Shea-I agree with you in principal, but the simple fact that so many people hate us for what our governments have done over the years, that we will have to contiue to defend ourselves for some time from our self-created enemies.

Until then, I’ll have what you’re having.

KWW- We seem to have a bad habit of forgetting people once they are no longer useful (at least, the politicians act in this manner.) It is shameful to say the least.
Thanks for the comments.

One thing that would help greatly is to get rid of Donald Rumsfeld. He is unbalanced, very destructive, and despised by all under his command. I recommend the straight jacket removal method. Another thing would be to require anyone who votes for war to pack up and go fight it themselves.

What worries me is that we are not decompressing the combat soldiers who are returning from Iraq. The VA is giving lip service to terms like PTSD but doing very little to lift these guys from the insanity into which they were plunged. Many of them will never be able to live a normal life again.

My son is still having major difficulties after serving 14 years some of which were in combat zones. Once the powers that be have gotten what they want out of a soldier they throw them away. Disposable personnel.

My experience with the US military years ago made me the anti-war activist that I am today. Unfortunately a recruiter got to my son.

I am not saying, “don’t defend yourself.” I am saying, if people would stop killing just because someone else tells them to, there would be no need to defend oneself (against groups, anyway).

I ask the world, again: if you meet a lunatic raving on a streetcorner, and he tells you to go kill someone because they are evil, how @#$% stupid is it to say “Uh, hyuk hyuk, okey dokey” and do it!? What’s worse: the lunatic or the lunatic’s flunky!?

I should start drinking.

Orikinla- I am a scholar of life and rationality- I simply try to use common sense in my approach to all things political and social. I do not always succeed, but I try.

Yes, humans are emotional creatures indeed, and education alone can’t prevent people from doing horrible things. While I would say that the most educated cause the most harm, perhaps it is not education at fault, but the fact that these folks get themselves into positions of power using their education to fool people into thinking that they have the right answers to problems. In truth, most of them are just power hungry.

Always good to hear from you.

Windspike- You know I never shy away from a good topic.
War does suck- but it has been used to stop awful endeavors by rogue dictators or nations. But in all cases, rationale for war should be clear, not muddied or constantly shifting like we see today.

OKLib- Thanks! I agree with the basic premise of your comment and will be exploring military reforms in the upcoming posts. Hope to heasr from you again.

I would say the biggest challenge that the modern US military must overcome is its government. For one thing, there needs to be a much stricter control of the Presidents’ war powers by Congress and there needs to be a much clearer definition of what those powers are in the first place. There also needs to be a streamlining of the command process so that it doesn’t take 30 minutes for orders to get from top to bottom. There have been far too many mistakes because of this. Truly, the US has the mightiest army in the history of this world but that doesn’t mean that bad leadership or just plain and simple mistakes can’t bring it all tumbling down.

Interestingly, in today’s press briefing (whitewashinghouse as I call it) with Scotty McClellan (I posted about it on my location if you don’t want to sift through the whitehouse press briefing text on your own), Helen Thomas points out that 18 children were just killed by our military in Iraq.

War sucks and as a last resort also a tool for diplomacy, when all other tools fail. It’s a political blunt instrument designed to destroy people with differing opinions. Indeed, on several occasions it was used to stop really horrible people from doing heinous things.

What toubles me most is when it the espouse rationale for engaging in war turns out to not be the true reasons for going in. Sure, our leaders are fallible, but then there is a difference between seriously screwing it up and purposefully misleading our entire military machine and the American population to achieve certain political aims?

What I have learnt in life so far is that humans in most cases have given in to their emotions more than common sense. Because, both President George W.Bush and Osama bin Laden went to school. But the majority of humanity prefer violence to peace. Terrorism manifests from the home front to the war front. From a barking husband to a barking general. From the past to the present, Man has not learnt from the tragic mistakes of civilization. And the most educated have done more harm to society than the retarded.