The other 1% our Service Men and, Should we fear the ARMY?

Military people know the military the best. That is why I thrusth Ike when he warned us about the military industrial complex:

Perhaps it might not sound so striking now that we are flooded by Lobbyst but I want to discuss another side of this clash, old as civilization itself, between civilian and military authorities.

In this article by Times called "The Other 1%"

The reporter talks about veterans coming back home and finding that Americans now nothing about war and their experience. As if the US was not at war. Indeed we are always at war because we no longer know what war means. As most things... we have made it artificial, manufactured. Who fights our wars? The poor and the conservatives, who are the first to put themselves in the battle front and who get to see the horrors of war, so conviniently hidden from civilian eye view.

This 1% see all the horror, get all the stress. Some become addicted to it, others kill themselves. It certainly is not healthy but still, the Milirary is like a big family, full of young, fitt, practical, and smart people. A far cry form the more obese and less diciplined civilians. So they beging to feel somehow different from us... disconected. Some, a minority, feel superior and thus something like a warior caste emerges from with in our castless nation.

I beleive, thus the thread, that the US is headed to an Iran style regime... in which the goverment is no more poweful than the revolutionary guard. A country in which the president can be vetoed and defied by the Pentagon. A country in which our rich congressmen, most of whom have never been to war unlike our previous generations, get fooled into syphoning money for unecessary expenditures, such as flawed weapon development, and are only too happy to send young men and woman to die in unnecessary wars.

One such case would be the M16 and its colosal failure in Vietnam, from wich we havent learned even to this day...

I recommend you read the article which is far better that this rant I have just posted.

edited 29th Nov '11 3:57:29 PM by Baff

Linkey no workie, Baff.

Although your OP definitely got my attention.

No, you should not fear the military. We should fear the politicians who continue to order that military into countless conflicts and give out paychecks to defense projects that are of dubious value.

Eisenhower is too much of a hypocrite to latch onto his whole military-industrial complex "quote".

Why? In 1952 there were less than 500 nuclear warheads IN THE WORLD. Under his watch and according to his direction, the US' stockpile alone went from less than 200 to over 10,000.

Just thought y'all should know that. Ike was a good leader but his quotes are worthless.

First, Ike was talking about undue influence of arms manufacturers on foreign policy. Basically, if war became a business (or worse, propped up our economy) there would be no practical way to stop waging war.

Second, every President does one thing and says something else. The Chains of Commanding see to that.

I see no hypocrecy.

Its more of an admission.

edited 29th Nov '11 3:58:10 PM by Baff

I'm in the military. I was active duty and I am now in the National Guard. I've deployed several times, including to Afghanistan. Now with that out of the way..

I sort of.. Agree?

I can't really disagree with the observations of other veterans that most civilians are a weak and squishy people who go nuts about petty inconveniences and usually have no knowledge of serious hardship. They aren't bad people, just.. Well, weak.

Do I want a military dictatorship? Not especially. Would I do everything I could to undermine my orders if I was suddenly ordered to start confiscating weapons and arresting people without cause? Yes. But it doesn't mean my bias will change. In some matters, Veterans generally are superior to civilians. By and large we are fit, disciplined, and hard working folks, and when Civilians are the ones directing all that ability, I will admit that I feel spite for it at times. We're ordered to fight, kill, and die by fat squishy assholes who will never feel those hardships, and that kind of pisses me off and I oft times wish something were done about it.

But at the end of the day, I don't think civilians need to fear the Army. We're all still Americans, just like civvies. Our family members and many of our friends are civilians, and aside from an armed uprising that starts shooting at us first, I don't think any of us are eager to harm civilians.

Yea. He realised the problem and tried to warn everyone.

This. Period.

The military is not some alien, foreign body waiting at our doorstep for us to let our guard down. The military is a weapon, not an independent being. Like any other weapon, you must maintain it and learn to use it properly and responsibly. Don't maintain it—keep it well-equipped and, as history as shown, paid—and it will blow back in your face. Don't use it properly, and someone else with their own weapon will dispatch you, and rightly so, as those who cannot use a weapon responsibly are unfit to possess that weapon.

The US allows children to wield weapons. But they aren't really children, in any conventional sense. They are man-child lawyer politicians who fulfill their world-spanning power fantasies while claiming to be "libertarian" because they've redirected their authoritarian urges outward, and force the world to suffer for it. So, the only proper response to a child with a weapon is to go up and take the fucking weapon. They are unfit to command a garbage crew, and we allow them to command the most powerful military on Planet Earth.

It is a disgrace to all that is good and honorable in the United States Military and its history of defending this nation.

And? Did we ever use a nuke under Eisenhower?

You shouldn't be accusing others of hypocrisy, either, complaining about American involvement with Europe on the military front while simultaneously advocating fucking around with other nations we have no business interacting with militarily.

Eisenhower ended the Korean War, rather than starting it. His time in the Presidency was marked by a lack of American conflicts. He also, if nothing else, realized that the path we were on was wrong, even if he had a hand in creating it, intentionally or not. The recognition of one's mistakes are signs of intelligence and maturity. I would rather make an immortal Eisenhower CIC-for-life rather than let almost any current politician within a thousand yards of the Oval Office or command of the USM. None of them are fit or capable of wielding such a weapon, never have been, and never will be.

