Well, actually, I think we really shouldn’t. There will always be some people who are fully suited to being mainly warriors, I guess–and I suspect there is a fine line indeed between them and the banditry I also alluded to. But generally speaking, we should want our military forces to be composed of people who can fight and acquit themselves well when called upon to do so, but don’t live and breathe for the opportunity to wage war. If we are to be a democratic republic (which I doubt the chest-thumpers care for us to be at all) then we need citizen-soldiers. We want these people to fight well, but also know that they are fighting as representatives of a (let us wish) peace-loving democracy, to which they belong and in which they expect to live most of their adult lives as peacefully productive and reasonably happy citizens, not fighting.

Therefore military service should include and emphasize fighting ability but should also balance that with carrying out useful work that has nothing directly to do with being a “warrior.” And our military used to be pretty good at being something like that, back when the truck mechanics and truck drivers and mess hall workers and so on were uniformed. Vice versa–if we have military bases overseas, presumably there is a reason why we think the place may become a combat zone, in which case it would be sensible for all the people who do routine work of this kind to also be trained, disciplined soldiers alert to the chain of command and contingencies in a sudden fighting situation.

So it is a bit odd for a person in the military to think they would have zero chance of being forced to fight, but not at all unreasonable for many people with specialized skills to presume that they would not be used as front-line cannon fodder. Especially since they were after all recruited under such terms. Especially people who already did many years service and were discharged, to feel betrayed if they are suddenly called up to perform tasks they were not trained for, in a war no one believes in.

So, wait. They thought the government would just give ‘em money to go to college without explaining that when you join the army you have to go fight the country’s wars?

I had an American girlfriend who said just that. She served with the US Army in Germany as a German linguist during the Cold War and then found herself shipped out to Saudi for Desert Storm. She was genuinely upset that she was made to go to war. She said she’d joined to get a college education, and hadn’t expected to fight.

Mind you, that was then, when the Army was facing the Soviets off across the German border, and this is now.

What I can’t understand is that in the millions who served in the 10 year Vietnam War era I read maybe a couple of thousand National Guard soldiers actually even saw Vietnam, and as we know many escaped the Selective Service by joining it. I really feel that some of the best and brightest of our citizenry, they and enlistees, has been put at a severe disadvantage, serving next to contractors serving next to so-called “contractors” making x times as much as they do. I wonder, as was shown to be the case in Vietnam to harm Mexican-Americans (first issue of “Lowrider”) if someone else may be getting the short end of the stick and may be reflected in the blanket statistics hidden perhaps by the arguably failed policy of “don’t ask don’t tell”.

the country’s business leaders took jobs running the war effort for a dollar a year, instead of trying to pocket tens of millions in graft.

It can be argued, successfully, that Bush actually declared war on America and all that we stand for and then concocted the ‘War on Terra’ as a quick cover for those that fall for that kind of thing.

Media ownership has helped so much that it’s been priceless… Who said that ignorance is bliss must have been talking about cows at a farm…

OK.

US Deaths in WWII: 416,800
US Soldiers in WWII: 19,996,639
% of Soldiers Killed: ~2%

US Deaths in Iraq War: 3,799
US Soldiers in Iraq War: 1,500,000
% of Soldiers Killed: ~0.2%

Sources: WWII, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Casualties_by_country

Iraq War, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_casualties.htm
http://www.wbir.com/news/regional/story.aspx?storyid=51621

World War II was approximately ten times as lethal to US troops as the Iraq war has been.

Mezosub,

Actually, no. Unless you are saying that we had 100 times more soliders fighting in WWII. Sounds to me that you’re as bad at numbers as Petey.

In WW2, we had on the order of 20 times as many personnel under arms, defending a population les than half our current one. And the entire home front was mobilized. And of course the country’s business leaders took jobs running the war effort for a dollar a year, instead of trying to pocket tens of millions in graft.

The only thing comparable is that we’ve actually been fighting this phony war for longer than it took us to win WW2, with no end in sight,

Things look a little different now, huh?

Petey Wheatstraw
November 24, 2007 at 4:48 am

Also, you forgot the fifth way people leave the Armed Services: In a box. I’m sure that that’s at an all-time high, too.

Petey, I take it you aren’t good with numbers, considering that we lost over 400,000 soldiers in WWII and fewer than 4,000 in Iraq. Hard to see how the 4,000 as an all-time high, as you stated.

A better, smarter way to put it would be that, for a full scale war, U.S. deaths in Iraq are at all all-time low.

He’s practically inconsolable over the crimes of sending soldiers off to war in this latest installment of the ‘Let’s Bomb Grenada’ foreign fallacy program.

He went on such a heated rant when I was there a few months ago. I figured that he’d be slightly annoyed at the turn of events but didn’t expect the venom and white hot heat that I got. It took a few minutes for him to stop shaking with the rage that he holds for not only Bush and Cheney (the rich boy draft dodgers) but for all those ‘bumper sticker idiots’ that think that supporting the troops means throwing their lives away and screwing them out of proper healthcare and proper pay.

His attitude was interesting because he was a ‘lifer’ in the military. He’s still very pissed off at how the VFW and most other groups treated him after he got back from Vietnam. He was actually spit on by what is probably a modern day Fox News devotee and was dissed by the local VFW at a parade.

This brings me to mention the treatment of the returning soldiers from Vietnam. My what a change, and so cruel, and so quick… Isn’t the Bushist ’support the troops’ merely a few degrees off the way the soldiers from that war were and are being treated?

They aren’t prosecuting AWOL’s because of the irony. Interesting…