Behold! The superior white master race!
I’ve had conversations with my son, a Major in the army, where he has lamented the difficulty of recruiting any more. It’s tough working with under-strength units, I guess. I’ll have to ask him what he thinks of Paul Gosar’s explanation, next time we talk.
Far-right congressman Paul Gosar is losing sleep over how few white people are enlisting in the army these days.
“The number of white recruits has plummeted,” Gosar wrote in an unhinged fundraising email sent out Thursday, with the subject line, “dismantling woke marxist ideologies.” “[It’s] a casualty of this cultural skirmish that has left our Army beleaguered and besieged by ‘woke’ ideologies.”
“This is not merely a crisis of numbers,” Gosar added. “It is a crisis of spirit.”
Gosar was responding to a recent investigation by Military.com that found that the number of white armymilitary recruits has been on a downward trajectory for the last half decade.
“Spirit”? “Woke ideologies”? That’s not the impression I get. I got to listen in to a big convo the leadership had with enlisted soldiers and their families (I’m family, I count). What I heard was enthusiastic officers discussing a deployment with enthusiastic troops, answering questions about how families were going to be taken care of while they were overseas. They discussed security issues and timetables. Is that what “woke” is?
Far-right commentators quickly pounced on those findings, and claimed they were “proof” that the armed forces had become overrun by “Marxists” who are forcing “wokeness” on its ranks—and, as a result, alienating prospective white recruits.
In recent years, supposed “wokeness” in the military has been a growing point of obsession among right-wing commentators, lawmakers, and culture warriors. That’s been driven, in part, by the Pentagon adopting LGBTQ-inclusive policies over the last decade. In 2011, the Pentagon rescinded the controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, meaning gay and lesbian service members could serve openly. In 2021, a ban on transgender people serving openly was officially lifted. Growing LGBTQ acceptance in the military has inspired far-right memes painting American soldiers in rainbow flags, suggesting that they are “soft” compared to their global counterparts (images of Russia’s military, particularly when they first invaded Ukraine in early 2022, are often used side-by-side as comparison).
I would have been impressed if that meeting had been a Marxist dialectic. It wasn’t. It was pretty much nothing but pragmatic answers about an assigned mission. Everyone was professional and disciplined about it, except me and my wife sitting quietly at home worrying about our little boy going off to a distant country with a side-arm and armor.
The disrespect I see is coming entirely from the far-right who want to compound enlistment problems by rejecting women and gay enlistees who are all contributing to the effectiveness of the military. If you’re concerned about racial differences in enlistment rates, don’t be a Republican who is enacting policies that increase the division between the poor and wealthy, and that selectively holds back black Americans. Fewer people sign up when the economy is good and when they have other opportunities at home, you know, because being in the military is a dangerous option.
A soldier with a rainbow badge on their backpack is still a soldier, you know. I would hope they wouldn’t be fighting for whatever Paul Gosar represents.
It has to be woke. It couldn’t be how hard it supposedly is post pandemic to get workers for low paying jobs, which presumably cuts into the number of people who see the military as a step up. Or demographic change, with there just being less young white guys around.
The number of white people in the US population has also been on a downward trajectory for the last half decade.
There might be a connection here that is too complicated for Paul Gosar to understand.
The evidence of the right wingnuts that the army is “woke”, whatever that means is nonexistent.
Hmm, I guess woke means equal opportunity, you know, not discriminating snd stuff like that.
Camp Lejeune ads are all over the place for those who suffered bad water. Sexual harassment of women is rife in the ranks. Living quarters are dismal. Chances are fair a recruit might get involved in some dismal war. People who join and suffer such problems tell their friends. “Should I join?” Think hard about the problems if you do. Pay is low. Long term, it is not that much of a career. You may not get marketable experience in the military. Recruiters are notorious about lying to prospective recruits and word has gotten around about that. What is the problem with recruiting. Many, and it ain’t wokeness. Treat military members like crap and it will become a severe problem.
Discussion of sexual abuse problems, and the often questionable way they’ve been dealt with, has probably had an effect on Canadian Armed Forces recruitment. They’re running short these days.
And a good thing it is. The predatory recruitment tactics that are used by the US military predominantly target low-income youths. Let the children of rich people die instead! In my personal opinion anyone who willingly joins the American military complex is morally suspect anyway.
I may have heard of Paul Gosar doing some other dumb shit too.
lasius @6:
I don’t think that’s fair. I served four years in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam era. (I was never in ‘Nam and make no claim to being a hero.) In my case, I was a really bad student and would have been drafted into the army if I hadn’t enlisted.
Real people are really complicated and have lots of reasons for their beliefs and behaviors that I don’t claim to understand, but I suspect that some of the reasons are rational. (The notion that the military is a step up for kids who’ve grown up in poverty comes easily to mind.)
If that is truly the case, then you don’t count as “willing” in my book.
In my personal opinion, that is close to war profiteering. Improving your financial situation on the backs of the population of the countries the US military has ruined.
White people are a combat liability. We’re much more visible in most environments, thanks to our pale, melanin-deficient skin. We’re also horribly prone to doing an imperialism all over the place, which just gets in the way of morale. Probably best avoid recruiting us for operational competence reasons.
Let us look at his military record for examples of what we should see in those fine upstanding youth that are marching in step behind him.
Well, I was willing enough at the time. I’ve learned a thing or two on my way to 77 years of age. 8-)
That strikes me as cruel and self-satisfied.
