[rturner76]

To be honest, the role of the US military from the very beginning was to secure international business interests. That's why the Navy was mandated by the Constitution and the Army was not.

Agreed. Money is always a motivation for war ever since we were banging each other on the head to occupy the best hunting ground.

 

[RDKirk]

I don't disagree with any of this. IMO dropping A-bombs on private citizens is a war crime as well as firebombing the citizens of Berlin. I believe the US wanted to send the message that if you don't give up we might just kill every man, woman, and child in your country.

A point to be made here is that unlike Germany, Japan did not concentrate war production factories as Germany did. Japan dispersed war production to the homes of its citizens...war production became a literal "cottage industry."

Army Air Corps General Curtis LeMay had been given the mission of totally destroying every medium and large Japanese city on Honshu with conventional munitions (he knew nothing about the atomic bomb), and he was proceeding in that mission with exceedingly great vigor. General Leslie Groves (the military lead of the Manhattan Project) feared that LeMay would destroy all the respectable targets for the atomic bomb before the bomb was ready.

But, as I've mentioned earlier in this thread or another, the hard fact of war is that nobody surrenders while the fighting is constrained to soldiers on battlefields. Soldiers on battlefields can be continually replaced; "Jody" can handle that. Wars conclude when it looks likely that a nation could lose its women and children...when the soldiers would have no one to come home to.

 

[Tuur]

A Significantly less lethal form.

So, if you consider jury duty as a form of slavery, do you support abolishing juries chosen from a random pool of citizens?

 

[Tuur]

A point to be made here is that unlike Germany, Japan did not concentrate war production factories as Germany did. Japan dispersed war production to the homes of its citizens...war production became a literal "cottage industry."

Army Air Corps General Curtis LeMay had been given the mission of totally destroying every medium and large Japanese city on Honshu with conventional munitions (he knew nothing about the atomic bomb), and he was proceeding in that mission with exceedingly great vigor. General Leslie Groves (the military lead of the Manhattan Project) feared that LeMay would destroy all the respectable targets for the atomic bomb before the bomb was ready.

But, as I've mentioned earlier in this thread or another, the hard fact of war is that nobody surrenders while the fighting is constrained to soldiers on battlefields. Soldiers on battlefields can be continually replaced; "Jody" can handle that. Wars conclude when it looks likely that a nation could lose its women and children...when the soldiers would have no one to come home to.

The firebombing raid on Tokyo alone claimed 80,000 to 100,000 lives, but few remember Tokyo.

 

[Ana the Ist]

It's already been raped so once the poppy fields were secured it was "Mission Accomplished."

Ok.

Now private armies hired by US, European, and South American, cartels keep what they can secured.

What private armies do you think are operating in Afghanistan atm?

It had nothing to do with providing the people of Afghanistan with freedom and democracy.

I agree.

It had everything to do with securing natural resources for big business.

Such as?

It wasn't the US that was going to profit from the poppies, it was the lobbyist's business that would profit. Lining the pockets of the right politicians will give you the ability to use the military resources of the US to carry out your your hostile takeovers in other countries.

I understand your line of thinking...but the only businesses I see profiting from this are military businesses.

I don't disagree with any of this. IMO dropping A-bombs on private citizens is a war crime as well as firebombing the citizens of Berlin. I believe the US wanted to send the message that if you don't give up we might just kill every man, woman, and child in your country.

I don't really believe in "war crimes" since I think war is inherently a state of lawlessness. There's no good or moral way to enter a region and kill a bunch of people. There's simply effective and ineffective ways to do this.

So we probably should declare war on ISIS and throw our whole military at their extermination. Instead, we try to police their actions rather than eliminate the leadership of the organization. If you are fighting a letteral "war" on terror, get the military involved, not just the FBI and CIA (though the CIA does have it's own private army).

I think these terrorists exist because we pretend to have rules for fighting wars. They operate outside the lines of those rules for the purpose of plausible deniability.

So I don't think we disagree very much on this issue. I think what we disagree on is what constitutes a littoral war.

I think if we treated war with the seriousness it deserves, we would fight it less often...and win more.

A point to be made here is that unlike Germany, Japan did not concentrate war production factories as Germany did. Japan dispersed war production to the homes of its citizens...war production became a literal "cottage industry."

