Originally posted by: Rainsford
Originally posted by: Nebor
Originally posted by: JD50
Originally posted by: PC Surgeon
Originally posted by: JD50
Originally posted by: PC Surgeon
Did you happen to read page 11?
ESTABLISH FOUR CORE MISSIONS for U.S. military forces:
? defend the American homeland;
? fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;
<snip>
Yeah its fine :roll:
Yea, because we've never had to do that before....:roll:
I'm confused by your response. Are you for these actions or against?
I think you are not interpreting the bold correctly. I don't think there is anything wrong with having a PLAN to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars". It has happened before(WWII), and will probably happen again. I am not saying that I agree with the PNAC, I'm just pointing out that there are certain parts that aren't all bad.
Exactly. At current levels, we're currently unprepared for North Korea to attack South Korea, or China to take Taiwan. We need the ability to fight mulitiple major theater wars.
I don't think we're unprepared. Obviously we're not "prepared" for a WWII type conflict, but that doesn't mean we're unprepared for the kinds of conflicts we would face in the world today. What's objectionable about PNAC's "core mission for US military forces" is that it's really backward looking, and sounds more like a plan for world domination than anything else.
Winning conflicts is not the same as it was in WWII. Let's face it, we've come a LONG way in terms of technology and tactics since then...it was 60 years ago, why would it be a good model for a conflict of the future? Our weapons are advanced to the point where there are solutions beyond just throwing waves of men at the enemy.
But even if I'm wrong about that, I think it's worth considering how ready the OTHER guy is going to be for a WWII scale conflict. We spend orders of magnitude more on our military than any other country on the planet, it doesn't really matter if we can field thousands of airplanes or ships or millions of men, because the other side isn't going to be able to either. All countries like China and North Korea have going for them is the millions of men in uniform, but their weapons are so far behind in terms of numbers and technology that it would be a slaughter. With Taiwan, for example, China certainly has the troops, but not the air force or the navy to support an invasion. This is not a problem for North Korea heading south, but the idea that the battle would turn into trench warfare is just silly. They'd come marching south with guys with rifles and get a bunch of tanks and fighter-bombers right in the teeth.
Maintaining a WWII level army when there is no adversary justifying it looks pretty much like imperial warmongering to the rest of the world, because it is...not to mention it's wasteful as hell.