Two interesting things. One, that’s a dog whistle that’s gone unnoticed for, “Keep the darkies in their place” (there’s another word frequently used in the place of dark, starts with the letter N). The military has been a safety valve upward, giving college money in exchange for service and many, many, many service members took advantage of those programs to attain an otherwise unaffordable degree. So, it seems that he’s especially championing KKK membership in a covert form, while wanting to deny education to people with dark skin and openly doing so. Looks like a really, really, really soft spot to sink a harpoon into his political career.
The other, a massive upgrade in what is an otherwise 1950’s campaign, switching Commies with Marxists. The last time I saw an actual communist, beyond Soviet forces during the Cold War, Hippies were still extant. Both, quite extinct in the wild. Dude might as well go on about the evils of ghosts.
As for celebrating what they are fighting for, we did that whenever we had down time. Few didn’t celebrate beer.
OK, I didn’t, I celebrated whiskey, along with the officers…
lasius, kiss my bare ass in Macy’s window during the New Year’s Day Parade.
I read the original source at military.com:
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/01/10/army-sees-sharp-decline-white-recruits.html
Gosar is wrong.
No surprise, Gosar is a lunatic fringe right wingnut from Arizona who often makes wild claims that have nothing to do with reality.
The army itself lists the causes of their recruiting shortfall as:
.1. a growing obesity epidemic
Meaning a lot of recruits can’t meet minimal physical fitness requirements.
.2. …an underfunded public education system.
Meaning a lot of recruits can’t fill out the enlistment form.
Or at least can’t meet the army’s minimal educational requirements.
.3. …including partisan scrutiny of the service…
Meaning right wing attacks on the US military for imaginary problems like being Marxist Wokes and for being gasp, horrors, not white enough!!!
In Realityland, Paul Gosar and the right wingnuts are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Here is more from the Military.com article.
There isn’t just one cause for the army recruiting problems.
It is a lot of things.
Part of it is the opioid addiction crisis which is mostly…a white person problem.
Recruits from the South these days are overweight and out of shape.
Those mindless right wingnut attacks from people like Gosar.
The army has too many women, nonwhites, and especially gays.
Too many of course, meaning more than none whatsoever.
Imagine using the Russian Ukrainian invasion forces as an example of an effective military. LOL! They are getting their asses handed to them on a daily basis for a few years now, by a country a tenth of their size.
Gosar has gone all New Age: He’s now channeling George Wallace.
Morale and troop-and-family support are a constantly-shifting target. There’s a throwaway line in Star Ship Troopers (!!! — not suggesting that this turn into an argument of precisely what flavor of right-wing nutcase Heinlein was or his works reflected) to the effect that a decent platoon leader — second lieutenant — always knew, for each soldier in the platoon, when they last got a letter from home. That particular subissue isn’t present as much now, given PFCs with cellphones; there are plenty of parallel replacements. Three-decades-old bios of both Schwartzkopf and Powell include extensive examples of individual-soldier-and-family-member recognition and dignity efforts forty years ago and more; some are the same battles being fought now, some are different.
But morale and troop-and-family support are nonetheless the target, regardless of which of the constantly-shifting 31 flavors are on this week’s menu or are the featured specials. And anyone who thinks the right-wing-nutcase pushback is new didn’t spend any part of the 80s as a commanding officer, whose tasks sometimes included responding to formal inquiries originating from [name of bigoted legislator redacted] boiling down to “you didn’t order the [racial/ethnic/religious minority] person under your command to cave in to the white ex-spouse’s grandparents on [divorce provision] that had been rejected by the civilian judge, ignoring that the order would have been illegal; submit to mah authoritie.” Or, more to the point, have to listen to [senior officer’s identity redacted] “suggesting” that all of the subordinate commanding officers in [name of large organization redacted] needed to show up to Sunday services to support the troops — immediately before the briefing on how the new officer performance reporting system was going to work, in which every officer’s report would pass across his desk for his indorsement. Magnanimously, there wasn’t explicit identification of which Sunday services would be satisfactory…
At the same time, this pushback is not well thought of by those actually in charge of the troops, the officers (and sometimes senior NCOs) who actually/potentially give the harm’s-way orders to individuals they actually know… and who occasionally have to write letters beginning with the five hardest words: “I regret to inform you”. So maybe there’s some hope in there.
@muttpupdad, # 11: Thanks for pointing that out. I checked Paul Gosar’s bio, it lists no military service at all. Typical chicken hawk, talking tough and expecting others to fight in his place.
Am I the only one who thinks the photo of Paul Gosar has a creepy similarity with Klaus Kinski in his most unhinged performances?
I especially recall a scene where Kinski -with stripy hair and all- was stroking a human scalp while making crooning noises.*
I hope Gosar is not carrying a selection of knives under his coat like Kinski did. It would be an escalation of creepiness from the one who CENSORED her boyfriend in a theater.
*It was a B-film Bruce Lee rip-off, unremarkable except for the Kinski portion.
I bet Gosar and his colleagues have never heard of the sacred band of Thebes.
Billseymour @ 12
I notice you are of the same age as “cadet bonespurs” 😊 .
Back during the Dubya presidency a lot of white kids with poor economy signed up just to put food on the table… and ended up in a meat grinder.
I imagine it is easier to motivate troops who are genuinely committed to the armed forces rather than choosing it as the least bad option.
