Skip to main content

VETERAN'S DAY THOUGHTS FROM A DISABLED VET AND FRIEND

  • As a disabled vet myself, who has seen many of his friends die in combat, I am offering these thoughts on Veterans Day.

    We are getting into too many unnecessary wars and other lesser combat actions. It is past time to stop trying to be the world's police force, and to stop trying to impose our form of western democracy on people who don't want it. If, for instance, the people of Afghanistan really want freedom from religious oppression, they must first fight for it themselves, and then ask us for limited help implementing it.

    It is time to bring our combat troops home from such places as Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan. We have had troops in harms way in Korea for 60 years. South Korea has long since become a major industrial and military power, and they can damned well look out for their own northern border.

    The last war we fought to win was WW2. In every action since we have sought truces or draws. We should not shed American blood for draws. We need to scrap the social engineering ongoing in the military for at least 50 years, shit-can the ridiculous rules of engagement (ROE) we impose on our combat troops, and fight every war we cannot avoid ruthlessly, so as to end it as quickly and decisively as possible and bring our troops home. Collateral damage is unavoidable. Senior commanders and JAG officers who have never been in the cauldron of combat have no business either formulating rules for warriors, or sitting in judgement on those warriors for their actions.

    We need to rebuild our intelligence arm, systematically gutted by the Carter and Clinton administrations, to a level of capability that will enable us to accurately determine where our real threats lie. This is absolutely essential if we are to reduce the size of our standing military and rely more on our reserve components. The Iraq War was a result of poor strategic intelligence more than a scheme to acquire Iraqi oil hatched in Houston. BTW, our intelligence forces exist to determine and neutralize our real enemies, not win domestic political contests.

    War is nasty; brutal; vicious. It cannot be anything else, and attempts to dilute its effects in an attempt to make it somehow more palatable are counterproductive exercises, preordained to failure.

    My last thought is that our military is but the tool of the civilian government. When we elect dishonest, corrupt and incompetent civilian leaders, we guarantee that our military will not be the effective policy arm that it is meant to be.
    By Michael Wilson, retired disabled veteran and an admired friend

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

AMERICAN AIRLINES -- MORE ABOUT UNIONS AND CH 11

I apologize for the structure of the post below, with no segmentation, but the system refuses to do it my way. To my post yesterday re AMR's chapter 11 filing relating my experiences over many years flying with AA, an AA pilot wrote a thoughtful comment that caused me to think a bit more about the precursors to conditions of their bankruptcy. Frankly, I have what is perhaps too much experience with trade unions and their excesses, but know less about others such as the airlines. After learning more about the negotiations of AA with their unions, I now think it's justifiable to post the comments below. I've seen too many industries destroyed by union excesses coupled with management incompetence in caving to excess demands. Start with coal (dead for many years), steel, textiles, shoes, electronics manufacturing, and more.  The Detroit 3 (once the big 3) deserves special mention. As their costs rose to $72/hour (fully loaded) and costs in the southern industry w...
Read more

LEFTIST MIND-SET OF TODAY -- REFLEXIVE, THOUGHTLESS SUPPORT FOR THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION

"Trying to persuade a prejudiced mind is as Sisyphean as trying to open a closed mind is Quixotic." Mann, May 2012 In a blog post herein below on May 1, 2013, I outlined what we who manage people and enterprises know as absolutes about performances of people who are put into management and supervisory positions for which they haven't requisite qualifications. For those who have progressed through several jobs to their level of incompetence, this is known as the Peter Principle as defined by Laurence J. Peter. In all likelihood, all who have managed people for any length of time have seen this principle played out. While Peter's observation applies to progression through multiple job levels, if a person is put into any job for which he is unqualified, the concept is also valid. Elective political positions is where I see this most often played out. The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States is the most significant example of this in my lif...
Read more

ETHANOL -- The worst mandate ever gets even worse

When politicians get control of science and the inept or dishonest scientists, nothing good comes of it. There are many examples -- global warming (aka climate change) is the most prominent. The ethanol mandate, although a part of the climate change mania, stands on its own as arguably the most ridiculous mandate of all time. President Jimmy Carter, who was influenced by a misguided college professor, can be charged with the mistake of promulgating the ethanol mandate.  Of course, Al Gore is the politician who played the global warming issue like a drum and has benefited financially from it. Use of ethanol in motor fuel is not a net positive either in costs or in impact on the environment.... enormous hype to the contrary notwithstanding. Ethanol does not have the positive effect on the environment as touted. It has only about 60% of the specific energy of petroleum fuel, which begs use of more fuel to achieve the same energy as petroleum fuel. And, so it does. I have my own exp...
Read more