Creation of a "Warrior Caste" in America

[Va Lefty]

"The United States has been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan for more than 15 years. There have been calls recently to put “boots on the ground” in Syria. Should the situation on the Korean peninsula deteriorate rapidly, there are already tens of thousands of U.S. troops already on the ground who may be in harm’s way. Yet, for the vast majority of American society, these deployments are an abstraction. Most Americans won’t fight in those conflicts and don’t know anyone who will."

"About 61 percent of Americans have a familial connection to service, but only 33 percent of Americans under the age of 30 share that connection. In a government self-described as “by the people, for the people,” fewer people than ever are interacting with those in uniform, and very few choose to serve. Not lost on the services themselves, 84 percent of veterans agree “the public does not understand the problems faced by those in the military or their families.”

"Yet, more than an issue of strength of the military, this disconnect plays a role in allowing use-of-force decisions to go without scrutiny. Even the most robust and diverse military leadership will fall prey to the whims of an unchecked commander in chief and a Congress that has time and time again abdicated its responsibility to authorize the use of force. This lack of accountability preys upon the public’s lack of familiarity with the military and how it’s being leveraged overseas today. The familiarity gap between the military and society posed by the civil-military divide does more than simply make everyday interactions awkward: It allows Congress and the president to use military force with relative impunity and shockingly few checks on those decisions. Even President Trump’s decision to push authority down to field commanders belies a lack of accountability that seems allowable mostly because very few have skin in the game."

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/08/the_warrior_caste_of_military_families_that_fight_america_s_wars.html


Not sure what the answer is outside of a draft or mandatory service and neither of those is popular or likely

[guillaumeb]

1. Another answer would be to cut the war budget by 50% and make the Defense Department

an actual defense department. But that would interfere with profits for the war industries.

[Va Lefty]

2. Agreed that would be a step in the right direction

Chalmers Johnson talked about how high the Def. budget was after 9/11 and said "When war becomes that profitable, I guarantee you we are going to see more of it."

[brush]

7. Why we could have single payer health care for everyone with just a fractional cut in the...

military budget.

[guillaumeb]

9. Declaring war on profiteers?

Agreed.

[procon]

3. One solution might be to reduce the number of unsustainable US military

interventions in foreign countries.

[zipplewrath]

4. And we couldn't use all of them

Our active duty military is very small compared to the eligible population. If you tried to have any draft, or mandatory service, you would need very few people and it wouldn't change the underlying problem.

The current situation is created by three realities, none of which are particularly addressable.

1) We are a technological military. We need relatively few "boots on the ground". Most of our modern combat is at arms length and the war fighter rarely sees the enemy directly. There really aren't "front lines" in most of our combat situations. So even among the existing active duty, the vast majority will see little, if any, combat. So much of our population, even our active duty population, doesn't have the experience associated with the horrors, or "fog" of war.

2) We don't fight large battles against large armies. We do almost all of our fighting in one of two ways. Either with "special forces" that are relatively small units that deal with isolated targets, most often in great secrecy such that we never hear of their work. Alternately there is air based attacks with drones, cruise missiles, and manned aircraft. VERY few people, if any, are in direct combat. A B-52 bomber can carry a very large amount of weapons that can be used for ground attack and ground combat support. We can do a tremendous amount of damage on the ground without actually entering the "battlefield".

3) The previous two realities have created a third which is that the military is both small and "professional", in that much of it is as much a career as working for a bank. This means that we are creating in effect a "warrior class" or worse a "warrior industry". This is different than the infamous "MIC" of Ike's day. It means you have a class of people that feel privileged and empowered. And we see it play out in modern society where it is presumed that "the generals" know better. We virtually have to seek their support for our military policy. It's not all that different from the privileged state our police find themselves where they can kill with impunity. Our military has a huge influence on our government, our society, and our military exercise of power. And you can see that play out in any administration where so many current and former commanders end up in otherwise "civilian" positions.

And all of this is playing out in very bad ways because they have also perfected the system of "classification" which allows them to avoid having to openly debate what they are deciding and what they are doing, much less how they do it. It all gets classified and can't be discussed or debated. It ends up being a small group of people who are allowed to even know, much less discuss or debate. Precious few people are allowed "in". Some administration appointees, and the president himself. But these few are sucked into a "bubble" and fed the information that those in command want to be known. Very little advice and counsel is allowed outside of the bubble. Anyone attempting to debate or criticize can be marginalized by the mere declaration that "they aren't privy to all of the pertinent information". Cheney quite effectively manipulated the bubble to manipulate what was known and who knew it.

I don't know how to change or fix this. All of these realities exist for a reason and we didn't get here overnight. But it is a VERY dangerous situation and one we have already seen start to spin out of control. For all we know it already has. Iran-Contra was only a taste of what could easily happen. Our military can, and is, used for activities of which we do not know, and will never know. And there is really no mechanism to stop it. Congress has no way of detecting it until someone either leaks, or screws up. And even then there is a great capacity to hide the vast majority of what happens.

Oh, and in the meantime, both China and Russia seek to be equally as powerful and in an equally unaccountable way.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

5. Trump can fix item 2: we don't fight large armies.

All he has to do is light a match under Korea, then we're fighting a large army. One that's backed up by an even larger army.

[zipplewrath]

6. Probably not

That one either goes nuclear real fast, or it stays as a series of strikes and counter strikes. We wouldn't particularly "invade" NK, because of China. We'd push them out of South Korea and undercut their ability to project power.

[brush]

8. We need stable leadership because war with NK is just about unthinkable.

Does trump seriously think China is just going to stand by and let us attack neighboring NK?

And what about Japan and South Korea?

And WTF does he think, NK is not going to dispatch it's own nukes? Even if they can't reach the US mainland, they can reach South Korea and Japan, and probably Alaska and Hawaii too.

[zipplewrath]

10. Trump....Think

Two words that should never be used together.