Salon is a liberal, progressive mouthpiece. Try reading Janes.....you know....people with actual knowledge.
A very anecdotal story Tiger and yet, true nonetheless. Twice a year, I volunteer through NCL, at Camp Pendleton, cleaning and preparing barracks for returning Marines. The last 3 years, it's been fairly standard cleaning....we mop floors, clean bathrooms, stock refrigerators, dust, make beds. The clean up has been minimal.....until this year. I literally had to fight my gag reflex while cleaning bathrooms. The barracks were a disaster. We made beds with nasty, dirty sheets, dirty pillow cases, and blankets with huge holes. I walked away and my thought was....I just cleaned up apathy. What I encountered is not the Marine way. Leadership is apathetic. There's a reason.
He won't because he cant. This Richard is the new Red. Sheltered and never lived a day outside of the walls of academia or from the walls of an office. I don't spout "assumptions " or "opinions " I have been there, still in contact with many friends that I trust from operators to commanders to small unit leaders and they all say the same thing. It's real world shit that pencil jockeys will never have the ability to fathom. It's okay, I don't expect him to understand because I know he cant. He only believes what he reads vs people that know because they have or are living it.
I agree. I am hearing the same things. We are not stronger today. Our forces don't feel it. We are not feared, respected, and looked up to the way we once were. Obama has done such irreparable damage.....I'm sad. Hillary has no friends amongst the SpecOps community. She should be nervous.
You see you and shane are actually speaking from some real life fucking experience, as painful as it is for you guys to watch this shit unfold right before your eyes while guys like tiger in nc up on high on his hilltop throwing bombs down below (figurative bombs as these pacifists don't believe in the use of the real ones) liberals just don't get it and they never will....that there is evil in this world that must be dealt with accordingly before they get you
Not true in the least. We have the largest, most capable, most destructive, and best funded by far military in the world. Of course we have fewer planes and ships than in the past. So do our adversaries, every damned one of them! We are the only military with worldwide reach. We have over twice the military budget of China and Russia combined! And that does not count our powerful NATO allies who collectively have a bigger military budget than Russia. Each of our adversaries has exactly one military ally. Russia has Syria and China has North Korea. We have 36. These are facts, look 'em up. It is a politically motivated delusion that the US is weak.
Listen closely Richard, no one is saying that isn't true. What we are saying is it isn't as big and/or powerful and most importantly motivated as it needs to be.
Funding does not equal capability. We have an aging and expensive-to-maintain air force. While other countries who say they want to participate in this global war on terror, very few chip in like the US. We cannot maintain superiority on several fronts while also playing big brother to the world. We told Russia we would not allow NATO to roll to their border....and yet we did. Putin is crazy like a fox. Obama has bumbled that "relationship". One of our key allies to stop any Russian invasion with a large well-trained and sophisticated military is Germany. But wait....Germany's fast jet fleet has less than 18% of its jets capable of flight. It's helicopter fleet is at 15%. Their tank and APC's is hovering at 33% operational capability. Their Navy has 1/4 ships capable of deployment. They have cut their defense budget to 1.1% of GDP, far below the NATO target of 2%. German people have lost their interest in defense. But I guess our budget will fix that, eh? Meanwhile, Greece has bolstered its navy and air force as it eyes possible confrontation with Turkey over the large natural gas and oil reserves recently found. They have partnered with Israel and Egypt which is shaping up to be a very interesting future military and political alliance to thwart the Islamic state that fancies itself the hub of energy in the region. Let's review China and the Pacific Rim for a moment. The biggest mistake of our strategy is that we explained it before we did it to the world. Yes China, we don't like you or trust you but we want your money and workers. We're going to shift the bulk of our naval, Marine and air power to the Pacific. Even though we were kicked out of Subic Bay and just built a deep water port in Singapore we're going to invest billions again in the Philippines because now, suddenly China is a threat. Moving along it does not take a rocket scientist to realize that Vietnam and China have fought no fewer than 4 border wars and are not friends. Russia loves to sell weapons to both of them...our arms companies want a piece of that action. Lets not worry about the past repeating itself or the fact 50k Americans died there etc etc we need to get in on this because China is a problem. So the rise of China by our own hand is now our number one military concern according to the powers that be and Northrop and every other arms provider. In the meantime the Pivot came at a cost of retracting from the Atlantic. So by policy, not war or crises, the US under Obama has taken the two largest, most powerful nations outside of the USA and made them potential enemies. Woot! Go Barack. America isn't weak....Americans are losing their desire to keep fighting an unnamed war against an unnamed enemy and receiving our people back in flag-draped coffins. The troops are disillusioned. Leadership is apathetic. What exactly, will having the world's biggest budget do to fix those things? Until there are less restrictive ROE's and a clearly stated goal, nothing will change. We have sent thousands of our best and brightest to multiple deployments and they have come back broken and unable to fit in. So Obama's answer is.....let's send women, too. Great job Barack.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...uz-says-barack-obama-has-dramatically-degrad/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/18/republicans-wont-stop-saying-our-military-is-weak/ "I will take umbrage with the notion that our military has been gutted,” Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Paul Selva statedduring a Pentagon press briefing in early February. “I stand here today a person that’s worn this uniform for 35 years. At no time in my career have I been more confident than this instant in saying we have the most powerful military on the face of the planet.” Here you go smarty pants. I don't have to refute all of your bull shit. I have it here from the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Paul Selva, and done so on the record. So, until you can produce something other than your awful opinion I'll stick with the authority of the Vice Chairman.
Yes, I am incapable of understanding the logic of people who think that our military is weak just because you and a few other grunts have agreed that it is weaker. You are not an authority and literally all of the evidence points to the contrary of everything you say about our military being weaker. Everything. Even the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs saying that he "take umbrage" with the notion that our military is weaker. In fact, he says, it is stronger than it's ever been.
