NYT reports:
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced a major reshaping of the Pentagon budget on Monday, with deep cuts in many traditional weapons systems but new billions of dollars for others, along with more troops and new technology to fight the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The shift from billions being poured into expensive and often ineffective military wizardry to increasing troop numbers and agility must be examined. What it shows is the end of the kind of military that Rummy wanted to realize: small, rapid, and hi-tech. But a small but stronger army ultimately meant a weaker democracy. And this contradiction is at the heart of all democracies since the Greeks: an increase in voting rights is consistently tied to an increase in army size. You can not separate, for example, the Reform Acts (1832, 1867, and 1884) in Victorian England with the nation’s expanding colonial military commitments. In short, Rummy’s ideal army was one that would need little public support: politically or physically. Robots and private companies would do all of the fighting. This is why the success of The Surge was in actual fact not a success for Rummy/Bush, whose ideal military moment turned out to be a failure—Shock and Awe. The dark secret of a democracy is a large army.
Side note: I remember when I was in early college and I thought adding a ‘the’ to a short titles was cool for my essays. Mudede is cool.
so, proportionally, the world’s best democracy is North Korea?
We’ve been here before.
Draw down the military just in time to get kicked in the balls by the next big world threat. Before WW1 and 2 we had let the armed forces shrink to near nothing. We have avoided that mistake for the past 65 years and that is why there was no WW3.
Now that we have a community organizer as Commander in Chief it will be interesting to see how long it is before we are up to our necks in danger.
@3, and a beauty queen would be better as a command in chief? fuck you.
@3, it must be really scary in your world.
here is a complete list of attacks on america by foreign powers in the last 100 years:
1. pearl harbor
2. 9/11 (and i’m giving you this one without argument)
if it didn’t happen on our soil, it was an attack on our EMPIRE. there’s a difference.
Citations, please? There are a few nearly stream-of-consciousness assertions here, but no sourcing. It’s an interesting argument if it can be supported, but “You can not separate…the Reform Acts…with the nation’s expanding…military commitments” doesn’t count as support.
@4 – I wouldn’t say better but just as qualified.
Goddamnit, STFU and stop spreading the lie that the Surge was a success. Peaches Petraeus bought security from insurgent groups. Now that the cash has stopped flowing, violence is back up. 34 killed in car bombs yesterday.
Ft Sumpter
Maine
Lousitania
S Korea 1950 (wasn’t our country invaded but it caught us with our pants down and 35,000 Americans paid the price)
Tonkin Gulf (yeah, it was a made up provocation- but Johnson sold it to a Democratic Congress so we’ll count it)
Also do we count the first attack on the Towers in 1993 and the atack on the USS Cole (the cole attack not terrorism but an act of war against a warship) or do we pretend they didn’t happen like Clinton did?
4- A girl who can use a gun would be a better CinC than a Liberal who would shit in his pants if he heard one go off. (and don’t discount the titties, Charles)
Umm, Iceland? Scandinavia? France? Love the philosophical mumbo-jumbo, but correlation ain’t causation. Unless you wanted to argue that they only have the luxury of having small armies because of the United States massive one, but that seems a bit too rooted in reality.
Our new military has nothing to do with Democracy. The reason it is changing is that Rummy’s idea for a smaller, rapid, hi-tech military doesn’t work in an occupation.
Rummy’s army could win any war against any enemy on a battlefield. However, our wars aren’t taking place on a battlefield. Instead, they are taking place in cities against a hidden insurgency co-mingling with civilians. It can be argued that such a war isn’t winnable under any circumstances, but the only weapons that have a chance to be effective are “boots on the ground”, and lots of them. Stealth bombers are useless against roadside bombs.
#8, the surge was an admission that the previous strategy in Iraq was deeply flawed — if not FUBAR. That fact remains whether one considers the surge a success or not.
#6, it’s a blog post, not a dissertation.
#3, throwing money at expensive weapons systems that are of dubious value is not the same thing as having a strong military.
