BANG FOR OUR BUCK
Well into my seventh decade, it has become clear that America has among the most inefficient and incompetent militaries on earth.
The last time we did a pretty good job waging war was WWII, but it's the only war in my lifetime I have no memory of, being a mere five months old when it ended.
The Korean War began my interest in American military affairs at the tender age of five and here I am, closing in on retirement and it's still not settled. The fighting ended nearly fifty-six years ago with a truce but no settlement. We did thwart North Korea's June, 1950 invasion of the South to unite the Korean Peninsula under Communism, but we incurred staggering losses when Gen. MacArthur tried to conquer North Korea instead of just stopping it, causing Communist China to intervene on their behalf and resulting in the Armistice of July 27, 1953. Amazingly, just three weeks ago, North Korea unilaterally withdrew from that armistice, fifty-five years and ten months to the day from its signing, to protest our ratcheting up sanctions to counter their nuclear weapons development. Maybe this conflict will be resolved in my childrens' lifetime.
It was the Vietnam War, 1959 to 1975, with most of US involvement beginning in the early 1960's, that crystallized my opposition to our flawed and failed interventions around the world. Again thinking we had to fight a proxy war to contain Russia, we stumbled and bumbled into the Mother of All Failed Interventions, this time on behalf of the utterly corrupt and hated South Vietnamese government against another Northern communist variant in a civil war. We put Vietnam in the loss column after nearly sixteen years of monumental human and financial waste just to make a unified Vietnam the thankful recipient of disappearing American manufacturing jobs.
Vietnam was such a colossal failure I thought I could retire from being an anti-war activist.Then, after the 911 terrorist attacks launched by the equivalent of an extremist Islamic street gang, our leaders, who distinguished themselves in their youth by using their privilege and clout to avoid the Vietnam conflict, went berserk in covering up their incompetence which assisted that street gang's success, and launched new interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan. And here we are, nearly eight years later, still funding these lost causes to the tune of four hundred million dollars and buckets of blood daily, while our economy is falling down around us.
Getting back to my premise that the American military stinks; I must clarify that does not refer to the brave young men, and now women, who fight these wars with incalculable pain and without gain and without end. It is the stupid, and power-hungry and mendacious civilian leadership that believes war is their right and their glory to whom I refer. It is neither. Just ask the troubled ghost of LBJ or the broken man holed up on his Crawford ranch.
It is their doom.
Originally published in Glen Ellyn News, June 17, 2009
The last time we did a pretty good job waging war was WWII, but it's the only war in my lifetime I have no memory of, being a mere five months old when it ended.
The Korean War began my interest in American military affairs at the tender age of five and here I am, closing in on retirement and it's still not settled. The fighting ended nearly fifty-six years ago with a truce but no settlement. We did thwart North Korea's June, 1950 invasion of the South to unite the Korean Peninsula under Communism, but we incurred staggering losses when Gen. MacArthur tried to conquer North Korea instead of just stopping it, causing Communist China to intervene on their behalf and resulting in the Armistice of July 27, 1953. Amazingly, just three weeks ago, North Korea unilaterally withdrew from that armistice, fifty-five years and ten months to the day from its signing, to protest our ratcheting up sanctions to counter their nuclear weapons development. Maybe this conflict will be resolved in my childrens' lifetime.
It was the Vietnam War, 1959 to 1975, with most of US involvement beginning in the early 1960's, that crystallized my opposition to our flawed and failed interventions around the world. Again thinking we had to fight a proxy war to contain Russia, we stumbled and bumbled into the Mother of All Failed Interventions, this time on behalf of the utterly corrupt and hated South Vietnamese government against another Northern communist variant in a civil war. We put Vietnam in the loss column after nearly sixteen years of monumental human and financial waste just to make a unified Vietnam the thankful recipient of disappearing American manufacturing jobs.
Vietnam was such a colossal failure I thought I could retire from being an anti-war activist.Then, after the 911 terrorist attacks launched by the equivalent of an extremist Islamic street gang, our leaders, who distinguished themselves in their youth by using their privilege and clout to avoid the Vietnam conflict, went berserk in covering up their incompetence which assisted that street gang's success, and launched new interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan. And here we are, nearly eight years later, still funding these lost causes to the tune of four hundred million dollars and buckets of blood daily, while our economy is falling down around us.
Getting back to my premise that the American military stinks; I must clarify that does not refer to the brave young men, and now women, who fight these wars with incalculable pain and without gain and without end. It is the stupid, and power-hungry and mendacious civilian leadership that believes war is their right and their glory to whom I refer. It is neither. Just ask the troubled ghost of LBJ or the broken man holed up on his Crawford ranch.
It is their doom.
Originally published in Glen Ellyn News, June 17, 2009
posted by Walt Zlotow at 6:03 PM
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