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| Marine General to Congress: We Might Not Be Ready for Another War |
| 2016-03-17 |
| "WASHINGTON -- If the Marines were called today to respond to an unexpected crisis, they might not be ready, a top Marine general told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. Gen. John Paxton, assistant commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, testified to lawmakers that the Marines could face more casualties in a war and might not be able to deter a potential enemy. "I worry about the capability and the capacity to win in a major fight somewhere else right now," he said, citing a lack of training and equipment." |
| Posted by:Vast Right Wing Conspiracy |
| #5 You are never fully ready. However, we are woefully unprepared for one. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2016-03-17 17:39 |
| #4 What war were you ready for? tl:dnr. Suffice it to respond: "Whatever the politicians decide is 'War'". |
| Posted by: Pappy 2016-03-17 13:25 |
| #3 What war were you ready for? The present confusion in the civilian mind and the true military mind respecting the purposes of armies and limits of warfare is attributable to many circumstances. Among them, no doubt, is the character of military history as it has commonly been written. Ordinary citizens are lacking in the raw experience of combat, or deficient in technical knowledge, and inclined to leave the compilation of military records to “experts” in such affairs. Writers on general history have tended to neglect the broader aspects of military issues; confining themselves to accounts of campaigns and battles, handled often in a cursory fashion, they have usually written on the wars of their respective countries in order to glorify their prowess, with little or no reference to the question whether these wars were conducted in the military way of high efficiency or in the militaristic way, which wastes blood and treasure. Even more often, in recent times, general historians have neglected military affairs and restricted their reflections to what they are pleased to call “the causes and consequences of wars”; or they have even omitted them altogether. This neglect may be ascribed to many sources. The first is, perhaps, a recognition of the brutal fact that the old descriptions of campaigns are actually of so little value civilian and military alike. Another has been the growing emphasis on economic and social fields deemed “normal” and the distaste of economic and social historians for war, which appears so disturbing to the normal course of events. Although Adam Smith included a chapter on the subject of military defense in his Wealth of Nations as a regular part of the subject, modern economists concentrate on capital, wages, interest, rent, and other features of peaceful pursuits, largely forgetting war as a phase of all economy, ancient or modern. When the mention the subject of armies and military defense, these are commonly referred to as institutions and actions which interrupt the regular balance of economic life. And the third source of indifference is the effort of pacifists and peace advocates to exclude wars and military affairs from general histories, with the view to uprooting any military or militaristic tendencies from the public mind, on the curious assumption that by ignoring realties the realties themselves will disappear. This lack of a general fund of widely disseminated military information is perilous to the maintenance of civilian power in government. The civilian mind, presumably concerned with the maintenance of peace and the shaping of policies by the limits of efficient military defense, can derive no instruction from acrimonious disputes between militarists, limitless in their demands, and pacifists, lost in utopian visions. Where the civilians fail to comprehend and guide military policy, the true military men, distinguished from the militarists, are also imperiled. For these the executioners of civilian will, dedicated to the preparation of defense and war with the utmost regard for efficiency, are dependent upon the former. Again, and again, the military men have seen themselves hurled into war by ambitions, passions, and blunders of civilian governments, almost wholly uninformed as to the limits of their military potentials and almost recklessly indifferent to the military requirements of the wars they let loose. Aware that they may again be thrown by civilians into an unforeseen conflict, perhaps with a foe they have not envisaged, these realistic military men find themselves unable to do anything save demand all the men, guns, and supplies they can possibly wring from the civilians, in the hope that they may be prepared or half prepared for whatever may befall them. In so doing they inevitably find themselves associated with militaristic military men who demand all they can get merely for the sake of having it without reference to ends. Vagts, Alfred, History of Militarism, rev. 1959, Free Press, NY, pp 33-34. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2016-03-17 09:10 |
| #2 But, but, but: you have female commandos, and gays no longer have to keep a low profile, and F35, and and...---how can you lose? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2016-03-17 05:35 |
| #1 As per the MSM-Net, looks like A-L-L the US Armed Forces are not up to Pre-Obama standard today. NOT-EVEN-ONE-N-ONE-HALF "ONE-OCEAN WAR" VS "ONE-REGION WAR". RUSSIA, CHINA, + IRAN, OTHER? WIN BY DEFAULT; US ALLOWING WOMEN INTO COMBAT??? DOES ANTI-US OWG GLOBALIST "NOT WORSE-THAN LIMITED-TACTICAL-OR-STRATEGIC-NUKE-WAR" COUNT??? The good news for the USDOD is that ... * WAFF > FRANCE SAYS THEY HAVE ONLY 20 COMBAT READY JETS. IOW AKA why France + UK, Etal. Euros including Russia needed US = USDOD assistance to back them up in the various anti-AQ, anti-ISIS, + anti-Assad fights across the ME, plus those still to come??? * IIRC DONALD TRUMP > Was quoted as saying that the "US NO LONGER FIGHTS TO WIN, NOR DOES IT KNOW [anymore] HOW TO FIGHT-N-WIN". OTOH THE USDOD MAY NOT HAVE TO SEND FORCES OVERSEAS AGZ THE HARD BOYZ ANYMORE BECAUSE THE GLOBAL JIHAD INCLUDING NUCLEAR JIHAD WILL BE COMING TO AMERIKA SOON ENUFF. * WORLD NEWS > [Nashville Tennessean] LAWMAKER: ISIS SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO RECRUIT ON [TN = State] [US-wide?] CAMPUSES. WHY NOT, AS THERE ARE CAMPUSES IN THE US WHERE THE LOCAL FEDS-POLICE ARE TOO BUSY WATCHING MADONNA FANS FROM GUAM THAN THE HARD BOYZ COMING-N-GOING IN THEIR MIDST - MIGHT AS WELL LET THE HARD BOYZ GO FULL MONTY + RECRUIT OPENLY-N-PUBLICLY, FAIRLY-N-LEGALLY??? YOOHOO, AL-QAEDA/NUSRA, HEZBOLLAH, LET, ...@ETAL. I'M A'LOOKIN AT YOU! D *** NG IT, ITS FOR THE CHILDREN, + CLINTONIAN AMERIKA'S SACRED NATIONAL COMMUNISM, YOU TRAITORS YOU! |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2016-03-17 00:40 |