The Tragedy of the American Military

[HuggyU2]

Long read... But well worth it.

"The most curious thing about our four defeats in Fourth Generation WarLebanon, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistanis the utter silence in the American officer corps. Defeat in Vietnam bred a generation of military reformers Today, the landscape is barren. Not a military voice is heard calling for thoughtful, substantive change. Just more money, please."

[B.L]

I think all those dudes willing to speak out about this got fired.

[Herk Driver]

I think all those dudes willing to speak out about this got fired.

H.R. McMaster has done a pretty good job of bucking the system. It nearly cost him but he recently got promoted to LTG. He is probably an anomaly but some ppl willing to buck the system are out there.

I got to hear him speak last year and he is still the same guy that he was when he wrote Dereliction of Duty.

Edited January 1, 2015 by Herk Driver

[MHS]

McMaster is a very down to earth G.O. I flew him a few months ago out of Andrews in our Guard C-12. No aide, no entourage, no welcoming parties on both the way out and back. He carried his own bags and shot the shit with us CWOs just like a regular guy would and actually seemed engaged and not just going through the motions like some other G.O.s. He's as laid back and professional as they come based on my short interaction with him that day. I had Wiki'ed him prior to the flight and was impressed with his bio and history of speaking out...sure wish we had more of them in service!

[hindsight2020]

The cynic in me has to play some devil's advocacy and suggest that, at least in the context of what the author titles "the chickenhawk economy", that the military has accomplished its mission flawlessly. That is: to be a steady conduit to the economic sustainment of civilian CONUS communities as part of the privately-admitted waste production endemic to the military industrial complex. I'm certainly convinced that the geographic etymology of my job is not a matter of operational and strategic relevance; the manner in which the government positions my job in order to capture my household spending is very much part and parcel of this socioeconomic engineering that has nothing to do with national defense. We're all complicit in that waste.

Back to the topic at large, that's a lot of contractor and civilian wage earners making a solid living under the wings of these endless barrels of pork. I know hating on public workers and private defense contractors big and small is the flavor du jour , but according to most of these civilians, this economic waste is more than justified; an outright necessity for a lot of these communities. The alternative would be even more households working competing for service economy/Olive Garden wages. What say you?

Waste production, in war or peace alike, is an economic necessity for this Country. I don't like that catch-22, but I can't think of an alternative that doesn't otherwise involve private industry getting dragged kicked and screaming into a position where they're forced to retrain the Country's labor force, in order to gainfully employ the population in a capacity no longer deemed wasteful or politically twisted.

[pcola]

The cynic in me has to play some devil's advocacy and suggest that, at least in the context of what the author titles "the chickenhawk economy", that the military has accomplished its mission flawlessly. That is: to be a steady conduit to the economic sustainment of civilian CONUS communities as part of the privately-admitted waste production endemic to the military industrial complex. I'm certainly convinced that the geographic etymology of my job is not a matter of operational and strategic relevance; the manner in which the government positions my job in order to capture my household spending is very much part and parcel of this socioeconomic engineering that has nothing to do with national defense. We're all complicit in that waste.

Back to the topic at large, that's a lot of contractor and civilian wage earners making a solid living under the wings of these endless barrels of pork. I know hating on public workers and private defense contractors big and small is the flavor du jour , but according to most of these civilians, this economic waste is more than justified; an outright necessity for a lot of these communities. The alternative would be even more households working competing for service economy/Olive Garden wages. What say you?

Waste production, in war or peace alike, is an economic necessity for this Country. I don't like that catch-22, but I can't think of an alternative that doesn't otherwise involve private industry getting dragged kicked and screaming into a position where they're forced to retrain the Country's labor force, in order to gainfully employ the population in a capacity no longer deemed wasteful or politically twisted.

Not enough brain cells left on this New Years Day to comprehend...

6th grade version?

[hindsight2020]

Not enough brain cells left on this New Years Day to comprehend...

6th grade version?

