militaryhistory

It is no secret that the U.S. Military is currently stretched very thin. The current doctrine of the of the military is based upon a peace time / civilian occupation model, in which military personnel are paid better than fair wages, given good benefits and can expect to be taken care of after their sevice is completed.  Though in stark contrast with a civilian occupation or the peace time military, soldiers, marines and other members of the armed service are placed in harms way,  and expected to serve in an extremely stressful and hazardous situation . A military unit can be rotated into combat theater approximately every three years, and expected to spend a minimum of at least a year in country before being rotated back stateside. Some units (and individual soldiers) have been activated as many as three times for tours of duty in theater, compared to their predecessors who served during the Viet Nam era, who were expected to be in countryfor one tour, and additional tours of combat duty were completed on a volunteer basis. Aggravating this problem is the practice of activating state level national guard troops, who can be required to serve similar tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan.

In three days from todays date, voters will be going to the polls to elect a new President. It is a very real possibility that both the Whitehouse and Congress will be controlled the Democratic party. A small streamlined government and small military has been a pillar of democratic doctrine for generations, and will continue to be so.

Information from recent polls, tell us that voters sites may very well be set on electing Barrack Obama as the next President of the United States. The war(s) in Iraq and Afghanistan have fallen out of favor with the American public, and history dictates that war cannot be executed, and enemies defeated without the consent of the people. The federal government has set clear presedence where control of the military and its leaders are concerned. An example of this is the removal of General Douglas McArthur by Truman, after McArthur conducted unauthorized operations in the Korean conflict.

However the rank and file in the military is stressed to the limit. Much like General George McClellan during the American Civil War, who had a habit of continuously calling for troops, when no more were available.  Field commanders in theater are calling for additional troops to complete the job that was started in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But unlike McClellans situation, who literally had hundreds of thousands of troops at his disposal. Current commanders in theater have  hundreds of thousands less available to complete the job. The difference here lies in two places; One is in national identity and sense of duty/ attitude of Americans, the other lies in the fact that the government has failed to utilize selective service by activating the draft.

So in three days we go to the polls to determine the future. Depending upon the choice of the voters and the electoral college, the destiny of millions of citiizens and thousands of soldiers will hang in the balance. The war is costing billions, the economy is in shambles as duing the last twenty years, jobs have been shipped wholesale overseas by the unchecked corporate giants, who in fact have become another level of government by strong-arming politicians, skirting regulation and engaing in the biggest show of corruption ever seen in American history.

How will you vote?