lets-retire said:
Nords--I filled out the means test and was told unless my treatment was for an injury incurred while in the military I had to pay. Of course that was three years ago so it could have changed, but I haven't received anything from them saying it had.
Same here. They swore they'd call me when they turned on the free dental exams, too, but I'm not sitting by the phone.
Maximillion said:
LT, "provide for the common defence", right, you are surrounded on two sides, so you need a Navy, but what the hell Common defence are you providing outside your own Borders??
I'm sorry, that feature of our policy is only available to members of the United States. "Common" refers to "among the states", not amongst the continent. Please consult our territorial membership application for further details.
brewer12345 said:
You are, of course, making an implicit assumption that armies will be doing invading. I am pretty sure that doing so has not proved to be a good idea militarily or politically, at least since 1945 or so.
Well, shooting a bunch of TOMAHAWKs and then going home isn't very effective either, if 1991-2003 was any indication. One building was "destroyed" three times during DESERT STORM but the satellite imagery kept insisting it survived. When the boots on the ground arrived they found that the first missile had entered a window, destroyed the interior, and left only a hollow shell. Subsequent missiles had actually used the same entry point because no one saw the need to program a new flight profile.
Mission accomplished, but BDA is a whole 'nother problem. You'll always need a grunt.
The problem between the political & military "solutions" is the broad fuzzy line separating them. Foreign policy is always going great until the troops start dropping in. But according to the military pundits, it's amazing that the soldiers don't all die on the beach. I just finished
"Masters of Chaos", one of the early military histories of the Iraq & Afghanistan invasions. It'll be another couple decades before the classified stuff gets out, but a big difference in the Iraq war began when the military turned over control to the politicians. The Army's Special Forces had already started reconsitituting local governments & civil affairs with the cooperation of the locals until they were ordered to "fire" the incumbents and start over. Bad idea.
brewer12345 said:
I'd feel a lot safer of our military were half its current size.
Bite your tongue! I went through the post-Cold-War drawdown and once is more than enough. Aren't you the guy who worries that we'll cut too far and have to institute a draft? That same fear keeps waking up the entire JCS at night, too.
Actually the biggest part of the military budget is personnel. So the military would feel a lot safer if it was half its current size, too, and it's heading that way yet again. Pretty soon the submarine force will actually have as many berths as crewmembers...