Pentagon abandons active-duty time limits

[sonar732]

Hey all,

I just came across this (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070112/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iraq_military) today, and as a Missouri National Guard 175th MPBN member, we were talking in depth amongst ourselves about the 20,000 troop increase.

[Bill Nichols]

A person I work with, who is a former nuclear engineer on USS Seawolf, is being recalled to active duty to do civil engineering in Afghanistan :-?

[Konovalov]

A person I work with, who is a former nuclear engineer on USS Seawolf, is being recalled to active duty to do civil engineering in Afghanistan :-?

The forgotten war. I wish him luck and a safe return from his tour. Dangerous place over there from what I have seen, in particular Kunar and Helmand province.

[waste gate]

20, 000 more troops. I didn't hear any uproar when Charlie Rangel (D-NY) was calling for a re-instatement of the draft.

[bradclark1]

20, 000 more troops. I didn't hear any uproar when Charlie Rangel (D-NY) was calling for a re-instatement of the draft.
Because everyone knew it was a symbolic gesture just like it was before.

[Schatten]

20, 000 more troops. I didn't hear any uproar when Charlie Rangel (D-NY) was calling for a re-instatement of the draft. Because everyone knew it was a symbolic gesture just like it was before.

I saw some interviews with him over that whole deal and he wasn't acting like it was symbolic, he really wants to do it. He also doesn't like it when you point out to him his military demographic figures aren't correct either.

[waste gate]

20, 000 more troops. I didn't hear any uproar when Charlie Rangel (D-NY) was calling for a re-instatement of the draft.
Because everyone knew it was a symbolic gesture just like it was before.

What is symbolic about conscription?

[bradclark1]

He didn't expect it to go. What he was implying was that if we are in a war everyone should help pull the weight so we should reinstate the draft. If you aren't prepared to reinstate the draft don't start a war.

[waste gate]

He didn't expect it to go. What he was implying was that if we are in a war everyone should help pull the weight so we should reinstate the draft. If you aren't prepared to reinstate the draft don't start a war.

Oh, I see, he was just fooling around?!! That's leadership. Now I will take what he, and his fellow Democrates, more seriously. Thank you for the heads up.

[bradclark1]

My pleasure.

[tycho102]

20, 000 more troops. I didn't hear any uproar when Charlie Rangel (D-NY) was calling for a re-instatement of the draft. Because everyone knew it was a symbolic gesture just like it was before.
What is symbolic about conscription?
Because he knows the bill would never even be put up for a vote. It's just an attempt to show the "hypocricy" of the Congress.

Personally, I still want us the hell out of Iraq. At this point, our people are dying over there for no good reason. We hit back the moslems and destablized the region. Absolutely without question -- Mission Accomplished. Get the hell out and let islam take care of itself. The Shi'a will annhilate the Sunni. Some of the refugees will infiltrate Saudi Arabia, where they'll start bombing pipelines. Iran will fund them. That will drive up the price of oil, and Exxon and Shell and BP and Phillips and Mobil will make HUGE profit margins. 60-70%. We'll get the hell off oil, and stop funding jihad against us. Dude, I'm not even kidding. Let Iran take over. Had we pulled our 38,000 from Korea and our 100,000 from Europe, we might have been able to secure the borders and stop jihadist infiltration. We might have been able to displace the civilian population in areas long enough to identify insurgents. Had we set up an identification database, we might have been able to identify recruited insurgents. But we didn't, and 20,000 isn't going to do it.

As for the active reservists, otherwise known as "citizen-soldiers", they signed up. If you are not prepared to fulfill your contract, don't sign up. That's it -- black and white. I might have a different opinion if we had a conscription, but we don't. Don't sign up if you aren't prepared to do the job.


Also, on the topic of the UCMJ, don't do nude photos while wearing any article of your uniform. If your commander officer orders you to cease an affair with subordinate enlisted member, do so immediately. And don't expect the "delete" key to actually delete your top-secret communication records.


That is all.

[Schatten]

Oh, I see, he was just fooling around?!! That's leadership. Now I will take what he, and his fellow Democrates, more seriously. Thank you for the heads up.

I don't they're joking around either.