The Swedish armed forces have quite high standards for joining, and I recall they cracked down on UN service veterans who started to create a kind of Rambo/foreign legion sub-culture.
Veterans who visit prostitutes while on UN missions get penalised. Servicemen are supposed to be citizens in uniform, with the same values as mainstream society.
As others have noted, it used to be said that the military was a form of welfare for the American South. I guess that’s too “woke” nowadays.
To me, it looks like he’s trying to engage in Mark E. Smith (late lead singer of The Fall) cosplay.
Substitute the word “woke” with the word “black” and he makes perfect sense in his demented little way.
Jesus Christ, he looks like Skeletor with a hangover.
I imagine he’s worried about losing the inevitable race war that he’ll probably start.
Big Boppa
Exactly along the lines I was thinking. He’s using dogwhistles to complain about non-white people in positions of authority or power. Growing up in the South in the 50s/60s, you never saw Black or Brown people in police uniforms. The US military was segregated until 1948, and desegregation became a major influence on desegregating other institutions. The racists never accepted that, and like with so much they want to go back to those halcyon days when any White man could delude himself that he was superior.
The same is true with women’s role in the military, of course.
This goes back to slavery and the Civil War. The Confederate army used slaves for non-combat roles only. They wouldn’t dare give them a gun. Southern militias had spent decades seeing to it that slaves didn’t have guns. Second Amendment rights never applied to slaves.
Until 1863, the Union army couldn’t use escaped slaves because they were technically property so they were held as such. However, once the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, and Lincoln adjusted his position on recruiting Blacks, the former slaves could enlist in the army. The Union army swelled with fresh recruits who were more than eager to join the fray, even knowing the risk of atrocities committed against Black Union soldiers by Southern soldiers. This played no small part in the final outcome.
Given that the military has been used to fight dishonest wars of aggression resulting in huge casualties and a few casualties among the military, maybe the appeal of “join the army, visit faraway people and cultures, and kill them” is growing old. Especially since the US keeps losing its illegal wars. I would think 26,234 times before I reenlisted, myself.
Then there is Russia – the “great enemy” that also appears to have started a full on bloody imperialist clusterfuck. Anyone smart enough to know which end of a rifle is the good one, ought to be thinking that being an imperial stormtrooper may not be a better job than just about anything else. The Russian army’s recruiting problem is worse.
Being in the US military, especially since the 80s means joining an organization that has been compromised by its political leaders, and that compromised itself, over and over. Those facts are clear. Anyone who joins up is accepting a very low standard of leadership. The command structure notoriously hid behind weak warnings like Colin Powell’s – but the careerist elite like Petraeus, McChrystal, Taguba, etc., are a stain to have served under.
I’m from Arizona, the state that brought you Kari Lake.
If you tried to construct a fictional parody of a mindless loud-mouthed bleating far right politician, an over the top satirical piece, you still wouldn’t be up to creating the likes of our Paul Gosar.
His record, though, offers some clues:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Gosar#Political_positions
@6,9 Wow. Spoken like someone who had money and options. I’m guessing mom and dad paid for college or cosigned the loans?
Check your privilege at the door.
Plenty of people enlist because it IS a step up–FOR THEM. The slogan you’re looking for is “3 hots and a cot”, meaning that a shamefully large number of people enlist just so they have a place to stay and food to eat. As an added bonus, the military will fix their teeth and eyes too! For a lot of people, this is the first time they will have had actual dentistry or corrective lenses. Second bonus: enlisteds can declare their younger siblings as dependents (on their tax returns or in some cases, they are the court-appointed guardians–family dysfunction is everywhere), thereby qualifying their younger siblings (younger than 18 anyway) for military healthcare (just as if they were kids/foster kids/stepkids/adopted kids) of the enlisted. Depending on the circumstances of their enlistment, the kids might be able to live with the enlisted (in family housing) and go to school on the military bases instead of decaying dangerous school districts. If you are an immigrant, you can sometimes get fast-tracked to full citizenship with military service.
BTW, enlistment surged after Pearl Harbor and 9/11. They did it to protect their country and their families. Are they morally suspect too?
The good news for you is that you get to have your crapinions because the people you dismiss and belittle with such contempt do their jobs for crap pay in crap conditions so you can continue to enjoy your privilege.
@15 It’s an opioid addiction problem if you are white, middle class or wealthy. Otherwise, you are just a criminal.
I imagine this asshat isn’t helping recruitment any either.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tommy-tuberville-military-holds-released-senate/
https://apnews.com/article/tuberville-senate-military-holds-b4d4fe19bada70a085208c9d82c35cb5
Nothing like withholding a pay increase from people who have already earned it to spur on recruitment!
am I mistaken or when the conservatives are in power and in the white house they attack and criticize the democrats for not being as supportive of the military and praise our warn fighters, the orange menace excepted of course because he changes what he says depending on who is listening.
@30. silvrhalide : FWIW Jim Wright of the Stonekette station blog has noted (on fb) that Tuberville and some of the other Repug appointment blockers here might to be trying to prevent Biden from appointing people to these positions in order to have “loyal” Trump kultists take them over in the – sadly looking disturbingly likely – event of Trump becoming POTUS again later this year..
