The Captain’s thoughts reminded me of a few lines by Winston Churchill who as an expert in the exercise of ‘moral courage’ knew something of which he spoke while wielding the English language with a sublime precision.

. . .the only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honour. . .
-Winston S. Churchill, November, 1940.

To whom does "our" refer? What interest do =you= have--do any of us have--in any possible
outcome in Iraq or Afghanistan?

I am sick to death of hearing about OUR NATIONAL INTEREST when nothing is being done about getting a fair, balanced economy going again; when ANY of our kids are hungry and poorly educated; when ANY man and woman who is willing to work is denied work; when ANY adults qualified to get loans cannot get the money they need for housing or to start up modest businesses.

I am sick to death of hearing about OUR national interest from elected officials who have sold their votes to interests inimical to the interests of 99 percent of American citizens.

And I am up to fucking ----->HERE<----- with the bullshit kabuki dance to which I am feted every time I enter an airport in the land of formerly free and home of the formerly brave. If someone is risking life and limb to defend our freedom, what the hell is =that= all about? The only people benefiting from airport security rules are purveyors of bottled water.

I get a HQ USMC feed on my facebook page. One of the recurring themes is how we are building playgrounds for the children in Afghanistan. We are building playgrounds in Afghanistan while we shortchange children in this country. How can this go on? It is beyond bizarre.

There was a very sad story here in the Atlanta area recently. One of the local municipalities couldn't afford to run its animal shelter so the police went in and shot 40+ plus dogs. We are moving towards third world status but we just keep rocking along on the same insane policies.

And I really think that Pres. Obama might want to change the policy - bring our guys back - but he would be excoriated by the Right Wing and its idiot minions would scream bloody murder if we rolled up our operations in Afghanstan.

Crazy.

Walt

could very well become anti-American and promote (or tacitly condone) forms of collective behavior towards women or minorities that you might find abhorrent.

You want a Liberal Democratic Iraq or Afghanistan. The problem is promoting, or forcing, liberalization on any society requires a degree of violence (and not just against military enemies; when you are forcing changes on a society, most people are "the enemy"), making cultural judgements, ongoing occupation, and an insistence on ignoring popular opinion. Our own history is proof of this.

What defies explanation is that it is easier to get Congress to approve funds for rebuilding an Afghan village, or funding a school, or constructing infrastructure and providing jobs in some Afghan backwater than it is to get that same eminent body to do those things here in the USA. The Neanderthal wing of the Republican Party and moral cowardice among Democrats has brought us to this juncture. Our economic problems are well deserved and we shall live with them for longer than most think.

Eric Hammel

I said "assume" I specified in my commentary that I didn't believe that but was only trying to make a point about how one could make the argument. But since we're here - yes, you are correct.

Whiskey Papa - yes - you are right, but not the point I was making either.

Little Mantate - Again - yes you are right, but again, not the point of my comments

Jpwrel - yep.

All I ask is that folks read the whole thing - what I really was getting at, and spent the most time engaging, was the idea of a national service obligation have any ability whatsoever to fix the problems.

National service won't fix the problem. It might help, but I agree it is not anything close to the silver-bullet remedy. From my time in Germany, it seemed like something that is a viable method to spread the cost of national service. I think it would help to re-align the population with it's military, but it definitely has some cons too (people would cheat the system, etc). It's not the end-all solution though.

I think something does need to be done to spread the cost around a bit... but I have some issues with the "what". Most likely, I would advocate some kind of tax, but I see that causing all kinds of troubles too.

My guess is that the best solution lies somewhere in increasing opportunity and inclination to serve. I would be behind a year or two of mandatory ROTC for every college student, at least for awhile. My hope would be that some would stay simply because it was not what they'd expected and that in that way we'd help close the gap.

There's a lot of discussion about this gap and a lot of great work done on the topic. I think that in the end, nothing can be done about it without seriously undermining individual rights and liberties - people should be able to choose whether or not to join the military and I honestly count it a success that the closest thing any of my civilian friends can compare an IED blast to is a large firework.

Maybe folks good choose to "opt out" of govt benefits: either pay your dues in military or civil service (waivers allowed for disabled or mental incompetent...or come up with alternative ways for them to serve) or you can opt out... but if you opt out you don't get any benefits from the govt. sorry, still pay taxes though. or something like that.

I do not think we need to differentiate--or elevate--military service or a stint in some other =public= endeavor like Americorps Vista from just getting up in the morning, getting the kids off to school, going to work, taking part in a school board meeting, helping the kids with homework, writing a few checks, and going to sleep to get an edge on doing it all over again tomorrow. We make contributions--equal contributions, I think--by being good people, good citizens, good role models, good parents, good neighbors, etc. We all have roles to play, obligations to meet, burdens to shoulder, travails to overcome. We all simply need to do the ordinary things we do.

