US military needs to be completely revamped

[Dayton3]

China has 2 or 3 aircraft carriers, and we have 17. Which country`s military is built for offense?

You do know (I hope) that the role of U.S. carriers is NOT to fight the carriers of other nations?

 

[pknopp]

It isn't genocide if the other side has the means to fight back

They have the moral right to repeal invaders.

All victims of genocide have means to fight back.

But what a sick idea on your part.

 

[bodecea]

While I question the "$1" thingy....lets get real for a moment. Vacate some of the airforce bases and move the planes and personnel to another base. Planes travel hundreds of miles an hour and can easily make up any time loss due to abandoning the pre-placement. Convert the empty base into a veterans colony with cheap housing for any vet who wants it.

Barbers Point in Hawaii is like that now...still lots and lots of homeless on the beaches.

 

[Dayton3]

They have the moral right to repeal invaders.

All victims of genocide have means to fight back.

But what a sick idea on your part.

what's sick about wanting to kill the enemies of the United States??

 

[bodecea]

Well, yes, if you don't even try very hard, um, yeah, you are going to fail.



Doing exactly what we did with Germany and Japan After World War II.
Create viable democracies

The thing is, in THAT War, we actually committed enough troops, executed the enemy leaders and dead-enders without mercy, and controlled the narrative.

Now, this is where I fault Bush, because he was told that we would need half a million troops to effectively garrison Iraq, and he decided to go in with only about 130K. If we were serious about fighting a war on terror and transforming the Middle East in a meaningful way, then we should have committed the troops to do it.

We weren't. If we were, the day after 9/11, we'd have restarted selective service, and had a large enough military to get the job done.

That would have required a Congressional declaration of war...that wasn't gonna happen.

 

[pknopp]

what's sick about wanting to kill the enemies of the United States??

Dennis Radar thought the people he was killing were his enemies.

 

[Couchpotato]

China has 2 or 3 aircraft carriers, and we have 17. Which country`s military is built for offense?

I assume you like all the international trade that happens? The US Navy says you’re welcome.

 

[candycorn]

Barbers Point in Hawaii is like that now...still lots and lots of homeless on the beaches.

Are they vets?

It won’t solve the issue of homeless vets. Thats sad to hear though. Why do you think it is like that?

 

[Couchpotato]

Are they vets?

It won’t solve the issue of homeless vets. Thats sad to hear though. Why do you think it is like that?

Hawaii is terribly expensive, Hawaii has all kinds of benefits for homeless people, and if you’re going to be homeless Hawaii isn’t a bad place to do it.

 

[Stryder50]

When we go to places where we`re unwanted and unneeded, the invaders will be sent packing. It could take a year or 20 years but they`ll be leaving and the Vietnamese knew this. They kicked the Chinese out twice and the second time it took 700 years to get rid of them.

Most of the South Vietnamese wanted us there. Shown by how many fled when the North won.
North Vietnam had major military and material support from CCP China and the USSR.
USA leaders were worried as to what would be the threshold that starts global WW 3, hence we held back, that one hand tied behind back analogy.
Had we bit the bullet, invaded the North and removed their communist regime, that war might have ended with a USA victory.
If China and Russia didn't do what they did in Korea 1950-1953.

 

[Stryder50]

Along with the war profiteers who insist on selling military toys that the pentagon doesn`t want.

Pentagon Tells Congress to Stop Buying Equipment it Doesn't Need | Military.com

www.military.com

Or asking for and buying speced toys that don't work;

The Inside Story of How the Navy Spent Billions on the “Little Crappy Ship”​

...

Littoral combat ships were supposed to launch the Navy into the future. Instead they broke down across the globe and many of their weapons never worked. Now the Navy is getting rid of them. One is less than five years old.​

...
In July 2016, warships from more than two dozen nations gathered off the coasts of Hawaii and Southern California to join the United States in the world’s largest naval exercise. The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea and others sent hundreds of destroyers, aircraft carriers and warplanes. They streamed in long lines across the ocean, symbols of power and prestige.

The USS Freedom had its own special place within the armada. It was one of a new class of vessels known as littoral combat ships. The U.S. Navy had billed them as technical marvels — small, fast and light, able to combat enemies at sea, hunt mines and sink submarines.

In reality, the LCS was well on the way to becoming one of the worst boondoggles in the military’s long history of buying overpriced and underperforming weapons systems. Two of the $500 million ships had suffered embarrassing breakdowns in previous months. The Freedom’s performance during the exercise, showing off its ability to destroy underwater mines, was meant to rejuvenate the ships’ record on the world stage. The ship was historically important too; it was the first LCS built, the first in the water, commissioned just eight years prior.
...

