Affirmative Action is now dead
- Thread starter Garmel
- Start date
Horn2RunAgain
2,500+ Posts
Have known many AFA, West Point and Annapolis grads to be like that. When I served and after I left the USAF in the real world. Some people are in it for themselves.
The honor many pledged to live up to goes down the drain when opportunity knocks. Thankfully most of those grads are honorable. Many are not.
See my post above.H2
That is disturbing but I guess not surprising. That they no longer put country first?
How tho' could this seem reasonable? Who is he pandering to and to what end?
Probably when the unqualified discovered they could climb the ladder of government and bureaucratic jobs without being competent at anything.
The top military leadership is as corrupted by woke politics as anyone else. They've spent a lot of time in DC and academia.
Who are they pandering to? Why?
Pols pander to the "Woke" thinking it will keep them elected.
It is sick to think enough voters are ready to destroy America
But damn if you have been in the military over 25 years How can you want it destroyed to pander to the "Woke"? What do you get out of it?
Pols pander to the "Woke" thinking it will keep them elected.
It is sick to think enough voters are ready to destroy America
But damn if you have been in the military over 25 years How can you want it destroyed to pander to the "Woke"? What do you get out of it?
Everybody they know and their commander in chief.
Sangre, you're close. When I was at USAFA, we were told (correctly, in my opinion) that the U.S. Armed Forces have two objectives:
(1) Organize, train, and equip armed forces that create such a credible deterrent that no potential adversary would attack for fear of our retaliation and the destruction they would face.
(2) In the event deterrence should fail and some entity decides to attack, quickly and decisively destroy the threat.
I don't see any reason to change those statements. DEI doesn't show up in either of those statements.
Guess I really am a dinosaur now.
(1) Organize, train, and equip armed forces that create such a credible deterrent that no potential adversary would attack for fear of our retaliation and the destruction they would face.
(2) In the event deterrence should fail and some entity decides to attack, quickly and decisively destroy the threat.
I don't see any reason to change those statements. DEI doesn't show up in either of those statements.
Guess I really am a dinosaur now.
You are correct HHD, but things go off the rails when politicians start picking out targets and building airplanes that are either not fit for the roles they are to perform, or not used in the manner they should have been. Gulf War I seemed to indicate command was back in the field and out of DC, but when Bush 41 didn't go after Sadam and allowed him to use his helos, things went south to where we are today.
Nope. We were focused on doing the job. Didn't matter if you were white, black, Asian, or whatever - you were expected to be Air Force blue.
Viper, you raise an excellent point. IIRC, there was a lot of debate immediately after the W in Desert Storm - why didn't we go ahead and invade Iraq to remove Sadam? One argument said "No better time than the present - we have plenty of firepower already in theater, and the Iraqis are already running back home." A counterargument said "Bush had an international force set up specifically to drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait - no agreement to continue into Iraq." The latter argument won the day. It would have been pretty easy for the forces in theater to continue on to Bagdad, but the decision was made to claim victory for the limited objective of freeing Kuwait.
Horn2RunAgain
2,500+ Posts
Iirc, the UN was never on board with the strategy of invading Iraq to the point of killing hussein. The mission was to defeat the iraq forces, free Kuwait. Otherwise it would have meant door to door type fighting, or so they thought..
12 yrs later....
I could be mistaken but that is my recollection from 1991
12 yrs later....
I could be mistaken but that is my recollection from 1991
I thought the issue was that there was a chance to destroy the revolutionary guard that was missed. The issue of driving to Baghdad is separate.
I was 15 in 1991, so I was just starting to pay serious attention to politics and foreign policy. I remember hearing everything you all mentioned, especially the fact that the international coalition we assembled had only established a consensus for forcing Huissein from Kuwait.
However, I also remember concerns about "mission creep" (first time I ever heard that term, which was raised by the war's liberal opponents) - the idea that what we thought would be a fairly simple mission would turn into something much messier and lengthier. Bush wanted to avoid this criticism going into an election year. Regime change was a bigger job. Huissein likely would have used WMDs to protect his regime, and he actually did have them at the time. Even bigger was the full occupation that would have been necessary - dealing with insurgencies, interventions from Iran, etc. (in other words, the crap we actually did deal with after the 2003 Iraq War). There wasn't political support for all that, especially in the wake of Vietnam, which was still on the minds of many Americans. Hell, the youngest Vietnam veterans were only in their 30s at the time.
They were, but they weren't *******. They knew what finishing the job meant, and they knew it was ugly. They knew it meant a lot of innocent people being killed in the process and a lot of American casualties. They accepted that as the price of victory and knew our willingness to accept it would be a major deterrent to bad actors. Unfortunately, most Americans don't accept it. If too many Americans are killed or there are ugly images of civilians on the other side being killed, we lose our nerve, and our support erodes.