"Good citizens." The key to your comment and, I would argue, the key to all of the commentary here. There is a lot of complaining about congress - a pastime I am particularly fond of. Couple the good citizen concept with congress. We, the good citizens just going about out daily activities and lives, elect those members of congress that we like to complain about. Cut this up any way you want to, at the end of the day the same executive and legislative branches that we love to hate on are elected by us, the good citizens.

At the end of the day there is no excuse for shitty representation. It boils down to the same good citizens not paying enough attention to local, regional, and national events (speaking US-centric here, leaving foreign affairs right out for the moment). We can all disagree on the details, and probably do. By and large though we probably all agree that having honest members of congress is good. Having members of congress that are willing to step up and speak the truth, recognize failing systems, and execute legislation that will actually improve things - these are good things. Is that what we have right now? Without getting too deep into specifics, in general congress does not work too well. Too many special interests, too many lobbies, too many damn near everything. And yet we keep electing the same people.

A seat in the house is, often, damn near a job for life. Yes, in the last mid-terms there was some turnover. But look at the numbers. The mandate lauded by the press was not, in fact, much of a mandate. Look at the actual numbers. How many incumbents lost seats? 355ish seats in the House, how many incumbents, that were running, were not reelected. And why do I keep harping on this? Because good citizens look at the numbers. Good citizens consider more than just the surface crap that the main stream press prints.

Fix the good citizen part and we fix the national issues. It's just that most people do not want to hear that the American public needs to get off its collective fat ass and make their brains work more. And no, I do not have a good recommendation for fixing this. Rather depressing all around.

Hate to comment and run but have to catch a plane now, go sit in meetings, and be disgruntled. Enjoy your day folks.

What you talk about is the bare minimum that you are supposed to do as a citizen, going that extra mile in the Military or any National service should be elevated.
You are supposed to get your kids to school
You are supposed to go to work
You are supposed to be a good neighbor
You are supposed to do the things you talk about, that is not equal to someone giving years of their time in a ghetto teaching as part of AmeriCorps, going overseas as a member of the PeaceCorps and it is certainly not equal to serving in a combat zone under a far stricter set of rules like the UCMJ. You talk of equal contributions but I just do not see that doing the basics and then doing more as being the equal of each other.

and unreasonable skepticism towards domestic improvements is a strange, schizophrenic, but unsurprising result of a mixture of Evangelical Missionizing/American Exceptionalism, a GOP modified version of political correctness, bellicosity, old fashioned spoils system politics (at least those Haliburton boys aren't lazy welfare recipients, they "earn" their cash), and reactionary faux populism. This pathology isn't that old, really. The grandparents of these people idolized FDR, and many 19th-century Americans in the so-called red states (the Deep South as notable exception) were all about internal improvements. But somewhere along the line, they were convinced that highway projects and railroads were really about setting up birth control clinics and exporting Bohemian values into their midst.

Regarding Afghanistan, it was never truly about improving the lives of Afghans (props in a play, really), more about American self-image.

"They also serve who only stand and wait." --John Milton

Cops and streetsweepers also serve by cleaning the streets.
Electricians also serve by keeping the juice flowing.
Mothers also serve by bearing our next generation.
Fathers also serve by setting an example and teaching children values.
Teachers also serve by teaching.
Doctors also serve by healing.

You're a reliably smart fellow. Do you get it yet?

If you're in the military, you're there, above all, because you want to be, because you're suited for it, because you're physically fit, because you believe. That's a happy confluence for you.

Are you really so self-absorbed that you need to denigrate others for their choices or the confluence of events, great and small, that carry them along to the lives they live, the better to pay for the life you have chosen to live?

I was watching C-SPAN a few years ago when a braying Randy Cunningham called out Patrick Kennedy for never having been in the military, for "never serving your country." Kennedy, who can live comfortably without lifting a finger or ever putting up with the likes of Randy Cunningham, calmly replied, in so many words: WTF do you think I'm doing in Congress? This was while Cunningham was taking bribes for his vote.

We're also serving by working harder to foot the bill foisted on us by our corrupt public officials and paying double to drive to work, and just to keep the lights on for you. We're also serving by living and working and going about our lives, by =being= the nation you call home, the nation you come home to.

What would please you, Eric? What's good enough to equal the sacrifice you must have known you'd face when you took the oath.

