Obama/Trump/Biden all share blame in this as well--I don't mean to absolve them of any of their own mistakes, and there were many--but they were given a problem that wasn't of their making and so they don't share responsibility for the original sin, which starts with the Bush admin and the pottery barn rule in my estimation (YMMV).
Obama/Trump/Biden all share blame in this as well--I don't mean to absolve them of any of their own mistakes, and there were many--but they were given a problem that wasn't of their making and so they don't share responsibility for the original sin, which starts with the Bush admin and the pottery barn rule in my estimation (YMMV).
And yes, I've long held the opinion that the end of the draft was going to water down our collective shared experience of war and concentrate it among a small group of peoples. Nixon basically ditched the draft as a way to stomp out the protest movement to buy himself more time in yet another conflict (Vietnam) where we decided that nation-building was in our best interests. Panama and Kuwait were contract force conflicts like the GWoT ones were, but the regime change and nation-building aspects were either not done or kept very limited, and so the conflicts were much shorter and tolerable for the American public's patience meter. Bush senior still lost reelection after deftly handling those two conflicts, which is kind of crazy in retrospect.
Bush Sr lost because the economy dipped in 1992. And if Perot hadn’t run Bush might have won. Here’s the real question—what if Gore beats W and then 9/11 happens?
I know Bush lost over issues not related to ForPol, but it's a little crazy post-GWoT that we ditched a guy who pulled that kind of thing off.
Yea I often wonder the same thing about what a post-9/11 world would have looked like with Gore in place rather than "Bush" (read: Cheney). We'll never know.
Obama/Trump/Biden all share blame in this as well--I don't mean to absolve them of any of their own mistakes, and there were many--but they were given a problem that wasn't of their making and so they don't share responsibility for the original sin, which starts with the Bush admin and the pottery barn rule in my estimation (YMMV).
And yes, I've long held the opinion that the end of the draft was going to water down our collective shared experience of war and concentrate it among a small group of peoples. Nixon basically ditched the draft as a way to stomp out the protest movement to buy himself more time in yet another conflict (Vietnam) where we decided that nation-building was in our best interests. Panama and Kuwait were contract force conflicts like the GWoT ones were, but the regime change and nation-building aspects were either not done or kept very limited, and so the conflicts were much shorter and tolerable for the American public's patience meter. Bush senior still lost reelection after deftly handling those two conflicts, which is kind of crazy in retrospect.
Bush Sr lost because the economy dipped in 1992. And if Perot hadn’t run Bush might have won. Here’s the real question—what if Gore beats W and then 9/11 happens?
I know Bush lost over issues not related to ForPol, but it's a little crazy post-GWoT that we ditched a guy who pulled that kind of thing off.
Yea I often wonder the same thing about what a post-9/11 world would have looked like with Gore in place rather than "Bush" (read: Cheney). We'll never know.