The Inside Story of How the Navy Spent Billions on the “Little Crappy Ship”

Littoral combat ships were supposed to launch the Navy into the future. Instead they broke down across the globe and many of their weapons never worked. Now the Navy is getting rid of them. One is less than five years old.

www.propublica.org

 

[Stryder50]

Korea we were completely in the right. One only has to look at North Korea today to realize we did the Koreans a solid.
Vietnam was a mistake, but because of superpower concerns, we fought that war with one hand behind our back to make it fair. Foolish.
Syria- a few advisors a war doesn't make.

My point about iraq is that both parties agreed Saddam had to go, and had been calling for him to go for a decade. The problem with the war on terror is that it was the first war where we were concerned about the enemy's feelings!



We went after Iraq because Saddam had been a pain in the ass for 20 years. Also, our Zionist masters wanted him to go.
But here's the thing, once you decide to go to war, you don't do half measures. It ruins your credibility.

I don't buy that "Zionist masters" crap; but the rest of this post is close.

That first Gulf War didn't really end in 1991. There was just a "Cease Fire" but not a "Peace Treaty"; hence the shooting was put on hold and remained that way for about eleven years. Note that similar applies to the Korea situation. There was a "Cease Fire" in 1953, but the war didn't end, since there is no "Peace Treaty".

Usually, a Peace Treaty has one side admit they were wrong, are sorry they were wrong, and are willing to make some level of reparations for the injury and damage they did. Neither Saddam's Iraq nor North Korea have done such. North Korea hasn't pushed the limits in recent years, like it used to, but Saddam's Iraq was a different story.

Saddam was obstructing in anyway he could, and causing more issues and complications than the USA wanted to deal with. More details in an upcoming post.

Key point to take away is that neither the Korean War of 1950-1953 nor the Gulf war of 1990-1991 had officially ended. Both are/were on Hold.

I will agree, if you are going to fight a war, don't do it half-assed, half-hearted. Also, have a very clear idea of how you want it to End, what sort of "better peace" you want, and also have some clear solid methods and strategy you'll use in fighting that war to achieve your goal(s).

 

[Stryder50]

The inspectors continued say "we have found nothing". The UN controls nothing. They do whatever we lead with.




The German people decided their outcome. Iraq, Syria, etc, aren't interested in the same. We gave the people of Iraq and Afghanistan every tool to change the direction of their countries and what did they do? They abandoned those tools and went home to maintain their old way of life.

We will never learn. You can't force people to be who you want them to be.

Saddam was obstructing the access of the foreign inspectors, so they didn't get a full insight to what was inside of Iraq.

For example, once we invaded we found numerous jet fighters, bombers, and helicopters buried in the sand near some of the air bases. On a related note, my oldest son, there with the 1st Cav in Baghdad, told be how they stumbled upon about 20 tanks buried in the dirt fields outside of the city. Point is, if finding conventional weapons where and when you weren't expecting, what else might be buried and where? With out the "maps with "X" marked on them" there might remain more to be found, possibly of a WMD nature, some day.

We found about 500 tons of yellow cake uranium, could be processed for making nuclear weapons.

There were several long truck convoys and several cargo aircraft flights into Syria before we invaded, and still don't know (publicly) what was sent out of Iraq to Syria. Though speculation is such may have been cargoes related to WMD.

When my oldest son was there with the 1st Cav in 2003-2004 they were based in an old military facility that had been a chemical weapons site. Our troops found some of the overlooked chemical weapons stashes when they entered the country.

Many of the people in Iraq and Afghanistan did want to change the direction of their country's and become more Western and Modern. But many (equal or greater number) wanted to pursue Jihad and be rid of the West influence (except for weapons) and were willing to be more vicious in their methods.

It's not about forcing people to be what you want them to be, rather of helping them find a more peaceful and productive way to be better than the "old way of life".

 

[Stryder50]

Well, yes, if you don't even try very hard, um, yeah, you are going to fail.



Doing exactly what we did with Germany and Japan After World War II.
Create viable democracies

The thing is, in THAT War, we actually committed enough troops, executed the enemy leaders and dead-enders without mercy, and controlled the narrative.

Now, this is where I fault Bush, because he was told that we would need half a million troops to effectively garrison Iraq, and he decided to go in with only about 130K. If we were serious about fighting a war on terror and transforming the Middle East in a meaningful way, then we should have committed the troops to do it.