You should watch a great stand up show by Chris Rock, there is a line in there that almost mirrors what you previously posted. I think you would find it funny and a bit ironic.

"Are you really so self-absorbed that you need to denigrate others for their choices or the confluence of events, great and small, that carry them along to the lives they live, the better to pay for the life you have chosen to live?"

-Who did I denigrate? Really, who? I stated that there is a difference and that the things you talk of are the minimum we expect for people to do. Are you really so self-obsessed with the idea that everything is the same that you cannot see that there is a difference?
I would say that certain jobs are a calling, like cops, fireman, etc...but the things you pointed to in your first post on that topic are really what you define as being equal to everything else? Perhaps I have raised the bar to high then? One should not expect that the average citizen should go to work, raise their kids, send them to school, etc....? If they do then they are doing just as much in your view as the cop, the fireman and soldier who also do those bare minimum things on top of their job? I do not denigrate anyone Eric, I simply do not think that so little should be expected of a citizen I guess.

"I was watching C-SPAN a few years ago when a braying Randy Cunningham called out Patrick Kennedy for never having been in the military, for "never serving your country." Kennedy, who can live comfortably without lifting a finger or ever putting up with the likes of Randy Cunningham, calmly replied, in so many words: WTF do you think I'm doing in Congress? This was while Cunningham was taking bribes for his vote."

-Great story, I cannot stand Pat Kennedy and nothing to do with what I was talking about but to be honest I am at the point that perhaps citizens should serve in some capacity before running for office.

"We're also serving by working harder to foot the bill foisted on us by our corrupt public officials and paying double to drive to work, and just to keep the lights on for you. We're also serving by living and working and going about our lives, by =being= the nation you call home, the nation you come home to."

-Umm....again, not sure what that has to do with the fact that I think that what you spoke of is the LEAST we should expect of a citizen and you kind of place all things on the same plane.

I see a difference, always will, people who go into the PeaceCorps or who did Vista, Americorps, the Military are putting their money where their mouth is and no, if I see an able bodied male who would equate his doing the "basics" of what you posted with those of a college kid who helped fight malaria in Africa for 2 years or a vet with a missing leg then I would just shake my head and say it is not the same.

let's give a shout out to the taxpayers that make it all possible, including way overpriced outhouses built by Peace Corpsniks.

You end your post with a typical example of American Messianism. What did those Africans do until the white bwana showed up to save 'em? I'm surprised they held out as long as (since Homo Sapiens first evolved from earlier Hominid forms) they did.

Looking at the numbers (from UNICEF), a country like Djibouti, basking in the warm light of French and American attention, ain't looking so hot. I'm sure the numbers were cooked, after all, a cesspool of demonic evil like Libya had some pretty good statistics.

"let's give a shout out to the taxpayers that make it all possible, including way overpriced outhouses built by Peace Corpsniks"

-Hey, never said we cannot do better on how we go about uses of funds.

"You end your post with a typical example of American Messianism. What did those Africans do until the white bwana showed up to save 'em? I'm surprised they held out as long as (since Homo Sapiens first evolved from earlier Hominid forms) they did."

-What the hell is that line about? How did you get that out of anything? I think someone who goes to help out anyone should get a tip of the hat, sorry, would it make you feel better if I said Americorps and in a city in the US? I think I included them in a post but don't let that stop you from making a crazy statement like "American Messianism". Sure, about a million people die from malaria every year, so why help? If you do help, in your mind it is some kind of soft racism I gather from your post? Brother, that is beyond a reach. You know what, you are right, no one should volunteer to help anyone. Those bastards! Looking to help someone, how dare they!!

I picked on Djibouti because it is usually cited as an example of how Western presence doesn't magically produce healthy babies and raise the life expectency.

Africa is a basket case and continues to grow worse despite all the help, decades of it. Western Aid has managed to produce a corrupt, entrenched class of political middlemen and intellectuals, dependent on foreign aid for their existence, and cut off culturally from their own people. Aid is a soft form of racism, in that it is basically welfare.

To really help, we could begin by levelling the playing field. If the US quit subsidizing domestic maize it would do more in 10 years for peasants around the world than the Peace Corps could accomplish in 100.

And on Americorps? Yeah, its like the Peace Corps, it's basically a feel good program that does little to solve the actual problem- lack of industrial jobs. All the programs in the world won't help those communities until jobs come back, if they do. The jobs could come back, btw, if the US leadership changed its economic and geopolitical economy to start favoring its workers as opposed to investors and multinationals. Now I might sound protectionist and seemingly contradicting my earlier coments on maize. Long story short, we could change a lot, benefiting US workers and foreign farmers and workers, but it would stop subsidies for some pretty powerful forces here and abroad.