Remember John Kerry is on the Armed Services Committee and the Dems hold him up to be a voice of authority on military matters and he's more than once said that an all volunteer military is a Very Bad Thing(tm) because it leads to "militarism" and other bad things. Other bad things probably being professionalism and efficiency, can't have those ya know.

So on one hand we have our professional military full of people who generally want to be there, who are motivated and well trained. On the other in a liberal ideal world we'd have a non-militaristic military full of conscripts who don't want to be there and definately don't want to have to go fight anywhere.

If you a look at what the readiness, morale and even court-martial levels for the early '70s draft army, the one that wasn't fighting in Vietnam anymore, and the volunteer one of today you'll see that the ideal "everyone pitching in their fair share whether they want to or not" military is a really, really bad idea. Especially when you're fighting a war.

Granted it did work in World War II, but that was a different time and we were definately a different sort of people in general. Back then we fought to win wars, instead of looking for the nicest euphemism ("Phased Redeployment" seems to be the term de jour) to use when we decide to lose one.

Withdrawl from Iraq right now is a whole other topic, but in general I believe that doing it now with the way the situation is would lead to even more problems than what is happening daily there now. If we withdraw before the Iraqis can get a handle on the situation and Iraq becomes Afghanistan circa 2000 all over again then a couple/few years down the road we'll be getting what we deserve for not finishing what we started.

[Yahoshua]

A withdrawl is a defeat. If we're going to win this war we're going to be there for a long long time.

By win, I mean setting up the Iraqi gov't on it's own feet and making it capable of running day-to-day operations so they can continue fighting the ground war for us. The U.S will still be there on a support basis but our position in the war will decrease substantially. When the insurgency ceases, we've won.

[U-533]

Reinstate the draft?

HA!

These punks would shoot themselves in the foot.....

Then we tax payers will have to keep feeding them.

[bradclark1]

Has regular armed forces ever defeated an insurgency in history? I can't think of one time.
Anyone?

[bradclark1]

By win, I mean setting up the Iraqi gov't on it's own feet and making it capable of running day-to-day operations so they can continue fighting the ground war for us. The U.S will still be there on a support basis but our position in the war will decrease substantially. When the insurgency ceases, we've won.
Until the Iraqi's stop using the Americans to prop themselves up there is not going to be any stability and the longer we stay the more the general population will turn to hate us as occupiers.
Iraq is a loose, loose situation. There are no patriots, no loyalty to Iraq, the only loyalty to to their religion, their militia, and their holy-roller/gangster imam(?). Iraq will always be a fight between the different factions.
I think what you want is an impossibility. Sad but true.

[Skybird]

Brad is right, for two reasons.

First, it is the old internal civil war between Ssunni and Shia, which is being fought for a thousand years now. There never was peace between both factions, only an occasional regional status of cease-fire, when their means to carry on the fight were running short. It is the old clash between Sunni Arabs and Shia Persians as well.

Second, there is no grown nation like "Iraq". It is an artificial, instable and arbitrary creation of Western and British policy-making that set up borders on maps without taking care to the mental and cultural and tribal realities on the ground. If you raise a new zoo and place a leopard into the same areal like a gazelle or a lion, expect to see you animal inhabitants decimating themselves. there is no grown national structure of an entioty like Iraq, and thus there is no truly national mentality. There are only different ethnicities, faiths, and economical interests. The same of politcial foolishness is on display in Kosovo, Bosnia, and other attempts to artificially enforce multicultural national bodies.

Nature let things grow. Man tries to create, even against all reason.

All this talking about Iraq - it will never work for longer than just a handful of years.

Rice has announced that the US will deliver weapons to the Palestinians to help them gaining stability, a deal worth 86 million dollars, I think (which for the most will come from the EU, I have little doubt). It seems some people never start to learn. As a nice side effect, European tax money is used to boost American weapon manufacturers. One can only gaze in awe at today's politician's intellectual competence. :dead: What said Kubrick so nicely? "Eyes Wide Shut".

Weekend is over. Luck for me. ;)

[Konovalov]

What said Kubrick so nicely? "Eyes Wide Shut".


That was a terrible and stupid film. :lol:

[Skybird]

What said Kubrick so nicely? "Eyes Wide Shut".