We weren't. If we were, the day after 9/11, we'd have restarted selective service, and had a large enough military to get the job done.

I think we had enough troops to do the job, just they weren't used correctly and we had no clear vision of a goal and how to achieve it. We, USA, muddled along and thought things would sort themselves out 'correctly', or to our satisfaction, and we could get by with minimum "hands on".

We should have considered having better methods to vet the Baathist Party member, and the higher military command so they could fill the needed, national leadership roles.

We should of had a plan on how to deal with the thousands of surrendered military, setting them on path to get home, how a "job" of sorts and get food and aid until the Nation had recovered from the disruption of the invasion.

We should have neutralized the Shia leadership that was agitating for resistance to our occupation.

We should have realized we were entering into a proxy with Iran where the Iraqi insurgents were the pawns of the Iranians (shared Shia religious bonds) and choked off that source of leadership, aid, and supply from Iran.

We should have started off with carpet bombing the nation with millions of bags of pork rinds and millions of pocket copies of our Constitution in Arabic, Kurd, and other languages in use there.

We should have done a better job of gauging likely supporters among the people and their leaders whom would be willing to work with us, before we went in.

But most of all, it looked like we had no clear, achievable, and workable goals in mind and hence no effective plan and how to get there, what ever "there" was.

 

[pknopp]

Saddam was obstructing the access of the foreign inspectors, so they didn't get a full insight to what was inside of Iraq.

For example, once we invaded we found numerous jet fighters, bombers, and helicopters buried in the sand near some of the air bases. On a related note, my oldest son, there with the 1st Cav in Baghdad, told be how they stumbled upon about 20 tanks buried in the dirt fields outside of the city. Point is, if finding conventional weapons where and when you weren't expecting, what else might be buried and where? With out the "maps with "X" marked on them" there might remain more to be found, possibly of a WMD nature, some day.

We found about 500 tons of yellow cake uranium, could be processed for making nuclear weapons.

There were several long truck convoys and several cargo aircraft flights into Syria before we invaded, and still don't know (publicly) what was sent out of Iraq to Syria. Though speculation is such may have been cargoes related to WMD.

When my oldest son was there with the 1st Cav in 2003-2004 they were based in an old military facility that had been a chemical weapons site. Our troops found some of the overlooked chemical weapons stashes when they entered the country.

Many of the people in Iraq and Afghanistan did want to change the direction of their country's and become more Western and Modern. But many (equal or greater number) wanted to pursue Jihad and be rid of the West influence (except for weapons) and were willing to be more vicious in their methods.

It's not about forcing people to be what you want them to be, rather of helping them find a more peaceful and productive way to be better than the "old way of life".

We never found squat.

 

[Couchpotato]

We never found squat.

The Intel was wrong. Happens. Doesn’t help when Saddam wanted us to think he had WMD.

 

[AZrailwhale]

You authoritarians are so transparent.

Nope, everyone should sacrifice for the good of society. I’m in favor of everyone, male or female being required to do two years of national service in a non-resident program. It could be military, something like the old Civilian Conservation Corps from the depression or something else that would enforce a regimented lifestyle and independence.

 

[AZrailwhale]

As was stated above, once you leave active service the DOD no longer cares about you, that is what the VA is for.

The VA needs far better funding and people who care about veterans running it. Right now it’s run by drone bureaucrats who care for their careers rather than the Vets in their care.

 

[AZrailwhale]

Nope, the UN Authorized us to take out Saddam.
What ruined our credibility was doing it in a half-ass way.
We should have went in there with enough troops. Held a Nuremburg trial for Saddam and his Cadre (instead of just letting the Shi'ites kill him as a party favor) and imposed a government that worked on them.
We didn't.
What we did with West Germany was a pretty good model.

The problem is that in a coalition, your actions have to be acceptable to your partners. None of the locals wanted Saddam ousted because they knew it would destabilize the entire region. The only functional democracy in the entire ME is made up of European immigrants and a minority of very long-term (hundreds of years at least) natives of a distinctly dissimilar culture to the dominant Muslim one. Islam is incompatible with democracy.

 

[AZrailwhale]

You do know (I hope) that the role of U.S. carriers is NOT to fight the carriers of other nations?

In a war it would be one of the functions. However none of the Chinese or Russian carriers could reasonably survive an engagement with an American carrier. I’d be willing to bet that all four Russian and Chinese carriers together couldn’t defeat a single U.S. carrier.