As far as helping people, I'd say that private groups, often religious (not all of them, however) have been more successful in elevating people's standard of living and teaching self-sufficiency. They are committed to long term and realistic projects, are more flexible, are more dependent on local initiative and have less turn over than programs like the Peace Corps or Americorps.

HUNTER, inquiring minds want to know exactly how we failed in ‘deterrence’ for instance in Iraq? After Desert Storm the USAF and RAF completely controlled both the northern and southern ‘no-fly zone’ airspace of Iraq while the Iraqi Army never did recover from their drubbing in 1991. Appears to me we didn’t give a damn about your dad’s good advice on the ‘First Mission being Deterrence’?

The Pentagon was eager to pull trigger since of course that’s what they do. In the meantime, the hapless Intelligence community ginned up crap for product at the intimation of the administration requiring a ‘casus belli’ to unleash the dogs. The White House thought they could do a quick and easy campaign in order to facilitate their crackpot domestic agenda with the enhanced credibility and prestige of a quick and easy war. I dare say both the feeble minds in the Pentagon and the most feckless White House of the century were amazed that the war that was supposed to be a walkover turned out to be something far different than what they expected. It is interesting how the best-laid plans can so often go awry.

Between about 1982 and 1991, I had the opportunity to speak before what must have amounted to many thousands of Marines at bases on both coasts. I never delivered a speech without noting: "If you never hear a shot fired in anger in the course of a thirty-year career, rest easy and take pride, because you'll have done your job."

And then George H.W. Bush communicated with Saddam Hussein by way of April Glaspie. It'll never be the same again.

You, of course, answered your own question. Who was it we should have been deterring? Obviously not the Iraqis, because they had nothing to do with 9-11.

At the military academy there was a four letter abbreviation that I absolutely lived by. It was called 'fols.' 'Fols' means follows i.e. this follows from your previous error, usually in my case a math error. In other words, you get partial credit for continuing the problem correctly even though you really f-mucked it up upstream from here. Sadly, there is no such partial credit for Iraq. Everything may 'fols' from those critical errors in the beginning, but I don't beleive we'll be scoring too many points, and we might not be passing the class.

because you and your compatriots were sent on a fool's errand. Or, rather, you were sent on a justifiable and achievable mission that was then warped and turned into a fool's errand. If political strategy is flawed, operating off of false principles, then no level of military professionalism will achieve victory.

The goals and grand strategy of the US in the Middle East is at odds with itself, reflecting a larger cultural schizophrenia that afflicts the US, which is to be expected in a nation as large and culturally diverse as our own.
The US, as a collection of disparate groups and voices, simultaneously wishes to defend Israel, keep oil prices low, grant popular sovereignty and meaningful representative democracy to the masses (via violence if necessary), atone for Western Colonialism, AND export liberalism and women's rights. If we have accomplished anything it is to weaken, perhaps fatally, social liberalism and cosmopolitanism in the region as miniskirts and religious minorities are becoming increasingly rare.

While talking a sacrificial and united we stand game, the ruling generations (including the "Greatest") in the US wished to not pay for any of these grand ventures, screw the grandkids. US operations have been characterized by a strange mixture of Internationalist altruism and spoils system greed, which served to undermine the first. In another example of US cognitive dissonance, US official narrative was culturally relativistic, devoid of any cultural critiques of the region (only a few bad Al Qaida apples and what not), but insistent, in a Amerocentric manner, that only we know what "freedom" means or what good governance entails.

In other words, only our neoliberal and corporatist system is truly free and represents the aspirations of people around the world, because official narrative demands that we are all alike. In more recent years, confronted with the degree of cultural difference, we now hear official and blogosphere talk of locals finding their "own" form of democracy, which is a tacit admission of defeat by Western would be social engineers.

Those opposed to us must be acting out of nihilistic motives, bad guys. But in any event we don't dare call them savages (officially) as we send drones their way.

It doesn't stop, what with our new Libyan friends.

No - I expect that if we kick off a war somewhere and I didn't like it I would face a moral dilemma - and I would, if I felt morally opposed to fighting in a particular war, deal with the consequences of choosing not to fight.

The backdoor draft... yeah, that is true - so then the Army can hold onto its volunteers, but absent a draft, no one can force new recruits into the force; something that would eventually deprive the politican the ability to fight. It beats simply showing up and telling kids they've got to go do this crap... frankly, even in the case of a true existential threat to the nation I object to anyone being "forced" to see the things we've seen and do the things we've done. I am proud of my service, would be proud of my kids if they CHOSE to do this, and will continue to serve this country as long as I can physically manage - but that's my choice and I value above all else, the ability to have chosen to enter the profession.