Army Air Corps General Curtis LeMay had been given the mission of totally destroying every medium and large Japanese city on Honshu with conventional munitions (he knew nothing about the atomic bomb), and he was proceeding in that mission with exceedingly great vigor. General Leslie Groves (the military lead of the Manhattan Project) feared that LeMay would destroy all the respectable targets for the atomic bomb before the bomb was ready.

But, as I've mentioned earlier in this thread or another, the hard fact of war is that nobody surrenders while the fighting is constrained to soldiers on battlefields. Soldiers on battlefields can be continually replaced; "Jody" can handle that. Wars conclude when it looks likely that a nation could lose its women and children...when the soldiers would have no one to come home to.

You know, I used to tell folks on here I held some rather extreme political views and when people would ask I'd point out I'm a total war advocate/theorist...and most didn't understand what that meant.

Just war theory...the theory we've been fighting under, seems to neither be effective at victory or leaving us with a sense of moral good. Since the sense of moral good is what the theory is for...I'd say we abandon it in favor of victory.

 

[rturner76]

But, as I've mentioned earlier in this thread or another, the hard fact of war is that nobody surrenders while the fighting is constrained to soldiers on battlefields. Soldiers on battlefields can be continually replaced; "Jody" can handle that. Wars conclude when it looks likely that a nation could lose its women and children...when the soldiers would have no one to come home to.

That does seem to secure the end of a war. When the women and children are being slaughtered, there won't be anyone left to pay taxes. Then, everybody in the government is out of a job and it's chaos unless the military force that just defeated you is setting up shop with their own police force and army. For the co;onists, it ended up not beaig feasible because they couldn't collect enough taxes to support the government, police, and military there. So they pull out and the richest warlord takes control.

Sorry, I' om one.

 

[rturner76]

But, as I've mentioned earlier in this thread or another

What private armies do you think are operating in Afghanistan atm?

Such as?

I understand your line of thinking...but the only businesses I see profiting from this are military businesses.

I guess not many strictly legal business businesses. The ones who profit from the poppy fields are organized crime businesses with ties to just as many legal business businesses. It's more risky for a politician to accept money from, a gangster but accept money from an energy company (with a CEO appointed by the board of directors (who happen to be 49% mob as silent partners.

I think these terrorists exist because we pretend to have rules for fighting wars. They operate outside the lines of those rules for the purpose of plausible deniability.

Right, they attack citizens and as protectors of the citizens we employ the FBI, IRS, and local police to fight this "war" If we want Congress to declare war against ISIS they should vote on it, and if they vote yes, throw everything we have at ISIS. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. The greatest, most advanced military in the world (Cheers Yeah Yeah) We won't do it until we find the natural resources to feed our business interests

I think if we treated war with the seriousness it deserves, we would fight it less often...and win more.

No doubt!

You know, I used to tell folks on here I held some rather extreme political views and when people would ask I'd point out I'm a total war advocate/theorist...and most didn't understand what that meant.

Just war theory...the theory we've been fighting under, seems to neither be effective at victory or leaving us with a sense of moral good. Since the sense of moral good is what the theory is for...I'd say we abandon it in favor of victory.

Victory should be the #1. What we focus in in this count`

 

[wing2000]

Younger people now days aren't just out of shape. Almost 50 percent of Gen Z and younger are obese. You aren't going to fix that in boot camp.

A new study from the Pentagon shows that 77% of young Americans would not qualify for military service without a waiver due to being overweight, using drugs or having mental and physical health problems.

A slide detailing the findings from the Pentagon's 2020 Qualified Military Available Study shared with Military.com shows a 6% increase from the latest 2017 Department of Defense research that showed 71% of Americans would be ineligible for service.

Even More Young Americans Are Unfit to Serve, a New Study Finds. Here's Why.

The updated figures paint a picture of what is currently plaguing military recruiters in many of the service branches, with a shrinking pool of potential service members available to them.

www.military.com

Additional factors as noted by the US Army Recruiting Command (2020 data):

Labor market: Most challenging labor market since the inception of the all-volunteer force
Awareness: 50% of youth admit they know little to nothing about military service
Qualified youth: 71% of youth do not qualify for military service because of obesity, drugs, physical and mental health problems, misconduct, and aptitude
Family business: 79% of recruits have a relative who served
Disconnect with society: Only 1% of the population currently serves; veteran population is declining.

Facts and Figures