@#29, silvrhalide:
Pearl Harbor not so much, although in light of the fact that the “sneak attack” narrative turned out to be a lie, it was certainly morally suspect of our leadership to encourage it. (The Japanese left a declaration of war at the U.S. embassy more than a day before the attack; the only reason it didn’t get passed along to the government is that we held the Japanese in such contempt that it had been deemed acceptable for every single person in the embassy who could read Japanese and had any sort of standing to take a long weekend off at the same time, and none of them returned until after the attack had happened, and FDR had already committed to the “sneak attack” narrative by the time the truth percolated through, and so the official line was to deny all of this until much later. Furthermore, the strategy used by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor should very specifically not have been a surprise to the U.S. military — the Japanese used it against the Russians in 1908, and the U.S. Navy specifically dispatched a team to study the results, and concluded “this was a very effective tactic, they’ll probably use it again”. To be caught flat-footed by it was a ridiculous show of incompetence.)
9/11, though? Absolutely. If your reaction to an attack by a terrorist group which is very specifically not a state is to go join up with the military, which can only be used against states, then you are a violent thug with a non-functional brain who actively desires pointless violence, and the disastrous Iraq invasion is in part the fault of your total lack of moral center (or, at least, people like you in the aggregate). Most Americans — and keep in mind that I am one — are, when it comes to war and/or foreign policy (usually the same thing for the US), nasty, vicious simpletons when the chips are down. The overwhelming majority of Americans — including a majority of Democrats, who have since tried to pretend otherwise — said “if the US has been attacked, then it is entirely normal and natural that we have to kill a bunch of people, whether they had anything to do with it or not”. This is horrifying. And given our history of blatant bloodthirsty violence around the globe, totally unjustified — on an “eye for an eye” basis, the 1954 coup in Iran would, all by itself, justify 9/11, and it’s not the only unbelievably terrible act of unjustified interference we’ve carried out, or the worst. If you supported any of the official response to 9/11 at any point, from the PATRIOT Act to the Hague Invasion Act to the Iraq invasion to the effectively random drone strikes where all male victims were declared post-facto to be “terrorists” to the execution without trial of Osama bin Laden, then your morals and ethics cannot be relied upon in any way — you’ll fall into line with the right wing the minute there’s the tiniest shred of a justification. Far worse retribution than 9/11 is almost certainly coming to the US in the next few decades, what with drone warfare being shown to be so effective; if all it took to turn you into a bootlicking warmonger was 9/11, you’re going to be an outright Nazi by 2050.
Vicar (singular), you really lack credibility. I’ll just note a couple of claims you just made:
Source for this claim? Because it sure sounds like bullshit.
Um. “On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden, the founder and first leader of the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, was shot and killed at his compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad by United States Navy SEALs of SEAL Team Six.” (Wikipedia)
You reckon he was a state?
(bah)
The Vicar @33: There’s so much to criticise the US for, why do you feel the need to make things up?
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/21/world/japan-admits-it-bungled-notice-of-war-in-41.html
The most dangerous organization in the world is having recruitment problems? Good. If Americans had a shred of sense we would have dismantled the entire military and used those resources instead to confront common problems facing humanity as a whole.
I’m still holding out hope that will eventually happen, but it’s not happening soon enough to stop our genocidal rampage through the Middle East, nor the war we’re trying to ignite in East Asia.
@silvrhalide
Since tuition is free in my country, no they did not.
And you don’t think that all of this is suprememly fucked up?
Yes. For those that weren’t conscripted that is. And their families were never in danger. How many civilian casualties did the USA have on homeland soil in WWII? And while the common Axis soldiers were fighting for evil aggressors, most of them didn’t have a choice in the matter either. I have more sympathy for the 15 year old Japanese kid drafted to die on some unimportant island, than for some US soldier that enlisted to see the world and kick some Japanese butt.
Stop assuming everyone on the internet is an American and stop glorifying the military.
@silvrhalide
And if you truly think anything done by the US army in response to 9/11 was noble, justified or done to protect their families, then I don’t even know where to start.
@33 “nasty, vicious simpleton” describes you perfectly.
The Iraq war was a war of choice by Dubya and Dick because the Bush family and Cheney wanted an oil pipeline through Iraq, which would bypass Iran, for access to the Caspian Sea and Black Sea oil sources. American idiots as clueless as you were mostly fine with it because they had no idea where either one of those countries were on a a map. The Afghanistan war was a war of necessity because the tribal regions refused to give up Osama bin Laden, once US forces tracked him to Afghanistan. The main problem with the tracking was that it was being done by a coked-up idiot who couldn’t manage to find oil in Texas, much less figure out where Afghanistan and Iraq were on a map.
No country on this planet will tolerate a terrorist attack and then refuse to answer in kind just because some wannabe dictator/closet cult leader attacks a country–attacks civillian targets–and then runs away to hide behind the sovereign skirts of another (failed) state. The US basically told Afghanistan “either you send him out or we’re coming for him at a time and place of our choosing”–through international and State Dept. channels and Afghanistan refused to give OBL up. They had options other than a US invasion.
OBL was killed in a targeted operation by US SEAL Team Six in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which also houses the Kakul military academy, the Pakistani version of West Point. Pakistan keeps claiming that they are a US ally and also that they were doing everything they could to find OBL, so Pakistan clearly has some explaining to do.
I’m not going to bother addressing the most of rest of your bullshit because you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
“the 1954 coup in Iran would, all by itself, justify 9/11”?
Pro tip: Iran is Shia. Al Qaeda is predominantly Sunni, the Taliban is Sunni.