What needs to happen is recruiters must be more clear about the ability of the government to hold onto you even after your contract is up, and let the military deal with the recruiting problems inherent in that.

We've said we could manage the issues of a draft before... I'm still opposed to it and I think that while it might work for a half generation or so, in the end it would end up like everything else - corrupted by folks with power and influence in such a way as to ensure they're children don't ever have to serve if they don't want to.

"In reality the standing force is just an (overused) instrument of foreign policy."...yes, that is pretty much what all military forces are for, been that way for a long long time, with a draft and without...pick up and read a copy of "On War" when you get a chance.
I find it amazing how people think that putting in a draft will put an end to war, or wars not in the national interest.

agree with most of your statements, but it's important to keep one thing in mind. When you say to the Capt, what did you expect? His response might be, well I expected the military to serve the function I was told it serves all through school, in social studies classes. He probably believed that the US military fights to defend freedom because we hear that same message repeated and repeated over and over on TV, on the news, in our movies, and by politicians from both parties. He may have made the mistake of believing what the recruiters told him. So let's not sit here and say that all of us soldiers who signed up at the age of 17 or 18 should have known better. You have the realist's perspective, and you are right-- a lot of what the US military does has nothing to do with "defending our freedom" but that is the line that is sold to these kids when they join.

I don't support reviving the draft.

I think it's important that everyone, especially our political leaders, understand the capabilities and nature of the military when deciding where/when/why/how to commit it overseas. However, I don't think that we need to create a situation to test each new American generation in military action.

If an existential foreign threat makes the draft a necessity, so be it. But, we need to understand what constitutes an existential threat in order make that decision. That understanding is best accomplished by leaders who have experienced national security policy firsthand rather than those who view it as something for the military 'other' to handle themselves.

where the CO says:

"A draft or mandatory public service (military or civil option) would do much to bring normal citizens into the fold on caring about public policy."

That's one way to get a larger proportion of our future leaders to take our national security personnally, but it can't be the only one, can it?

Singling out the (underage) daughters of President Obama seems like a pretty hamhanded attempt to drag partisan politics into it.

(Also, just for the sake of argument, consider the many, many neo-conservative architects of our current adventures who never served in the military.)

And don't forget that the Bush twins reached military age without storming the barricades at Walter Reed and Bethesda to read a book aloud to a blind soldier or, ulp, empty a paraplegic's bedpan. Dangerous front-line work like that.

None of them are going to go, and we know for sure that Sasha and Malia, whose parents are the foremost advocates of public education in the country, aren't going to entrust their daughters to the DC Public Schools. And that goes for Jenna and Barbara or anybody else from the ruling class that don't want to push away red clay at Fort Benning the way I and many other volunteers did.

First ladies and kids live in an armed camp and travel according to an ops plan, with locked-loaded escorts. Freshmen congresswomen have become targets for 'sovereign' advocates of freedom.

The target mentality might figure into why the leaders of the nat security state are so ready to compromise joe six-pack's freedom to shoot coons and make untraceable phone calls.

when elected leaders become increasing closeted because of justifiable fears, their sense of reality may become increasingly disconnected from the truth and are more dependent on bureaucrats and lobbyists for their information. Post 9/11, we saw how dangerous frightened Congress people can be.

without prejudice toward forest goats, sportsmen or night scavengers ;)

One could argue that venereal disease was a small price to pay for something that was so worthwhile.

I know why we are still here. There is an obscene amount of money to be made on our continued presence, and defense contractors, CEOs etc 'gotta get paid.'

the Constitution of the United States? Can that be our mission? And to obey the orders of the President and the officers appointed over us?

no MULE, that is the oath, however you are not far off...I recommend anyone reading this thread google DODD 5100.01 dated December 21st of 2010. This document lays out the purposes of the Defense Department and each of its services. For example, the purpose of DoD is to:
a. Support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
b. Ensure, by timely and effective military action, the security of the United States, its possessions, and areas vital to its interest.
c. Uphold and advance the national policies and interests of the United States.

Hate to be a doctrine Nazi on this one, but I think it would be a valuable tool for, or at least a starting point for most on this thread...you can use that as a reference point and debate if you agree with what is in it or not. In addition, it reads as a true job description for DoD, the COCOMs, the Services, etc....so if you want to know what the U.S. military's "real job" is, take a moment and educate yourselves