I don’t want us playing world cop.\u00a0 I personally have gone, and while I ate up the mission at first, it soured around the time some of my friends were killed (I identified them and signed for their uh receipt at the big military hospital there), and my second tour was an exercise in finding a job I could do with all my heart.\u00a0 All I did was take care of our people, which I can do all day long.\u00a0 No “host-nation” partnering, no nation-building, no joint security tomfoolery; just take care of our people over there.\u00a0 Happy to do so, because the whole thing was a piece of refuse, and I wanted to take care of people who thought the way I had on my previous deployment, the way others had taken care of me.<\/p>\n
It is right and good to oppose Russia’s thug tactics, but I greatly dislike the Hee-Haw “Hit ‘im again!” playing at war.\u00a0 Only retards are eager to breach the safeguards that keep NATO proper from remaining non-combatant.\u00a0 I support Israel’s fight to survive and to thrive, and I support Taiwan’s bid to remain out of the maw of a failing but viciously dangerous Red Chinese communism.<\/p>\n
Those being said, why can we not fix our own border?\u00a0 The military refuses, and says that’s an internal matter, the CBP and DHS’ problem.\u00a0 I disagree.\u00a0 It is exactly a matter for our Army until they FAIL and the problem sets foot across the border, which should not happen<\/em>.\u00a0 What on Earth is our Army even for, in our “modern” nation-state world, if not first and foremost to defend our own border?\u00a0 Is our Army solely an instrument of overseas foreign policy?\u00a0 If so then A) base it solely overseas, and B) transfer it under the Department of State.\u00a0 Yes, stupid ideas both, but necessary implications of the Army being solely an instrument of foreign policy.<\/p>\n It’s not as though we have the sea or air lift capacity to rapidly deploy a sizeable force.\u00a0 If they only matter overseas, then station them overseas.\u00a0 I’ve been stationed overseas, and it works.\u00a0 So we have this army stationed here which is forbidden to defend “here”, and which cannot get to any “there” without a lumbering (and now failure-prone) exercise of creaking logistics just to get on the ground, much less set up to fight.\u00a0 Is this army now aimed at the population of the United States?<\/p>\n Station our Army on the border.\u00a0 Make the entire southern border one big long Army base and court-martial anybody who allows the perimeter to be breached.\u00a0 Make the entire northern border a looser zone of control but utterly the responsibility of the Army.<\/p>\n And if we’re not going to do that, then I don’t give a flying hoot about its farther-flung “responsibilities,” which will not be met anyway.\u00a0 How well did any of this turn out for Iraq or Afghanistan, or even our interests (Hey!) in the region?\u00a0 Just because a failure takes twenty years and eight trillion dollars<\/em>, that doesn’t somehow make it a sucess.\u00a0 Instant failure, protracted failure, failure on the cheap and at great expense, unforeseen failure or obvious, long-predicted failure; these are our options for military adventures, and at no point is our southern border secured!\u00a0 I’ll be blunt and unpleasant — if our series of administrations will send young men out at risk of life and limb, then at least let it be for the country proper, not for vague buzzword-bingo connections to “deeply held values”.\u00a0 You know what I care about more than the lofty core values of any military service?\u00a0 Not getting slaughtered by MS-13 or blown up by Hamas or crippled by some Rwandan maniac.\u00a0 Same goes for my family.\u00a0 So the rest of the world can kiss my backside until we are prepared to defend our border.<\/p>\n Which is where Venezuela and New World Communism come into.\u00a0 Maduro the commie, like most commies, enjoys support from China.\u00a0 Like it or not, the Cold War is already in our back yard, digging trenches and preparing the inevitable assault on the doghouse and the back porch.\u00a0 Maduro is now, by apparently multiple-source reporting, rounding poeple up and trucking them to concentration (“re-education!”) camps if they are lucky.\u00a0 Now is a time of positive movement in South America.\u00a0 Milei is conducting a masterclass in “Hell no” rejection of a bankrupting nanny-state socialism, and Venezuela has by all accounts except Maduro himself just elected a non-Communist, non-Socialist.\u00a0 This is all somebody else’s business and not ours, except…\u00a0 what if the South Americans are on the cusp of producing conditions on the ground that could not only potentially reduce the flow of invaders to our own border, but even take up some of the flow, and inspire \/ influence their neighbors to do better?\u00a0 A Latin American renaissance!\u00a0 Few things could be better for our southern border than this.<\/p>\n Well, short of a couple thousand miles of sandbags and .50 cals.\u00a0 I am not joking about that.\u00a0 But this is never going to happen no matter how seriously I mean it.\u00a0 I’m driven, not stupid.<\/p>\n So I’m for a limited support of the “good guys” down south.\u00a0 Given my preferences, we would see South and Latin-American countries get behind their own regional leader and intervene, and I would have no problem providing large support.\u00a0 But not one US boot on the ground as part of that specific effort, not one bomb dropped, not one shell or TLAM fired from offshore.\u00a0 This project will never work if the South Americans cannot manage it, and will become a quagmire if we wade in.<\/p>\n So I can support it — from a distance.<\/p>\n I don’t want us playing world cop.\u00a0 I personally have gone, and while I ate up the mission at first, it soured around the time some of my friends were killed (I identified them and signed for their uh receipt at the big military hospital there), and my second tour was an exercise in finding a job I could do with all my heart.\u00a0 All I did was take care of our people, which I can do all day long.\u00a0 No “host-nation” partnering, no nation-building, no joint security tomfoolery; just take care of our people over there.\u00a0 Happy to do so, because the whole thing was a piece of refuse, and I wanted to take care of people who thought the way I had on my previous deployment, … Continue reading