Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
Agreed... but you have and you will (thanks to your respective politicians).
We certainly have; should've learned from Viet Nam that such interventions are foolish. We did, a bit and other than a few little aberrations, we avoided any major commitment along those lines for 30 years. Hopefully, within the next 30 -- and with two strikes to learn from -- we will grow a bit smarter. So there may be no "will."
The capability needs to be built because it is going to be used as it has in the recent past.
I don't agree on either count. "It is going to be used" is awfully positive and while you may be correct, I would hope -- as I said above, -- we get a bit smarter. There are other, better ways to handle such situations.

The capability doesn't have to built, it has to available which is not the same thing. Adjustments to training, some underway should be adequate IF they are not halted.
Let the remainder prepare for the war with Russia or China that will never come... unless you are expecting an invasion from Mexico.
We've been in several wars that weren't expected. They didn't all come in irregular form, think Korea and Kuwait...
This approach will have a significant benefit for the US military in that it will force the military to attend to the (internationally acknowledged if not locally) weakness in the US military in the inability of companies/platoons/squads ability to operate independently with the specific command skill requirement thereof.
We have had a skill deterioration, no question. That is entirely the fault of the training establishment who took decent training programs and tossed them to adopt the atrocious Task, Condition and Standard process, probably so someone could say he brought great change on his watch. We have -- too slowly -- learned that was indeed a mistake and the Army is now groping for a way to fix their problem without admitting they used a flawed process for 30 years. That's the bad news -- the good news is that some units transcend that norm and can and in fact do those things, though there are not enough of them.
Secondly it will remove the 'tour mentality' that has been applied to war since Korea and at the same time keep the units and their command more constant and stable. 100 times better than right now I would say.
Maybe, maybe not. Probably not. The tour length is a Congressional issue...
Its a good question... but its irrelevant.
No it isn't. Even dumb politicians eventually learn a little, even dumb American politicians whose egos do not allow the reading of history -- the Army needs to point that out (acknowledging that dumb Generals are another story...).
The politicians screw it up all the time and sadly so do the generals. Looking at this little exercise in Libya its hard to believe it but Obama managed to screw that as well (and he is surrounded by military advisors).
As I told you long before it started -- and he isn't surrounded by military advisors. By law, he only has one -- the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He talks to others on occasion but my impression is he talks and they listen...
One notices from the Brit military that at or around Lt Col senior officers need to become politically astute to survive and advance. What that level is in the US I don't know but it will be there. The problem is that these senior officers (many of whom have abundant physical courage) don't have much in the way of the moral courage required to stand up to the politicians even if it means an end to their military careers.
Same rank. There's some slight merit in what you say but it's far from totally accurate. It's also far more complex than moral courage -- the degree of military subordination to civilian authority in the US is hard for many from other nations to fathom. It has a very pernicious effect...
The beauty about these small wars is that they are fought at battalion level and below.
I can agree with the sentiment and all it conveys but must point out that nowadays those Battalions come from different units, frequently from different nations and small wars are only fought by all those Battalions if their higher headquarters and / or nation allow them to fight and do not otherwise intrude too heavily...

What, Perfesser, is your solution to that little rub?