Let it never be said that the military doesn't know how to fight the last war. Or not fight it.
Check out this piece from the Washington Post:
The current U.S. military structure -- known as the "Total Force" -- was implemented after the Vietnam War. The system was designed to require activation of Guard and reserves personnel in order to wage war. Defense officials ensured that war-fighting capabilities were integrated across the active and reserves components to such a degree that, as an Army chief of staff, Gen. Creighton Abrams, is said to have claimed, "they're not taking us to war again without calling up the reserves."
But the Total Force had another goal as well -- to act as a check on indiscriminate or capricious uses of military force. Recent experience in the Balkans and the Middle East demonstrates that it is easier to send troops abroad than it is to bring them home. And history shows that Congress rarely has acted against a president to limit the use of force. Thus, the Total Force was designed to compel Congress to scrutinize military operations. As employers give up workers and as families say goodbye to soldiers augmenting active forces, Congress should be pressured by constituents to act. In sum, the sacrifices of waging war -- or even keeping peace -- are supposed to spread throughout our democratic society to such a degree that our elected officials are forced to debate the wisdom of sending troops abroad.
So in other words, we have a National Guard not to provide a surge capability in case our regular forces are insuffiicent to fight a war, but to hurt the nation's economy and social fabric so badly that we won't fight any long wars.
What this is is another symptom of America's post-Vietnam hangover. It is a policy that is designed not to ensure that America stays out of pointless wars, but to ensure that America stays out of all wars that cannot be ended in 90 days. It is designed not to spread the burden of warfighting between full-time soldiers and reservists, but to give America a Pavlovian shock every time we go to war, no matter how just the cause is. What Ms. Davidson is arguing for is a policy of "peace at any price." John Stuart Mill had this to say about seeking peace at any price:
War, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice--is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature, who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.
And may I add, sometimes the "democratic debates" have to take a back seat to doing what needs to be done to keep this country safe.
UPDATE: Another Apropos quote on the subject:
"There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war." --George Washington
As I said, the "Total Force" policy is not about helping the US be at all times ready for war, but to make it so we can't fight real, hard, slogging wars at all without doing damage to the nation. Washington would be ashamed.
Posted by Thief at November 16, 2003 10:03 PM