Holy shit, you are an idiot. Hell, why not include the Mexican War there, even as there’s no proof that the Mexicans shot first.
The Lusitania was a British ship.
The Maine’s destruction was an accident.
South Korea. Who gives a fucking shit if it “caught us with our pants down.” The Koreans did not attack us.
Gulf of Tonkin. Are you fucking kidding me? We were occupying a foreign country, you fucking nimrod.
You are such a typical, ignorant, pansy-ass American.
That is not at all what I took from the article. “deep cuts in many traditional weapons systems but new billions of dollars for others” sounds like we are pouring all of our money and research into UAV’s and less money into traditional weapons that have proved ineffective in an insurgency.
@14: more specifically, it’s a lazy blog post that attempts to argue that a larger army and a stronger democracy are inextricably linked, but fails to support that argument.
Remember, Charles does not write assertions of fact. He issues provocative statements full of hyperbole meant to encourage a dialectic. He throws a conversation bomb into the room and watches from afar, chuckling at the chaos.
@15 And you forgot that Fort Sumpter, where no one was injured, was an attempt to rid the land of an unwelcomed occupying army.
@5,
The Japanese also occupied part of the Alaskan Aleutian islands during WWII, so technically, that should be listed too.
But I’m sorta just splitting hairs here… I agree with your post, I’m just a WWII Pacific Theatre buff and couldn’t resist.
Charles,
I disagree. Democracies’ dark secret isn’t large armies. It’s is an effective & educated volunteer (not drafted) army (except for commissioned officers who graduate from the service academies). And, that is not a dark secret. We also have an Air Force and a nuclear deterrent (Britain didn’t have either in the 19th century). Our army is now evolving from a merely land infantry/mobilized force for conventional wars to smaller rapid response forces for immediate threats such as terror and guerrilla warfare. We (and other Western armies) are also developing the army as a force of humanitarian good whether for disaster relief, vaccinations, preventive care, peacekeeping etc. A bigger army means that force can conduct a wider array of tasks. Future wars (and there will be more) will largely be the type like Iraq (at least for the United States). We now also have a stronger NATO (France is now a full member since 1966 with it’s officers in the integrated command structure and Germany is reunited as a full member).
I agree with Gates that the Pentagon needs reshaping and streamlining. The best move Pres. Obama has made in his young administration is retaining Gates at Defense.
It’s not a dark secret; a democracy, communities of individuals have more to lose. A community demands a full spectrum of defense against theft across full populations’ interests. A despotic government has only myopic economic concerns on the table; domestic police have far more reaching authority rather than a military under such systems.
Swords and plowshares are made of metal and wielded by human hands, but neither are applicable in untrained hands and unfocused use.
mudemumbo jumbo. Good pseudo bohemiam fodder but do not trust anything this guy says abot history, economics or political economy.
Costa Rica: lots of democracy, no army.
Cuba: big army no democracy. China, USSR Nazi Germany, Japan in ww2, etc.
Colonial America: everyone was in the army a/k/a militia; few had voting rights it was highly restricted based on property.
Then through the 1800s the voting franchise expanded too all white males and NO, THERE WAS NOT A BIG ARMY AT ALL.
Now take England, yes they had an empire in the 1800s and Reform Acts and perhaps there’s some causal relationship there…but it’s not the core of democracy…they also had empire in the 1700s (remembber, they had US) without expansion of voting rights and their really big armies didn’t come until the 20th century wars.
Back in those days of Greece and shit? And Rome? Persia?
Big, big armies including tons of mercenaries, slaves etc. most of whom didn’t have no fucking voting rights.
They put tons of people in the British army in WW2 and when they got out they said fuck the elite, we’re voting for Labor. I guess in Mudemumbojumbo land this is a bad thing or a dark underbelly of something or other……He would prefer they kept in Churchill?
WTF????????????????
the surge wasn’t a surge (a brief 2-3 month period when troops are escalated and then withdrawn), but a combination of bribes for the Iraqi militia and an Escalation.
Even so, it’s time to stop trying to spread Democracy at the point of a gun.