That was a terrible and stupid film. :lol:
I liked it. 2001, Shining, and Eyes Wide Shut, these are the three Kubrick movies I like best, in this order.

[waste gate]

What said Kubrick so nicely? "Eyes Wide Shut".


That was a terrible and stupid film. :lol:
I liked it. 2001, Shining, and Eyes Wide Shut, these are the three Kubrick movies I like best, in this order.

Dr. Stangelove doesn't make your list??

[waste gate]

Has regular armed forces ever defeated an insurgency in history? I can't think of one time.
Anyone?

Hungary, 1956. Israel 66-70 AD. Indian Nations in the US.

Those are three that I thought of off the top of my head.
EDIT:
Realized that the seccessionists of the US civil war were also insurgents.

[Takeda Shingen]

Has regular armed forces ever defeated an insurgency in history? I can't think of one time.
Anyone?

Hungary, 1956. Israel 66-70 AD. Indian Nations in the US.

Those are three that I thought of off the top of my head.
EDIT:
Realized that the seccessionists of the US civil war were also insurgents.

Don't forget the Norman conquest of England.

EDIT: I forgot the Conquistadors and the Mayans, Aztecs and Inca.

[waste gate]

Has regular armed forces ever defeated an insurgency in history? I can't think of one time.
Anyone?

Hungary, 1956. Israel 66-70 AD. Indian Nations in the US.

Those are three that I thought of off the top of my head.
EDIT:
Realized that the seccessionists of the US civil war were also insurgents.

Don't forget the Norman conquest of England.

EDIT: I forgot the Conquistadors and the Mayans, Aztecs and Inca.

In each instance overwhelming force was used. There is a lesson there.

[Schatten]

Has regular armed forces ever defeated an insurgency in history? I can't think of one time.
Anyone?
Hungary, 1956. Israel 66-70 AD. Indian Nations in the US.

Those are three that I thought of off the top of my head.
EDIT:
Realized that the seccessionists of the US civil war were also insurgents.
There was also: the Malayan Emergency 1948-60, the Philippine Insurrection 1899-1913, the Second Boer War 1899-1902, the Greek Civil War 1946-49, Baltic resistance to the Soviet Union 1944-52 among others.

The media has built up a whole mythology around guerillla wars/insurgencies that doesn't have a whole lot of facts to back it up. Insurgencies have been won by government troops as often as they have been lost, it's around a 50-50 proposition historically and the success rate is on a par with any other sort of warfare. But you don't hear that, you hear all sorts of talk about the successful insurgencies which leads to the sort of talk of "You can't win a war against insurgents" which is bunk, it's been done many times before, and more than once by the US. But to listen to many in the media you'd think that just because it's a fight against insurgents we should run away as fast as possible because everyone knowns insurgents have magical powers and are unbeatable... :roll:

A case could be made that the US even won the "insurgency" phase of the Vietnam War as well, since after the Tet Offensive of '68 the VC was pretty much gutted as an effective force and the war continued almost exclusively through the use of NVA troops.

Whether or not the CSA was technically an insurgency is something that's still up for debate. There are good arguments both for and against it. However after the war, during Reconstruction there were indeed several small, scattered guerilla/insurgent campaigns fought in many places with the most notable ones being in Tennessee, South Carolina, Texas and Arkansas. Federal forces won all of those campaigns as well.

[bradclark1]

A case could be made that the US even won the "insurgency" phase of the Vietnam War as well, since after the Tet Offensive of '68 the VC was pretty much gutted as an effective force and the war continued almost exclusively through the use of NVA troops.

They were sacrificed for the specific purpose of annihilation. The north wanted them out of the way.

[Takeda Shingen]

The Austrian War of Succession dealt with the handy defeat of multiple insurgencies.

[waste gate]

A case could be made that the US even won the "insurgency" phase of the Vietnam War as well, since after the Tet Offensive of '68 the VC was pretty much gutted as an effective force and the war continued almost exclusively through the use of NVA troops.

They were sacrificed for the specific purpose of annihilation. The north wanted them out of the way.

It would appear as if your question regarding insurgency defeats has been answered.

[bradclark1]

Has regular armed forces ever defeated an insurgency in history? I can't think of one time.
Anyone?
Well I think that was sufficiently answered. :oops: :rotfl: :D