Quote:
Originally Posted by JAD_333
Shek:
I see Friedman's rationale is nearly the same as that articulated in the book--excellent, by the way; thank you. It seems to me that something is lost in always deciding issues from the standpoint of economics. The all volunteer army appears to work well, but when the number of troops comes up short to carry out all our missions, we find ourselves in this odd juxtaposition of part of us at war and part of us continuing to enjoy the good life. Perhaps that is the natural result of an all volunteer military. My 18 year old son won't even consider joining the reserves because, as he told me, he doesn't have to. He thinks people only defend the country if they want to. I don't fault him for his attitude.
|
JAD,
Glad that you liked the book.
As far as the AVF goes, the issue is beyond that of the AVF. As a point of departure, strategy encompasses just the military. Grand strategy encompasses DIME (Diplomatic, Informational, Military, and Economic) or MIDLIFE (Military, Informational, Diplomatic, Legal, Intelligence, Financial, and Economic), depending on which acronym you want to use. In any case, the current administration has not developed an integrated grand strategy IMO, and instead, has relied mostly on the military. In choosing to do so, the burden of the war has fallen squarely on the military, while the rest of the machinations of government has for the most part been left out of the fight (with the exceptions of parts of State and some intel agencies), as have the American people.
As recently as January, when asked about what the American people have had to sacrifice, the best answer that President Bush could come up with was
peace of mind. Except for some extremely veiled calls for service, the administration has not asked for increased enlistment, and it was only this past fall that it finally reversed itself on avoiding increasing the size of the military. I suspect that if the President had called for service post-9/11, or even in the summer/fall of 2003 when it became clear that Iraq wasn't going to be an in and out gig, that we could have increased the active end-strength of the Army by several hundred thousand.
Bottomline, the inspiration and leadership for mobilizing the country needs to come from the executive office. The bully pulpit wasn't used, and that is where I think much of the apathy towards the war lays. If you're told to go out shopping and living like normal, then that's what you're going to do.