Ok, so basically you need all these self-licking ice cream cone jobs so that the households every peon envies/aspires to can continue to make $120K/yr where otherwise the communities would collapse and with it all the mickey mouse crap hourly jobs that support the consumption of said 120K/yr households. Furthermore, if we don't like the fact these jobs are wasteful bullshit to begin with, then somebody is gonna have to come up with a way where we can route the population currently dependent on defense spending into other occupations without making it so prohibitively expensive that they might as well give up and join the welfare rolls.

That dynamic is what the author referred to as the "chickenhawk economy" and I devil-advocate that such is a success of the military as it is currently utilized in de facto peacetime. A view that's incredibly cynical by my own admission, but one that ought to be discussed in the context of the author labeling it as a failure, when it can be argued it is a success of the military industrial complex (at the expense of the eventual failure of the Country's future solvency in my view).

Hopefully that's a little simpler to digest.

[Seriously]

Ok, so basically you need all these self-licking ice cream cone jobs so that the households every peon envies/aspires to can continue to make $120K/yr where otherwise the communities would collapse and with it all the mickey mouse crap hourly jobs that support the consumption of said 120K/yr households. Furthermore, if we don't like the fact these jobs are wasteful bullshit to begin with, then somebody is gonna have to come up with a way where we can route the population currently dependent on defense spending into other occupations without making it so prohibitively expensive that they might as well give up and join the welfare rolls.

That dynamic is what the author referred to as the "chickenhawk economy" and I devil-advocate that such is a success of the military as it is currently utilized in de facto peacetime. A view that's incredibly cynical by my own admission, but one that ought to be discussed in the context of the author labeling it as a failure, when it can be argued it is a success of the military industrial complex (at the expense of the eventual failure of the Country's future solvency in my view).

Hopefully that's a little simpler to digest.

I'd call that a fringe benefit, not the mission.

[jice]

Is it really even a benefit? The argument that sustaining the current state of the industry to preserve jobs is a requirement should sound familiar: we did it with the banks and automotive industries in the very recent history, but with the important difference that the addition of government money required significant restructuring. The beautiful thing about the free market is that we (in theory) do not need to redirect efforts in order to replace failures. That's why we have generous bankruptcy policies. To prop up obvious failures is theoretically the least benneficial for those who depend on the industry and only serves to retard progress. Ever wondered why soviet cars never seemed to change much yet still become more expensive and less available? If our defense industry is churning out the weapons equivalent of the moskvitch, we've got a problem.

[sqwatch]

Ok, so basically you need all these self-licking ice cream cone jobs so that the households every peon envies/aspires to can continue to make $120K/yr where otherwise the communities would collapse and with it all the mickey mouse crap hourly jobs that support the consumption of said 120K/yr households. Furthermore, if we don't like the fact these jobs are wasteful bullshit to begin with, then somebody is gonna have to come up with a way where we can route the population currently dependent on defense spending into other occupations without making it so prohibitively expensive that they might as well give up and join the welfare rolls.

That dynamic is what the author referred to as the "chickenhawk economy" and I devil-advocate that such is a success of the military as it is currently utilized in de facto peacetime. A view that's incredibly cynical by my own admission, but one that ought to be discussed in the context of the author labeling it as a failure, when it can be argued it is a success of the military industrial complex (at the expense of the eventual failure of the Country's future solvency in my view).

Hopefully that's a little simpler to digest.

[Prozac]

The cynic in me has to play some devil's advocacy and suggest that, at least in the context of what the author titles "the chickenhawk economy", that the military has accomplished its mission flawlessly. That is: to be a steady conduit to the economic sustainment of civilian CONUS communities as part of the privately-admitted waste production endemic to the military industrial complex. I'm certainly convinced that the geographic etymology of my job is not a matter of operational and strategic relevance; the manner in which the government positions my job in order to capture my household spending is very much part and parcel of this socioeconomic engineering that has nothing to do with national defense. We're all complicit in that waste.

