Mike Huckabee had an article run in Foreign Affairs magazine. The article almost disturbed a hair on Willard M. Romney's helmet, as Huckabee dared voice a criticism of the Chimperor, to wit:
"American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out. The Bush administration's arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad."
Huckabee then goes off the rails somewhat, in his call to expand the size of the armed forces. While it may be desirable to have a larger army, nobody has ever explained how that is going to happen without either (a) reducing standards for recruits to an absurdly low level or (b) reinstating the draft. As it is now, the Army can barely fill its recruitment quotas now, and that is by taking 20% of the recruits who are below either moral or intelligence standards (in other words, the ranks are being filled with criminals and morons) and by offering extremely large bonuses for those who volunteer for cannon-fodder MOSs.
And let's face it: There will be no draft. Once we start drafting the sons and daughters of the middle and upper classes, the opposition to the Chimperor's Wars will grow exponentially and will resemble the last time a president from Texas confused his balls with the national interest got us severely tangled up in an Asian quagmire.
Willard, on the other hand, is hewing to the Bush policies because his polling data says that is what the Kool-Aid Drinkers want. You know that old flip-flopping Willard is never going to say or do anything that will upset his targeted demographic, which is why if the Kool-Aid Drinkers thought that sipping the blood of live puppies was a key to good health, Willard would be out there with a Labrador Retriever, a razor blade and a straw.
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The U.S. Army was at 18 divisions at the peak of the Reagan buildup, and that was with an all-volunteer army. While Reagan didn't have them in combat, it certainly was understood by myself and everybody else who volunteered that Reagan was the kind of guy who would likely send us into combat at any time.
How to fill an 18 division army with volunteers:
1) Destroy the economy. During the Reagan era, the U.S. lost 2,000,000 manufacturing jobs. So all that President Huckleberry needs to do is look for another industry to destroy. I suggest the health insurance industry, there's currently 2,000,000 people whose sole job is to withhold health care from people.
2) Eliminate social services. Ronald Reagan removed college as a choice for most lower-middle-class people by eliminating grant programs for all but the poorest of the poor and instead substituting costly loans that most lower-middle-class people could not see any way of paying off. This meant that instead working class kids went into the military. Now, a lot of colleges are now working around that by raising large endowments to fund need-based scholarships for lower-middle-class kids so that they don't have to take out such large loans, not to mention that the GI Bill limits have not been raised with inflation so are now woefully inadequate to cover anything other than Bob's Truck Driving School. So to finish it off, just require 4 years of military service in order to qualify for any remaining federal financial aid, and voila. Instant recruiting bonanza.
In the end, kids aren't joining the Army because they're afraid to die. 18 year olds think they'll live forever, they think it's the *other* guy who's going to die, not them, that's why 18 year olds are so prone to driving crazy or driving drunk and crashing and burning and killing themselves, because they don't have a sense of their mortality yet. So it's not fear of death that keeps kids out of the Army. Kids aren't joining the Army because they see the Army getting fucked over by the Busheviks and see better opportunities outside the military. So if President Huckleberry wants an 18 division Army, he can do a President Reagan again. Which is not to say that I want President Huckleberry running the country. Just that he wasn't entirely talking out of his ass -- Ronald Reagan did it (i.e. raise an 18 division all-volunteer Army), and Huckleberry could do it too.
Yes, but we are in a war now. At least two of them. One would have to be brain-dead to not know that to join the Army means going to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Yes, some people volunteer. They were even doing so during Vietnam. But even Huckleberry can't sustain things the way they are.
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