And about the volunteerism part of the military. They are volunteering
so you don't have to be drafted. You still sign up to be drafted when
you turn 18. The government has the ability to start a draft, but they
don't need to because of the amount of volunteers.
I really doubt this. Maybe for a war like Vietnam, everybody back then was scared shitless of Soviet Russia, and communism=soviet russia. Therefor the government treated Vietnam like it was as serious as a war with the soviet union and decided it was serious enough for a draft. Even so, there was still a TON of rallying against Vietnam (And I don't get why people hated against people who wanted the war to end, they were protesting the war so the soldiers wouldn't have to risk their lives, and people acted like they were disrespecting the soldiers)
If the government tried to institute a draft for this war, which practically no one supports, there would be a referendum or something to stop. There's no way it would happen.
So saying that
because they are volunteers, they don't deserve respect is just stupid.
The point isn't that. The point is that instead of being soldiers who were forced out of their homes for the necessity of defending the freedom of America (like WW2 GIs), they're volunteers to go fight for government interests in the Middle East. I can say I know very few people who actually joined the war to "do the right thing" or "defend their country". Most people I've known that signed up couldn't get into college or find a job with today's economy, so they joined the army as a last resort kind of thing.
And the wmds they were searching for was for the protection of the US
and the interests of it. If sadam had wmds and had used them, the people
of the us would be like "what the fuck bush? Why didn't you do
anything" But since he did react
to something that was not known if true at the time he gets shit for it.
We confirmed there were no WMDs like years ago. I'm not saying the war was never necessary, because Saddam could've easily had WMDs. But we should've taken him out for being a threat to our security, looked for the weapons, and then come back home when we found out there were no weapons.
This whole "try to institute democratic principles and have the less advanced nations train their own army" thing never works. We tried Vietnamization in the Vietnam War to have the South Vietnamese protect themselves after we left. Seoul fell to the NVA like a week after we left. It just doesn't work. We try to step into countries and fix their problems, but we always fuck up so badly that we end up trying to liberate and help a country that doesn't even want us there anymore. And with the state of our economy, we should focus less on trying to end a 1,000 year old Muslim feud and trying to fix our own damn problems.
Also
my quote was from a year or 2 after ww2 which almost half the war was
won through the actions of the Marine Corp and the navy so yes, I'd say
the marine corp has a very strong influence on the wellbeing/freedom of
the citizens of the US.
That makes more sense. But you cant say the Marine Corps has a strong influence on the freedom of the US anymore, you can say they did have an influence. Back then the marine corps was necessary, but honestly unless some crazy nation steps right through our brinkmanship policies, there's no way anyone is ever going to assault the US on it's own grounds ever again.
I mean look at Canada, I don't even think they have an army, and they're doing fine, probably better than us.