Stating that 9/11 happened because of the Iran coup is like stating that the Shining Path will justifiably attack the US because of the Vietnam War and Pol Pot (just for you, because I realize that you need the hint, Pol Pot was in Cambodia). None of them give a shit about each other and in fact, Sunni and Shia fanatics will kill their [heretic] “Muslim brothers” in preference to killing unbelievers.
In the future, get the rabies shot in time to do some good.
My sister-in-law’s office was crushed when the towers fell. If she hadn’t had a case scheduled for night court on 9/11/2001, she would have been in the office at the time the planes hit, so you can go fuck yourself.
@36 I’m hoping we get real universal healthcare in this country in preference to yet another unneeded battle platform but I’m not holding my breath. The stranglehold the industrial military complex has on this country defies the imagination.
Vicar @33:
I’m afraid that the source documentation I’ve seen (some of which I used to have custodial responsibility for) disagrees with both your interpretation and the sequence of communication of the Japanese “intent to engage in hostilities” on 07 Dec 1941. In no particular order,
• What was sent from Tokyo to the Japanese embassy in DC did not, under well-accepted international law of the time (or today), qualify as a declaration of war. It only warned of future and immediate action to protect Japan’s interests.
• It wasn’t the Japanese speakers in the US who were away, it was the English speakers in the Japanese embassy who were cleared for the material who were away.
• The timing for delivery of the message by the Japanese embassy to the Department of State was intended to be approximately 30 minutes prior to the carrier aircraft beginning attack runs. However, the carriers were closer in, with an unanticipated tailwind, and launched 15 minutes early — and it took so long for the Japanese embassy to type up the message for delivery that they were late anyway. All of this was intended by the Japanese: They wanted a formal statement to CYA while maintaining surprise, and blew it.
• The US did have an intercept of the coded Japanese message several hours earlier — but didn’t complete decryption until about 90 minutes prior to the attack, which given the communication links at the time was not sufficient: Get flag-officer approval (a lieutenant commander — the highest-ranking individual who could actually read the romaji — isn’t authorized to take the nation to war!), then cross from the Department of the Navy to the Department of the Army for transmission back to Hawaii, followed by forwarding from an Army post across the harbor to the Navy, followed by the minimum two hours to get the vessels out of the harbor. The Japanese carrier aircraft considerably outnumbered the ready aircraft at the Army post. Even had the Army post come instantaneously to alert and launched its ready-and-armed aircraft, they might have saved a few lives, but almost certainly none of the vessels. (The airstrike was actually overkill, with a substantial portion of later-arriving aircraft having to search for targets of opportunity.)
So: No. I’m afraid that the theory stated @33 is from an alternate reality.
beholder @36, I do like your aspirational peace plan.
Questions come to mind, however, such as:
What about military aid to Ukraine, or military training? Can’t provide that without military assets.
Actions regarding, say, the kidnapping of USA citizens overseas?
Or the hijacking of cargo ships?
What about the forced nationalisation of USA foreign assets?
That sort of thing.
I mean, right now, the military attends to those things, and by merely existing and being the most dangerous organization in the world (as some have claimed) it prevents a lot of that sort of stuff.
No military, well… what is the USA gonna do about such things?
(Thoughts and prayers?)
@John Morales
Take off your US goggles and think about how countries that don’t have a bloated military deal with such problems.
The usual US MO is to use the CIA to topple the democratically elected gouvernment of that country and put a murderous dictator in its place.
@37
Handy for you. Some of us actually have to work for a living. How much of your time and/or money have you donated to rectify the ills of the disadvantaged, or are they just the noble savages trope/prop for your performative posturing?
As flawed as the de facto Pax Americana is, it protects a lot of countries around the world, not just the US. Why do you think that so many countries suddenly want to join NATO? American military guns–and lives–allow you the luxury of your butter.
Pearl Harbor is in Hawaii, which is one of the 50 states in the US, so yes, the Japanese did in fact attack the US homeland. Buy a map.
Wow. You know this for a fact? That contrary to every other war the Japanese fought, in which they unquestionably attacked civilians (check out the Sino-Japanese war, especially the rape of Nanking), you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Japanese would never in a million years attack American civilians or civilian targets. Are you consulting a magic eightball for this information or just consulting the voices in your head?
What kind of idiot are you, to think that any country, after being attacked, would wait for their attackers to attack civilian targets before attacking back? Or would your country just beg the US to save them if they were the ones attacked? It is a go-to move for a lot of the rest of the planet.
It was certainly the go-to move when al Qaeda started attacking other targets, notably European ones. At a time when other countries started to dismiss al Qaeda as a “US problem”, suddenly it was a problem for them too when al Qaeda started attacking their citizens and their countries.
You do realize that the imperial Japanese regime you are so ardently painting as noble savages treated most of its citizens like cattle (because most of them were peasants), treated minority peoples (like the Ainu and the Koreans) within its borders as lower than animals and experimented on and vivisected prisoners of war? Go look up “comfort women” and their seizure and sexual assault by the Japanese military.
In fact, I do think it is supremely fucked up. The problem is that most of the people who are enlisting are generally from the poorer red states–the ones who don’t want better social services and a social safety net, because people should apparently employ bootstrap levitation into a better life. Unlike you, I reserve my anger for DC, not the people who are largely left without choice.
I never assumed you were an American, just that you were a privileged idiot and so far, you are certainly showing yourself to be one.