Back to the topic at large, that's a lot of contractor and civilian wage earners making a solid living under the wings of these endless barrels of pork. I know hating on public workers and private defense contractors big and small is the flavor du jour , but according to most of these civilians, this economic waste is more than justified; an outright necessity for a lot of these communities. The alternative would be even more households working competing for service economy/Olive Garden wages. What say you?

Waste production, in war or peace alike, is an economic necessity for this Country. I don't like that catch-22, but I can't think of an alternative that doesn't otherwise involve private industry getting dragged kicked and screaming into a position where they're forced to retrain the Country's labor force, in order to gainfully employ the population in a capacity no longer deemed wasteful or politically twisted.

Despite the use of big words, this is some of the dumbest shit I've ever heard.

[Blue]

Not enough brain cells left on this New Years Day to comprehend...

6th grade version?

Don't want to speak for Hindsight, but here's my take:

Most people think the Pentagon has one overarching mission: Provide for the security of the US on the world stage.

I'd argue, the Pentagon has two missions: 1.) Provide Security 2.) Provide Jobs

In addition to it's mission of providing security for the US of A, the military also has the mission of being one great big 'ol jobs program.

It's arguable which mission the Pentagon has more focus on at any one time. If you look at how the Pentagon spends money (inefficient, wasteful, etc), you'd think they're not getting their money's worth, assuming you think the military's only focus is providing security.

However, once you realize that the military's mission is also to be a jobs program, then it looks like the Pentagon is actually spending money in a pretty smart fashion.

The more wasteful and inefficient you are, the more jobs that are created.

Edited January 2, 2015 by Blue

[hindsight2020]

Despite the use of big words, this is some of the dumbest shit I've ever heard.

Tell that to Congress, they're the ones peddling said shit, I'm just framing it in more concise analogies that politically monolithic simpletons can digest.

Edited January 3, 2015 by hindsight2020

[Napoleon_Tanerite]

Despite the use of big words, this is some of the dumbest shit I've ever heard.

How so? It makes perfect, cynical sense. Think of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth at ANY level if you try to eliminate jobs (unless they're active duty) within the defense system, even if those jobs are underperforming. Try to do any sort of work in your squadron (wiring, hanging TVs, etc). We have in my squadron over the past few months. A few enterprising guys took it upon themselves to do some of the work and CE (contract) found out. They were PISSED. It's not because we did the work poorly, it's because of Muh Contract. If we demonstrate how worthless they are at their jobs, their jobs risk going away. At bigger levels this gets congressional attention. Why do you think we have so many single unit bases at locations that could support two or three full wings? Muh district!

It's a failure of the entire top down gov't system. People pay a shitload of taxes to fund a gov't who then gives them their own money back via the pentagon jobs program. If we didn't have these ridiculous jobs in the first place, taxes could be lower and people would have more money in hand in the first damn place.

[Red Fox]

I think our success in Desert Storm has been a detriment to our strategic planning. I think the success of our PGMs and LO assets have caused us to become too technology dependent and risk averse. Yes technology is great and we are able to execute missions while risking fewer lives, but we haven't fought a large scale conventional war against a determined foe since Vietnam. Yes, PGMs and newer technologies would have been a great help to us then, but if we had had them, the Vietnamese, most likely, would have also.
At some time in the future we may have to fight a determined adversary with equal technology if we want to maintain the current status quo within the globe and will have to accept loss of large numbers of pilots and aircraft to win. Is it possible for us to develop weapons so expensive that our military leaders and civilian authority will be scared to employ them for fear of losing such high value equipment? We lost about half of our F-105s in Vietnam. Imagine losing half of our F-35s/F-22s. I doubt we could afford to recapitalize and then where would we be in maintaining desired global status quo?
Personally, I think we should invest in some LO, but not solely LO. I think we need to invest in cheaper aircraft where we could buy more, perhaps many more. They would be more cost effective in operations similar to Iraq or Afghanistan and we would maintain a larger number of trained and proficient fighter pilots. One day we may have to rely on numbers and not just technology to accomplish a mission and we will have to accept losses. This is akin to the Normandy invasion or Iwo Jima. We would not have achieved success there without overwhelming numbers of young men willing to die. We may have to do the same in an air campaign some day.
So, I believe it is in our national strategic interests to maintain a large fighter fleet,and fighter pilot force, to maintain a skilled defense/aircraft industry labor force, and to keep more than one company in the business of manufacturing fighter aircraft. We can't do it by buying only the F-35, IMHO.
A bit of a ramble. Hope it makes sense.