They are a group of spoiled brats grappling for who gets to play with the new toys, and we are their complacent parents, who do not or will not comprehend that the only proper response, as it's gotten so bad, is to smack them a good one and teach them that those toys—bought with our coin—are not theirs to play with, and that the world is not their personal sandbox to throw dirt about in.

But what if the military is becoming too independent. What if the weapon is beginning to consider its own interests???

People say we shouldnt fear the military, we should fear the polititians! And from that it isnt very far away from, lets give power to the military! But didnt you say we shouldnt fear the military taking power??? (this is rethorical... not intended to strawman USAF but to highlight a common argument)

edited 29th Nov '11 5:47:58 PM by Baff

Then men like Smedley Darlington Butler and Paul Van Riper will step up to the plate, hopefully.

Why? because a group of oligarchs attempted to reclute him to help organize a coup against Roosvelt?

Except the responsible use of the weapon would also keep its potential for becoming self-aware (or, to stop using this now-tortured analogy, attempting to exert political influence).

Obviously, you should work to keep the military in check, politically. However, that doesn't mean that military values and experience isn't useful in the political scene. You simply must make it very clear that being a former general isn't a license to make the military huge and go out on stupid foreign adventures. And, honestly, most of the military officers that have been leaders of the US haven't been doing retarded shit with our armed forces. It's the fucking lawyer politicians with huge nationalistic egos that abuse the military.

So, yes, I do fear the guy using the weapon—the idiotic politician—more than the weapon itself.

Generals that were on the front line themselves are the best for advice. They know the risks first hand.

Perhaps he is referring to events like the one in Myanmar in 1962 when the military usurped government power. Out of curiosity, how likely is such an event in the US? Are there preventive measures?

A Republican response would be that the preventative measure is the gun behind every door thanks to the 2nd amendment.

But almost all high ranking officers in the US army are Republicans... and must people who use guns are also republicans.

Oh! The irony.

And my problem is not with Former Generals being polititians. WE NEED MORE EX-OFFICERS BEING POLITITIANS.

Officers who are welling to call the military on their Bull when they have to... unlike this civilians representative who will give the pentagon whatever they want as long as the keep doing their dity work.

^^^

We're awfully different from Myanmar.

^^

Amen. And I'm not even a Republican.

^

No. We need more enlisted people becoming politicians. Officers don't know the price of war half as well as a good NCO. Officers in the military most often end up being politicians wearing a uniform, and not actual officers. I don't want a politician in office, I want an actual leader. And in my experience leaders are few and far between in the Officers Corps, but extremely common when you start talking to NCO's.

Also, not all officers are Republican, or even the majority. Officers all started as college kids, to be honest most of the ones I've met were intelligent and quite commonly liberal.

Just an observation from my travels around the globe and interactions with soldiers of other countries, but the US has a very unique military culture. In most of the countries I've been to or met people from, the Military is ignored at best, and hated at worst.(With the UK being a definite exception) In the US, there is a culture of respect between the troops and the people, a sort of sacred trust that we're here to protect our people from any enemy, foreign or domestic.

Not all coups are necessarily bad, especially if there is a peaceful transfer of power afterwards(Which isn't common, but neither is the attitude and culture of the US Military and Americans)

Anyone here ever think of the possibility that if the military were to tear apart some of our corrupt system and try to build something new, it wouldn't be such a bad thing? Corrupt politicians have absolutely no power if the military refuses to play ball, because we're the "break glass in case of insurrection" box.

edited 29th Nov '11 7:46:47 PM by Barkey

Look up Butler's career, it's quite extraordinary.

Smed is the shit, and I normally don't like Marines.

I can tolerate being called "soft" and "blobby" because I can't break a man's neck in thirteen ways, but now I'm clling bullshit.

No militia — let alone a suburbanite with a 12-gauge — is going to fend off a professional, paid army. What you are suggesting is turning US soil into a battleground, one between the armed forced and civilians.

@Barkey.

Officers begin about equal. But as you go up the ranks... the democrats begin to drop out until almost all high level officers identify either as independent or Republican... but almost none democrat. Read the articles in Time magazine.

Hmmm...I'd rather trust Barkey's Primary Data myself.

@ Barkley: And as an aside, the Military is more popular in Britain then it ever has been — the Politicans, less so...

Ever heard of the saying "Lions Led by Donkeys"?

Wark.

edited 30th Nov '11 7:43:30 AM by Colonial1.1

Aye. That came from the Great War.

Hmmm. Baff, you are Brazilian, right? How is the Service viewed over there?

My base politics are a little unique I suppose, being a stand-alone National Guard base that isn't on an active duty base. But because most of us are civilians 28 days a month, our political expectations are a bit more broad than when I was active duty. My CO is a Lt Col who is a democrat, and our base commander is a full bird about to get his star, he's a democrat.

The Guard is definitely a different animal, but we're the ones most likely to be tapped for riots and civil disorder, because we're state, so the Governor can authorize it as opposed to federal forces needing federal level approval from folks like the president.

I'm also in the Air Force, we've probably got the most even-keel political bent of all the branches.