By the way, since you posture so much about noble causes, what have you done to bring justice and an end to the Russian attack and attendant genocide on Ukraine? Asking because the US has already sent money, materiel and weapons to Ukraine and this summer, the US military will be going to Europe to train Ukrainians to operate US tanks in their fight for survival as a people and a country.
So getting Obama was worth the death of more than 40.000 civilians and the ruination of a country? And by the same logic, getting Dubya, Rumsfeld, or Kissinger and bringing them to Den Haag would justify an invasion of the US by another hypothetically more powerful country?
If it’s done by the US or Israel, most countries have to accept it. Might makes right, is that your worldview? And the reason Afghanistan was a failed state was prior US intervention, don’t forget that. It was the US who armed Osama and the Taliban.
lasius @43:
Um, I’m Australian. We have a military, too. Smaller than it might be, since we’re under the USA umbrella.
Ah, right, you’re one of those types.
Here the topic is the military, which you explicitly claim should be entirely dismantled, but when I pose you a question about what would replace it, you claim it’s very unusual to have to use it, since in your worldview the usual US MO is to use the CIA to topple the democratically elected gouvernment of that country and put a murderous dictator in its place.
Are you aware of what is going on in the Red Sea, right now?
Of the many megatons of cargo that’s being diverted at great cost in time, money (and more importantly) fossil fuel usage from the Houthi danger? What it means for global trade and so forth?
Ah well. Pretty obvious what the answers are.
You are one of those people who don’t just talk in slogans, but think likewise.
I mean, the Houthis are’t a country. Right?
Dare you try to tell me more about how you imagine this problem is amenable to the non-military method you claim is the usual USA MO?
Because if it is not, then you acknowledge you attempted to evade my question.
(I notice these things)
But hey, say I accept your stated viewpoint as genuine. I then must believe that you seriously imagine that the USA need not have a military, since it can just use the CIA to topple the democratically elected gouvernment of that country even when the threat is not a country.
(I’m finding that hard to do, most people have at least a weak grasp of reality, but you may yet sway me)
[OT but can’t resist – 3 links in order of occurrence]
https://www.reuters.com/business/moscow-takes-control-over-assets-western-companies-2023-07-27/
https://www.reuters.com/world/kremlin-says-it-has-list-western-assets-be-seized-if-russian-assets-are-2023-12-29/
https://www.upstreamonline.com/lng/putin-sweetens-deal-for-shells-confiscated-stake-in-russian-lng-project/2-1-1578946?zephr_sso_ott=8zlVvB
Of course, according to at least one person, the USA will probably use the CIA to topple the democratically elected gouvernment of that country (Russia) and put a murderous dictator in its place.
(Saint Putin!)
Show me where I did. If a military were a purely defensive force I would have fewer problems with it.
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blockquote>…arguing against a self-constructed strawman…
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blockquote>
A purely defensive force? Like most countries have?
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blockquote>Are you aware of what is going on in the Red Sea, right now?
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blockquote>
Yeah, the results of a US-Iran proxy war, with the US propping up a dictatorship (and additionally also a modern colonial state), while the current state of Iran is the result of the US installing a dictatorship there in the 50s. I think you can guess where I lay the blame for this problem.
<
blockquote>[OT but can’t resist – 3 links in order of occurrence]
<
blockquote>
To be fair, the US plans to do the same. Is that wrong in your opinion? Of course in this case toppling a democratically elected gouvernment and installing a dictator is not an option. So military invasion it is?
@silvrhalide
So do I.
I pay my taxes, that pay for tuition-free university, uneployment benefits, sponsorship of students from low-income families and other social programs. And I vote for parties that aim to further enhance these programs. I also donate to organisations that feed the homeless and try to make them accept help.
Yes. An invasion of North American soil was neither in the plans of Japan or Germany nor in their capabilities. The aim of Japan was purely to keep the US out of the pacific theater.
I am not trying to excuse Japanese war crimes, or vilify US involvement after being attacked. But the notion that any American soldiers in WWII or after 9/11 were doing it to protect their families at home is laughable.
The USA is a democracy, is it not? So the blame for these politicians being in power can be put on the people voting for them, right?
We had this discussion in many threads, and yes, the whole clusterfuck is fubar now. But Putin, while being an unscrupulous dictator, wasn’t always an anti-west demagogue. In the 2000s he tried to approach the west and create closer diplomatic and economic ties with the EU, but the US and most of its EU allies were not interested in a de-escalation of west-east tensions and the creation of a more powerful European bloc back then. Diplomacy with undemocratic regimes might not be to your taste, but it is always vastly preferable to war and the associated cost of lives in my personal opinion.
lasius:
Good point. That was Beholder, not you.
You only replied to my reply to them, and I obs associated you improperly. Too short shrift.
My bad. Sorry.
No. A military force. Under political control. Like most countries have.
Make no bones about it, the military is about killing people and breaking things.
That’s the very point — if it can’t do that, it’s not fit for purpose.
(What, you imagine Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is democratic because it’s in the name?)
Well, it only started happening after Israel began to systematically attack Gaza to collectively punish a population for what Hamas did in early October. Using the Israeli military to raze an entire walled-off bit of land that is entirely dependent of Israel allowing food, medicine, fuel, and other necessities of life.
Must be a coincidence.
And sure, you guess it’s because the USA military exists.
<snicker>
Plannig to do is not having done it, is it? :)
No. Not to mention that it would be kinda hard to find someone more murderous than Putin to replace him.