Regards, RF

Edited January 3, 2015 by Red Fox

[dvlax40]

Red Fox just summarized how insane it is we spend millions of dollars dropping some of the most technologically advanced weaponry on dudes in toyota tacomas. seriously, there is a place for low tech/high numbers flying with cheap planes and cheaper ammunition

[BB Stacker]

H.R. McMaster has done a pretty good job of bucking the system. It nearly cost him but he recently got promoted to LTG. He is probably an anomaly but some ppl willing to buck the system are out there.

I got to hear him speak last year and he is still the same guy that he was when he wrote Dereliction of Duty.

Only reason he got his first star is because Petraeus got ordered by the Secretary of the Army to briefly come back from Iraq and head the BG promotion board that year ('08)...if that hadn't happened McMaster almost certainly would've been passed over a third time and would now be a Mr.

[Clark Griswold]

While I have been the grateful recipient of military spending, made transitioning from AD to the ANG seamless as the orders flowed, I have say that while there is room for some excess military spending to keep the industrial base & force highly capable, we are not a good jobs program.

Military Spending: A Poor Job Creator

By William D. Hartung January 2012

For some towns / areas of the US, an increased military presence as an economic stimulator is acceptable but those are few and far between. The fat we keep around weighs down the organization and detracts resources but that pork is how we get things done in our consensus based democracy. I think our military (mostly our procurement) is a symptom of a problem that we as a nation face, our founding fathers designed our government to need an unusually large amount of consensus to get things done at the large scale, they really meant for state governments and counties to administer the civil needs of the nation as that was the scale of life then. Now fast-forward 200+ years and we live at a totally different scale but fundamentally have the same government system for the big things needing a really large amount of consensus to get the big things done, so in our diverse and sometimes divisive nation, we horse trade with other people's money to get things done, and as we have seen in the military, we get tanks the Army doesn't want and aircraft programs purposely distributed to make them unkillable because everyone has a piece of the action even if it is over budget, underperforming and way behind schedule, reference

Flawed F-35 Fighter Too Big to Kill as Lockheed Hooks 45 States.

This problem translates to the modern military, we have a military designed for a large scale conventional war on multiple fronts but with no incentive to change or reconfigure when circumstances warrant it because the authority is actually so distributed and the laws so Byzantine it is almost impossible to get anything done. And even when the probability of a large scale conventional war is a possibility and increasing as China / Russia strengthen capabilities and probe the resolve of the West, it continues with business as usual.

Edited January 4, 2015 by Clark Griswold

[pawnman]

How so? It makes perfect, cynical sense. Think of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth at ANY level if you try to eliminate jobs (unless they're active duty) within the defense system, even if those jobs are underperforming. Try to do any sort of work in your squadron (wiring, hanging TVs, etc). We have in my squadron over the past few months. A few enterprising guys took it upon themselves to do some of the work and CE (contract) found out. They were PISSED. It's not because we did the work poorly, it's because of Muh Contract. If we demonstrate how worthless they are at their jobs, their jobs risk going away. At bigger levels this gets congressional attention. Why do you think we have so many single unit bases at locations that could support two or three full wings? Muh district!

It's a failure of the entire top down gov't system. People pay a shitload of taxes to fund a gov't who then gives them their own money back via the pentagon jobs program. If we didn't have these ridiculous jobs in the first place, taxes could be lower and people would have more money in hand in the first damn place.

It's also why we're buying tanks that the Army said they don't want.

You only have to look at any major weapons program to see this at work.

