al@ames-lm.UUCP (Al Globus) (04/03/84)
Well, I lost the original. The gist was to reduce our military to a bare minimum since we could make things hot for an invader anyway. Being invaded, my friend, is a disaster of unparalleled proportions. You just don't want it to happen. Your friends and family get killed, your house gets burnt down, the economy is ruined, the land is torn to pieces. It's just not something you let happen if it can possibly be avoided. Ask the Afgani's. I have a lot of beef with DOD, but they have performed their primary mission - the U.S. has not been invaded AT ALL for a hundred years or so. I have an alternate proposal, actually two, for U.S. military posture. 1. DOD's mission is two fold, defend the U.S. and protect American 'interests' around the world. The second is a catch all for anything the Pres wants to do. Let's get rid of it and require a declaration of war to deploy U.S. armed forces outside of the U.S. and the neighboring oceans. There are two standard arguments against this approach - what about Europe and SOVIET EXPANSION. Well, Europe is quite capable of defending itself. Their economy is as big as ours and they have a long and powerful military tradition. The change over needs to be gradual (10 years?) but is quite doable. As for SOVIET EXPANSIONISM, the best place to stop expansion is in battle. That's happening in Afganistan. We should support the Afgani's in every way possible, including developing weapons specifically for their needs. If the U.S.S.R. is defeated, they'll be reasonable for a decade or two. 2. We do need an offensive arm for a variety of tasks. How about an UNARMED FORCES that the Pres can use in any way he pleases? Before you start the cat calls remember that unarmed forces freed India, got Southern Blacks the vote, have helped cripple the U.S. nuclear industry, and conducted successful missions on Soviet territory within the last year (Greenpeace). All of this with very low casualty rates. Unarmed forces must be willing to accept casualties, after all, what military force doesn't take losses? Or even get wiped out from time to time? That doesn't mean they're useless. And unarmed forces have a pretty good record in terms of missions accomplished. The worst case is when the opponent just mows you down. That happened a few times in India, but overall casualties were very low as liberations go - until the Moslems and Hindus started killing each other. I've wondered a great deal if the U.S. mission in Beruit might have been more successful with a large unarmed force rather that a couple thousand Marines. The locals treated the Marines well at first, only becoming belligerant when the ships started shelling them. An unarmed force could have been much larger without making people afraid of being taken over, and could have sustained a couple hundred casualties before doing a worse job than the Marines. What would be the effect of a few hundred thousand well trained and equiped (body armor, tv cameras linked in real-time to ships off shore, etc.) unarmed men 'attacking' Beruit? We don't have that kind of a force so we'll never know.
rcd@opus.UUCP (04/03/84)
<> >I have a lot of beef with DOD, but they have performed their primary >mission - the U.S. has not been invaded AT ALL for a hundred years >or so. Say what? Now (1984-1941) >= 100? I know, I'm being picky... >1. DOD's mission is two fold, defend the U.S. and protect >American 'interests' around the world. The second is a catch all >for anything the Pres wants to do. Let's get rid of it and >require a declaration of war to deploy U.S. armed forces outside of >the U.S. and the neighboring oceans. I'll second that one. In other words, let's restore to Congress the power to declare war (vested in it by the Consitution) and get rid of this "national emergency" and "peacekeeping" and "protecting democracy" (ad nauseam) crap that's mostly used as an excuse for mini-wars. -- Nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile. {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd
bitmap@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA (04/06/84)
<.....> >>the U.S. has not been invaded AT ALL for a hundred years >>or so. >Say what? Now (1984-1941) >= 100? I know, I'm being picky... I'll be picky, too. Aside from Poncho Villa in the early 1900s, I can't think of a time when the United States have been invaded since, say, 1814. True, the territory of Hawaii was attacked in 1941, and I think that some of the Aleutian islands of the Alaska territory were even taken over (anyone know?). The Mexican War was fought, I think, entirely in Mexico (I could be wrong on this). It was, I think, ~1848. Am I missing an invasion? (I'm not counting such things as Gettysburg, although one could argue that). Sam Hall, UCB ucbvax!ucbtopaz!bitmap
alan@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Alan Algustyniak) (04/09/84)
*<invasion - to enter for conquest or plunder > Thanks to the intelligence of the average reporter, and the bias of the average Liberal, the term 'invasion' is losing its strict definition. I don't know quite how you are using it, but, at any rate, you seem to have overlooked a few incidents from WWII. 1) The Japanese launched many balloon incindiary bombs at America. Many of them reached the US and had their intended immediate effect, that of starting forest fires. They did not cause the panic the Japanese had hoped for, due to a successful coverup of the fact that this was happening. 2) The Germans sent their submarines into US waters along the East Coast in order to sabotage shipping. The book 'Iron Coffins' was written by a U-boat commander. He tells of going up the Chesapeake Bay and surfacing at night. 3) Teams of Germans were dropped onto US soil in order to carry out sabotage missions. This is not a real critizism of the original letter, but the opportunity to bring these fact to public attention.
mwm@ea.UUCP (04/17/84)
#R:ames-lm:-19400:ea:10100023:000:997 ea!mwm Apr 16 18:44:00 1984 Only one superpower? That doesn't sound right. Lets look at what you claimed was true of the us, and compare for the USSR. 1) The soviets couldn't mount a conventional attack on us. True, given that you want both some hope of success, and aren't willing to put up with a large conflict as preparation. But the same is true for us - we couldn't mount an attack on the soviet union that had a prayer of succeeding if we didn't start with a preparatory war. 2) We can project our power to just about anywhere, even adjacent to the USSR if we weren't worried about the soviet response. Likewise true. However, the soviets don't seem to have any problem in the power projection department themselves. Of course, they tend to do things by proxy, but that's true of us, to. The US is in better shape than the soviets as a "military superpower" But if we left the picture, the Soviets would have very little trouble dominating it, with or without their nuclear arsenal. <mike