(Ask Prigozhin — oh, wait. You can’t, since he died in an unfortunate plane accident)
Heh. Hardly.
You do know that Russia has a bunch of nukes, no?
(More than the USA, but not as good. Not that it takes that many to be nasty)
Russia (and maybe other nuclear-armed powers) can get away with it given the associated enterprises have written off their investment and plant, as happened in Russia. But you won’t find too many cases where that occurs, precisely because the USA has a military that some people call the most dangerous organization in the world.
And Russia will pay the price for that big-time — in fact, it’s paying it now. They used those foreign enterprises to fund their fossil fuel extraction and run their aviation, for example. They don’t have the technical expertise or the capital to either maintain or replace those assets, and there’s only so long they can manage to cannibalise bits here and there to keep a rump running, as with their airfleet.
Anyway, that was an example of how it can actually happen.
Pointing out it’s a thing. And it was kinda sorta part of the sanctions.
cf. https://www.marketplace.org/2023/06/28/western-companies-russian-sanctions/
Such a sap!
I recommend you check out Vlad Vexler about Putin’s political history.
Here:
Mind you, the topic is about USA soldiers, not about Putin.
lasius @6
Mmm… Anyone who is overly enthusiastic about joining up, sure, they’re sus.
But not nearly as sus — or provably corrupt — as the corpo rat scum running the ops.
They’re morally bad, yes.
What I ain’t gonna do is sit here in the comfort of my apartment and judge the folks who sign up as a way of getting out of a bad sitch. You do what you gotta do, but it’s best to keep it legal, you know?
Meh. After reading the rest of your comments, you’re not worth my time. Enjoy the five minutes I wasted composing this.
I certainly pay my taxes and work for a living, while University tuition is free.
Sweden is bringing back the draft after a brief pause; as we are entering NATO it makes sense to be able to help our democratic European neighbors.
Even so, you need to recruit professional NCOs and officers and the work seems to have a high status (Rambo wannabees definitely NOT wanted).
In theory, NATO troops could be dispatched to a non-democratic place, but the example of Tony Blair in Britain will make leaders hesitate to lie us into another meaningless war.
BTW one good thing about conscription is that you usually get a representative slice of society. And there is always someone in the group who drives trucks or repair engines in his civilian job, problems can be sorted out relying on the ‘skill pool’.
@42 John Morales
Why should we be supporting a fascist regime in Ukraine? No, I don’t want our resources going toward that.
Not well served by a military going around blowing shit up. That’s why we (should) have international diplomatic entities that address this in a way that doesn’t end in a pile of human skulls.
A risk of doing business. Not well served by a military going around blowing shit up.
Good. I approve.
No military, well … maybe we just have to get good at international relations and find peaceful solutions to our problems.
beholder @54: Not sure what you’re beholding, with your head firmly stuck up Putin’s arse.
@45
Kissinger and Rumsfeld are dead. (I was very disappointed that Rumsfeld’s death was not aspartame-related.) I am unclear on what you plan on doing with their corpses once you get them to The Hague.
Dubya?
TAKE HIM. PLEASE.
The Afghanistan tribal elders–selected by their respective tribes, if not by democratic means–made that choice. Those deaths are on them. They did have the option of turning over a mass murderer and terrorist for justice… at The Hague.
Translation: I gave at the office.
Found the fascist.
Afghanistan was invaded by the now-defunct USSR in an attempt at a land grab, just like the current Russian Federation did with South Ossetia, Georgia and Ukraine. Afghanistan was a failed state because of the Soviet invasion, not because of US intervention. Prior to the invasion, Afghanistan was a poor country ruled by a monarch that adopted Western style clothing and norms. It was a NATO friendly country, which is one of the reasons that the USSR attacked it.
Afghanistan begged the US for help in repelling the USSR invasion–and got it.
The CIA gave Korans away to Afghanis, in an effort to build up a resistance to the USSR invasion. The US government gave weapons and ammunition to the Afghan government. The bulk of the actual fighting resistance actually came from a Saudi national known as Osama bin Laden and his mujahideen followers, who wanted to have a religious war to bring about a theocratic Islamic government. (The Saudis stripped him of his citizenship after 9/11).
Funny how you don’t have any harsh words for a mass murderer and terrorist who deliberately and willingly went shopping for an armed conflict, and when the Afghanistan-Russian war ended, continued for foment armed conflict and terrorism.
Are you getting that information from your magic eightball or the voices in your head?
https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/nazi-saboteurs-and-george-dasch#:~:text=The%20Landing&text=Each%20was%20destined%20to%20land,a.m.%2C%20June%2013%2C%201942.
https://www.liherald.com/stories/a-true-long-island-war-story-75-years-ago,92861
https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2010/06/07/the-japanese-invasion-of-america/
https://irp.fas.org/eprint/arens/chap4.htm
That is precisely what you are doing.
The war crimes and crimes against humanity were carried out–quite enthusiastically–by your “15 year old Japanese conscript” and all the other conscripts and enlisted military. The kidnapped and enslaved “comfort women” were enthusiastically raped and tortured by the Japanese military. The war crimes and crimes against humanity were carried out by the entire Japanese military. It was not the work of three very busy military officers.
Like the purely defensive peacekeeping Belgian forces that so successfully prevented the Rwandan genocide?