[Boilermaker]

Napoleon started to hit upon what so many people seem to miss when talking about the government as a jobs program. The government can never create jobs. At best it will be a zero sum game. They take money out of the economy in the form of taxes, debt, or inflation and then reintroduce it back into the economy as if they somehow know what industries or products are needed more than others. This is not to say politicians are stupid, though this is often the case, but that no single actor can make such decisions as efficiently as all actors acting freely. Supply and demand will naturally result in the most efficient use of our resources. If we have too much of one product or service, the price will fall and people will produce less of it. If we have too little and it is in demand, more will be produced. However, no individual can obtain such knowledge. Therefore, any attempt to remove resources from the market via taxes, debt, or inflation to prop up one sector or company over another will only result in misappropriation of those funds and result in an inefficiency in the market. Whereas, if they were not removed in the first place they would have been use more efficiently to produce products and services of value. This is how jobs are created. Even if the government were somehow capable of doing this with 100% efficiency we would only break even because they would be making the same decisions that would otherwise be made. In reality, however, there are a multitude of layers of fraud, waist, and abuse along the way. Don't get me wrong, I'm not an anarchist, but my point is if the government stayed out of the way and allowed the economy to function freely, a far greater number of jobs would be created. It is easy to count a job created, but it is far harder to quantify the number of jobs that could have been created had the economy been allowed to function freely.

Edited January 6, 2015 by Boilermaker

[pawnman]

Napoleon started to hit upon what so many people seem to miss when talking about the government as a jobs program. The government can never create jobs. At best it will be a zero sum game. They take money out of the economy in the form of taxes, debt, or inflation and then reintroduce it back into the economy as if they somehow know what industries or products are needed more than others. This is not to say politicians are stupid, though this is often the case, but that no single actor can make such decisions as efficiently as all actors acting freely. Supply and demand will naturally result in the most efficient use of our resources. If we have too much of one product or service, the price will fall and people will produce less of it. If we have too little and it is in demand, more will be produced. However, no individual can obtain such knowledge. Therefore, any attempt to remove resources from the market via taxes, debt, or inflation to prop up one sector or company over another will only result in misappropriation of those funds and result in an inefficiency in the market. Whereas, if they were not removed in the first place they would have been use more efficiently to produce products and services of value. This is how jobs are created. Even if the government were somehow capable of doing this with 100% efficiency we would only break even because they would be making the same decisions that would otherwise be made. In reality, however, there are a multitude of layers of fraud, waist, and abuse along the way. Don't get me wrong, I'm not an anarchist, but my point is if the government stayed out of the way and allowed the economy to function freely, a far greater number of jobs would be created. It is easy to count a job created, but it is far harder to quantify the number of jobs that could have been created had the economy been allowed to function freely.

Of course, you are operating under the assumption that the government is paying for the things it is buying with tax dollars. Right now, we're paying with some IOUs.

[Boilermaker]

Of course, you are operating under the assumption that the government is paying for the things it is buying with tax dollars. Right now, we're paying with some IOUs.

Which will be paid with future tax dollars, future debt, or future inflation. That's like buying stuff with your credit card and saying it isn't being paid for with your income, maybe not today, but the credit card bill has to be paid with tomorrow's income.

Edited January 6, 2015 by Boilermaker

[Guest]

The author is undoubtedly educated on the industrial-military complex, and it's political intricacies. Unfortunately, I couldn't discover what he was trying to say. Corruption is bad, lip-service gratitude to servicemembers is bad, poor Officer retention is bad, lack of vocalizing loyal dissent is bad, public apathy and ignorance is bad, budgetary irresponsibility is bad, contractor culture (especially with the F-35) is bad, cronyism is bad, campaign finance law is bad, milquetoast careerists are bad, political Balkanization is bad, etc., etc. Where is your point? He closes with similarly vague recommendations.

It feels like he's trying to kill a mighty whale that's a few hundred feet under water from a helicopter that's a few hundred feet above water using only a shotgun. Guess what? These scattered attacks won't penetrate.

The numerous concepts are too huge to have a individual, focused discussion.