The United States military is not "the finest fighting force that the world has ever known"

Freedom Fighters for a Fading Empire
What It Means When We Say We Have the World’s Finest Fighting Force
By William J. Astore
William J. Astore, is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and a professor of history.
January 6, 2011

Words matter, as candidate Barack Obama said in the 2008 election campaign. What to make, then, of President Obama's pep talk last month to U.S. troops in Afghanistan in which he lauded them as "the finest fighting force that the world has ever known"? Certainly, he knew that those words would resonate with the troops as well as with the folks back home.

.... this awesome ability to exercise "global reach, global power" hardly makes us the finest military force ever. After all, "finest" shouldn't be measured by sheer strength and reach alone. First and foremost, of course, should come favorable results set against the quality of the opponents bested. To use a sports analogy, we wouldn't call the Pittsburgh Steelers "the finest team in NFL history" simply because they annihilated Penn State in football. Similarly, we can't measure the success of today's U.S. military solely in terms of amazingly quick (if increasingly costly and ultimately dismal) "victories" over the Taliban in 2001 or Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces in 2003.

To carry the football analogy a few yards further, one might ask when our "finest fighting force" had its last Super Bowl win. Certainly, 1918 and 1945 (World Wars I and II) were such wins, even if as part of larger coalitions; 1953 (Korea) was a frustrating stalemate; 1973 (Vietnam) was a demoralizing loss; 1991 (Desert Storm in Iraq) was a distinctly flawed win; and efforts like Grenada or Panama or Serbia were more like scrimmages. Arguably our biggest win, the Cold War, was achieved less through military means than economic power and technological savvy.

So I'm sorry, President Obama. If you wish to address the finest fighting force the world has ever known, you'll need a time machine, not Air Force One. You'll have to doff your leather Air Force-issue flight jacket and don Mongolian armor. And in so doing, you'll have to embrace mental attitudes and a way of life utterly antithetical to democracy and the rights of humanity as we understand them today. For that is the price of building a fighting force second to none -- and one reason why our politicians should stop insisting that we have one.

Read the full article at:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175337/tomgram%3A_william_astore%2C_we%27re_number_one_%28in_self-promotion%29/#more

I like how the article attacks an American icon, but of course the President says our military is the best, and football analogies are pretty lame.

very well lately.

especially when they get out.

the troops and vets have had to fight and beg for every scrap they've been thrown by a "Grateful Nation"

The President is supposed to be his or her country's biggest cheerleader.

Then why are so many people still pissed off about the lying of the previous administration?

Do you see a difference between saying someone's haircut looks great, when it only looks OK, and telling someone their spouse has been having an affair, when the spouse has not been having an affair? One lie helps to build confidence, while the other lie is destructive.

Sure gives me a nice warm, fuzzy feeling about the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan!

Feelin good about war!

Do you really not know these things?

I understand that.

Do you?

They say the troops are awesome, they surprise the troops with unexpected visits, and other moral raising activities.

Oh .... "when we are at war"?

Whom am I at war with?

Maybe we would do better as a nation if we weren't so hung up on sports analogies. The "3 strikes" law for instance, how does a citizen get a "ball"? If you are tried without a conviction 4 times do yo get to take first base?

The author presumes that the goal of wars is still to "win" when in fact wars of occupation are not about winning (unless you plan to annex the occupied country). We occupy countries and we are pretty good at it. War now is not about defeat Hitler or Tojo, it is about access to resources, and MI contractors getting paid.

Who has a standing, battle-trained military that rivals ours right now?

You'd think they could win occasionally or at least come up with a respectable tie. But, instead they just keep advertising themselves as the best and losing.

I blogged about it some time ago:

http://eyeblister.blogspot.com/2007/08/most-stupendiferous-military-that-ever.html

The Duke of Wellington said of his troops in Spain....

"The scum of the earth, enlisted for the drink, and fit only for thievery and fornication."

He then went out and beat Napoleon's army.

General Westmorland said of his troops in Vietnam.....

"These are the finest roops the world has ever seen."

And got his ass handed to him by some third world "agrarian reformers".

If memory serves me right over 7,000 U.S. troops were able to overcome around 1,500 allegedly armed Grenadian troops and a few hundred airport runway construction workers who put up the most resistance to the invasion. The airport workers were heavily armed with several rifles (not sure if they were muskets) and fully loaded pistols.

Over 600 construction worker "enemy combatants" were captured.

And this only took about 48 hours!

Shock and awe!

worthy of textbooks

I wonder how many of them eventually ended up named in malpractice suits in the U.S?

After the 1983 Grenada invasion, the Army awarded more medals than the total number of soldiers who landed on the island.

"The Americans’ tyranny cannot be escaped by any act of reasonable submission. These brigands of the world have exhausted the land by their rapacity, so they now ransack the sea. When their enemy is rich, they lust after wealth; when their enemy is poor, they lust after power. Neither East nor West has satisfied their hunger. They are unique among humanity insofar as they equally covet the rich and the poor. Robbery, butchery, and rapine they call 'Empire.' They create a desert and call it 'Peace.'"

and as long as the suckers keep believing it, we can never back out of the Empire business.

We lost in Vietnam, and in this century we've managed to get bogged down in un-winnable wars with two countries ... one that had no army, and one that had no army or even a fucking country!

We have 130,000 troops (more to come) in Afghanistan - along with another 100,000 "contractors". We're fighting (maybe) 25,000 Taliban. We have control of the air, endless supplies, and the only modern weapons system in the area.

And we're stalemated.

Let's not forget that the military and intelligence apparatus that this country spent Trillions of bucks on failed to protect us from 19 guys with box cutters.