Or the “purely defensive peacekeeping forces” in the Netherlands and Belgium that got steamrolled by the invading Nazi military? You know, the one that caused the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina to run away to safety to the UK first, and then when the UK was under attack, she ran away to safety to… America.
It’s a crying shame that she didn’t take the Dutch Jews with her.
So, according to you, the lives lost in war are always bad. The lives lost in a genocidal attack or in government oppression/persecution against an internal ethnic or minority group (like, say, the Jews or the Uighurs) are perfectly acceptable losses.
Good to know.
You still haven’t explained what your big (perfect) nonmilitary plan is to prevent the Ukrainian genocide.
@54
Ukraine has had a democratically elected government, ever since the Orange Revolution. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is its democratically elected president. The only fascist regime in Ukraine is the Russian one.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/how-ukraines-orange-revolution-shaped-twenty-first-century-geopolitics/
It couldn’t possibly be because everyone under the age of 40 has seen their friends and family sent abroad to commit crimes for ExxonMobil only to be dumped off back home with no Healthcare and a case of ptsd. No its definitely the (((Marxists))) doing it…. As a card carrying Communist I don’t know whether it is funny or scary how our weak and disorganized orgs still scare the shit out of these capitalist ghouls as of the USSR was still around.
Ah, a Russian propagandist. All is explained.
In the news: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/24/us-navy-cargo-ships-houthi-missile-attack-yemen
—
A bit of context: https://www.ifpri.org/blog/impacts-red-sea-shipping-disruptions-global-food-security
Wow, I never knew I was fighting in Afghanistan to commit crimes for ExxonMobil! How much oil did ExxonMobil pump from Afghanistan to Afghan ports?
I see that one still has to turn one’s brain in to get a Communist Party card. About as bad for a Republican Party card, these days.
Iraq, well, as near as I can tell, that was really all about, “He tried to kill my dad”… :/
Meanwhile, as near as I can tell, the US has always been wrong and will always been wrong and we need to apologize to the Barbary Pirates and reinstate them. Diplomacy and ransom is the only way to properly behave. Well, that and enjoy cargo ships coming to port empty.
And for the record, I did lose a cousin in the WTC. His grave remains empty, as remains were never found, what with an office building grinding his remains into dust.
Oh, a small general nit pick, that most Saudis would happily provide as well. The bin Laden family are indeed Saudi citizens, but are Yemenis, not Saudis. Kind of a big deal, socially in both nations.
But, I’ve learned now that Yemeni rebels have the absolute right to dictate all merchant traffic in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, given an attack on an Indian vessel within Indian waters and the random attacks on anything floating in the Red Sea. So, to not leave out northern Africa, we need to dig up the Barbary Pirates, apologize for trampling their rights to pirate, rebuild their ships and allow them to ravage all European merchant traffic.
Fucking talk about Bizarroworld illogic!
Oh, John, Australia is under two protection umbrellas. Commonwealth and the US, the US being the current heavy hitter due to the much objected to larger military force. Kind of makes sense, given population size that sponsors those forces.
wzrd1 @61:
One of the smartest people I know is a Communist (one of my nephews). Please try to avoid the “they’re X and they’re stupid, therefore all X are stupid” bullshit. The same mistake as people who think all Americans are genocidal capitalist douchebags.
@61 Yes, you are correct that OBL is actually Yemeni in origin and yes, it is an important social distinction in Saudi Arabia. Using the term “citizen” would have provided more clarity. However, Oxford defines a national as “a citizen of a particular country, typically entitled to hold that country’s passport”, which, prior to 9/11, OBL definitely had.
Dubya’s reason for Iraq was “he tried to kill my dad”. Dick Cheney’s reason was because Halliburton wanted an oil pipeline running through Iraq, for the Kurdish oilfields and the Caspian Sea & Black Sea oilfields. Never underestimate that guy’s propensity for a grift, especially on the government dime. Look at all the sweetheart deals he got for McDonnell Douglas when he was Secretary of Defense. It’s not an accident that that family lives in Wyoming, the “inland offshore”.
I am so sorry about your cousin. I remember how terrible it was not knowing if my SIL was alive or dead but at least I finally got the good news. I am so sorry that you did not.
@58 Technically, former military service people have the right to get their healthcare through the VA. The problem is that the VA is perpetually understaffed and underfunded and also lies about the service that they provide to veterans. Having VA healthcare is meaningless if you can’t get a doctor’s appointment in under 9 months or get treatment in under 2 years.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/whistleblower-says-va-ordered-fake-appointments-to-cut-waiting-list/2019/06/26/97e50648-9856-11e9-a027-c571fd3d394d_story.html
The other problem is that most of the US military only comes from about 2% of US families. If 40% of US families had members in the military, things would be very different. What birger johansson @53 about conscription is absolutely true.
As a card carrying Communist, how is that the crimes against humanity committed by the former Soviet empire and the current PRC and DPRK seem to have escaped your ire and your notice? Or past atrocities committed by military coups/terrorist organizations like the Kmer Rouge and Shining Path?
Rob Grigjanis @ 62, I suspected I should’ve clarified. The far fringe on right or left, in my experience, wait a bit, you find them coming around from the other side and back into view to annoy you – from the opposite side.
Dunno why, but age tends to push some past the extremes of one side and toward the fringe of the other.
Meanwhile, the real world is somewhere in the middle. Not that most in the US could even find the middle, being so right leaning to begin with as to be at the risk of falling over.