Many good points. I survived the Battle of An Loc. Nights of sheer terror as our choppers were sacrificed to NVA Russian anti-aircraft batteries just to give courage to our faltering South Vietnamese allies. Just pawns in the game. Sacrificed to a war already lost.
Americans send soldiers to die while they go to the mall. They put “Support The Troops” decals on their SUVs. They mumble embarrassed “Thanks for your service” to vets before scuttling away. They don’t want to know. They couldn’t understand if they did.
The men who die for them are not like them. They come disproportionately from poor cities and the South. You don’t meet many soldiers from Berkeley, Madison, Ann Arbor, Harvard, Yale or Stanford. They are busy playing video games or doing start ups.
Most Americans, especially the Blue elites, have no skin in the game. To them, soldering is just another service industry. They are happy to hire out murder and then ignore the results.
Veterans’ benefits are laughable. The VA is always under-funded and staffed. Veterans die waiting for help. Too expensive to help these people when they come home. Taxes might increase and wouldn’t be able afford that 70 inch curved screen TV.
And more war looms. This mad president may start a war just to cover up his failures. Once again, the public will fall for that ancient ruse.
How will the military react? This military is very different than the conscript army I served in. It is not used to protracted battles or large, ongoing casualties. The Gulf War was a joke. The invasion of Iraq a walk over. Only Afghanistan has been a bloody (if small scale) nightmare.
Around 4,400 soldiers have died in all the years of the Iraq conflict. Nearly 17,000 died in just 1968 in Vietnam. During the week of February 11–17, 1968 the record for the highest US casualty toll during one week was set. The record coming off after the Tet Offensive was 543 Americans killed in action, and 2547 wounded. The current military has simply never seen that level of slaughter.
As mentioned, we have moved increasingly to special forces and declared them invincible heroes. Special forces don’t win stand up wars. Those are fought by masses of regular soldiers. It’s been so long since we have been in a real, large-scale war that it’s impossible to know how this politically correct, all volunteer, wonder military will perform.
As a former draftee, I never thought I’d say this, but military service should be universal for both sexes and with no deferments of any kind. If you can fog a mirror, you serve. It’s the only way the ignorant American public will understand what’s at stake, what the cost is. When their kids start coming home limbless or dead, they’ll get it and they’ll be more careful. They won’t think of war as ordering pizza.
You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all:
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an` Chuck him out, the brute! “
But it’s “ Saviour of ‘is country “ when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
An ‘Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool — you bet that Tommy sees!
