Charles Rangle kills Democratic Party before the party begins

Out of my office an hour ago was a man who did a tour in Iraq as an MP, his wife, an Air Force trauma nurse is scheduled for deployment within 3 months. I actually asked him about the draft and his opinion and his buddies' is NO DRAFT. Not that they don't want more troops, but they don't want unmotivated, bottom of barrel Americans or soft rich kids. They want 'motivated and serious soldiers'.

What Bush et al have given is Vietnam II, a war run by politics and politicans, not professional soldiers.

 

AA:

Your last sentence is dead-on.

I want to send the f'n Middle Eastern US-haters to hell, too. It's too bad the current group had/has
ZERO legitimate visition as to how to do that.

But I'll take the bull by the horns, and bottom-line this chat, pronto. Hiigher troop levels without a draft? Only way would be to boost the pay/benefits packages substantially -- and can't see that flying.

 

Indeed. Much better to have your wars fought by disinterested, unfit people than professionals who sign up for the job.
Next idea: Hold a draft and force unqualified people to do open-heart surgery, structural engineering and drug research.

 

More soldiers is not going to fix that mess. No way. We won the war in about a week and a half, because air power trumps all in an invasion like that. But you can't keep that country from falling into civil war simply by overloading it with U.S. soldiers fighting with two hands tied behind their backs.

 

I'm not saying I want more troops. I'm saying if we're going to stay in Iraq, more troops are a must because we're going to get bled dry otherwise. If we need more troops, they'd have to resort to a draft to fill the needs. If they do a draft, they'll get shitty troops.

Maybe, then, the solution, is to find a way out. Plain and fucking simple.

 

I'm not exactly sure where we disagree, alley. War is a social and political debate, at least in a democracy. I will grant you it's one we should have had before we got lied into the clusterfuck, but we're having it now and I'm on your side, except I think you could run a couple hundred thousand troops in there and not "win" this thing in any effective way.

 

That's exactly my point F_B. If we can't win the war no matter the number of troops, then why are we there? If our goal was to get rid of Saddam, we did that. But if our goal is to build a democracy, we're going to be there for a century or more. Hell, we haven't even finished building our own.

 

And we agree, and go off to have a beer.

 

Fine by me. I'm just trying to prevent this from slipping into a "Dems want this, GOPers want that" kind of thread.

 

You can't have a beer if your are in the military and stationed in Iraq. Don't want to piss off the Muslims.

 

Oh, yes, you can.
The Thirst knows no boundaries, 'yab.

 

Somehow, even the Navy manages to find a way to serve its sailors beer, and alcohol is prohibited on naval vessels.

It's called beer rations and they actually do serve them. Had me some in 1994.