Hell, would Americans have kept on supporting WWII if they had seen images or video of what we did to Köln, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, and Dresden? The USAAF and RAF friggin' barbecued hundreds of thousands of civilians mostly to intimidate and terrorise the civilian population. I'm not so sure support would have held up if people had to look at that in colour images. It was really nasty.
However, I also remember concerns about "mission creep" (first time I ever heard that term, which was raised by the war's liberal opponents) - the idea that what we thought would be a fairly simple mission would turn into something much messier and lengthier. Bush wanted to avoid this criticism going into an election year. Regime change was a bigger job. Huissein likely would have used WMDs to protect his regime, and he actually did have them at the time. Even bigger was the full occupation that would have been necessary - dealing with insurgencies, interventions from Iran, etc. (in other words, the crap we actually did deal with after the 2003 Iraq War). There wasn't political support for all that, especially in the wake of Vietnam, which was still on the minds of many Americans. Hell, the youngest Vietnam veterans were only in their 30s at the time.
They were, but they weren't *******. They knew what finishing the job meant, and they knew it was ugly. They knew it meant a lot of innocent people being killed in the process and a lot of American casualties. They accepted that as the price of victory and knew our willingness to accept it would be a major deterrent to bad actors. Unfortunately, most Americans don't accept it. If too many Americans are killed or there are ugly images of civilians on the other side being killed, we lose our nerve, and our support erodes.
Hell, would Americans have kept on supporting WWII if they had seen images or video of what we did to Köln, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, and Dresden? The USAAF and RAF friggin' barbecued hundreds of thousands of civilians mostly to intimidate and terrorise the civilian population. I'm not so sure support would have held up if people had to look at that in colour images. It was really nasty.
Horn2RunAgain
2,500+ Posts
My dad and 2 uncles served in the south pacific, dad was badly wounded. My other uncle served in Korea.
All 4 told me when I was a kid (plus many others) was that Americans were war fatigued by 1945. Any continuation would have been given a big push back. Too many families dealt with killed sons.
My Dad was a marine through and through, but scoffed at the idea of Patton's suggestions of extending the war towards Russia. "Yeah, when you're at the very back of the ******* line in combat, you can talk a big game. Get up front with the rest of us. Then talk"
All 4 told me when I was a kid (plus many others) was that Americans were war fatigued by 1945. Any continuation would have been given a big push back. Too many families dealt with killed sons.
My Dad was a marine through and through, but scoffed at the idea of Patton's suggestions of extending the war towards Russia. "Yeah, when you're at the very back of the ******* line in combat, you can talk a big game. Get up front with the rest of us. Then talk"
Yes the bargain was topple Japan and Germany governments so that it would be forever over, but no more. Unfortunately China went communist and the Soviet Union too over Eastern Europe.
Give Patton credit where it is due. In WWI as the commander of the very first US tank brigade he left headquarters at a French village where he had been ordered to stay to give status reports ,Patton walked to the battlefield where he then climbed onto lead tank and led them into battle.
He was of course reprimanded for it. Patton did like leading from the front.
and many felt he liked combat too much.
He was of course reprimanded for it. Patton did like leading from the front.
and many felt he liked combat too much.
Horn2RunAgain
2,500+ Posts
A General who can't follow orders is a huge threat to his men and the mission
As for how he lead, being up front... Believe half of what you read.
Define "at the front" first. Did he lead charges? No, that is what Lieutenants and Capitans are for. Field grade officers plan and direct. General Officers have total responsibility for those under them.
Patton was a brilliant military strategist. He knew his enemy and he knew how to motivate his men. Look up Operation Quicksilver (the Normandy one; not the A-bomb one); or the breakout in Normandy when Bradley would not push Montgomery to do the job he was assigned; or who turned his Army 90 degrees in freezing weather and saved the Allies in the Battle of the Buldge.
Also, do not believe what you read about what his men thought of him. Yes, there was that 10% who hated him, but the vast majority loved him. In the early seventies, one of the CEO's of a subsidiary of the company I worked for was a Capitan/Major in Patton's army. The love and respect for Patton was quite obvious.
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In the incident in WWl I referred to Patton who was head of first ever U.S. tank brigrade walked from their hdqtrs to battlefield to see how his tanks were performing.
Afterwards a General did criticize him saying Patton needed to stay near a telephone to give up dates back to other hdqtrs even further from combat.
He certainly was no Eisenhower.
Afterwards a General did criticize him saying Patton needed to stay near a telephone to give up dates back to other hdqtrs even further from combat.
He certainly was no Eisenhower.
Yes, we all know that Leftists would never resort to using Civil War era laws to accomplish their purposes.
What's kinda sad is that we were willing to go to war over "Viet-fuckin-nam" and Korea, which were relatively inconsequential, but we did little to stop the far more impactful China and Eastern Europe from going communist.
Yea but it was fought by a different generation. The prior generation had done enough in their mind. Share the joy so to speak.
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