Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
When last was a 'crunch time'?
Actually, we started the mobilization effort in September of '39, got far more serious in November of '40 but it was the mid '43 before we got totally serious.
Will the next enemy allow you the time to get the Henry Ford style human and industrial production lines into operation?
Note the last time, it took us almost four years to really get involved -- some would say it was really the winter of 1944 before we got up to speed. So no, I doubt anyone thinks even a fourth or fifth that time will be available in the future. I personally suspect that a week or two is probably the most time we'll have, thus my earlier comment:

"Excessive bother of the wrong kind will not invoke a sleeping giant scenario -- you're as dated as Carl and those pundits and think tanks I warned him to eschew. That was then, this is now. No sleeping giant, no fire up the industrial base. Those days are indeed gone. What is not gone is the ability to simply remove the leash IF and when warranted. Not a lot of Troops on the ground required, very few in fact."

Note that I do not include any of our subsequent wars or interventions as crunches. None were, all were minimum effort soirees essentially aimed at US domestic politics and not at any serious effort in international affairs. They are minimum efforts and they also produced far less than even good, much less optimum, results. One gets what one pays for...

The US political establishment will only provide maximum reaction to what it perceives as a maximum threat, lesser threats we'll attempt to disrupt or channelize with the least possible effort. As you know, politicians assess both threats and effort differently than do military people.

Regardless, we have considerable capability that is rarely displayed and even more rarely understood and we have not since WW II allowed more than a small fraction of that to be used; the Armed Forces have been kept on a very short leash and other nations have actually been handled relatively gently. Thus my 'remove the leash' comment above.
This was the game plan I was speaking of. As observed by von Schell in 1930 during his time at Fort Benning. Sorry if I was not too clear on that.
I understood. In those days, we did tend to have long term plans. Among other things we've lost here, it seems that ability has also fallen to political expediency thus my also earlier comment that "there is no standard US game plan."

Sadly...