American Blitzkrieg

The United States made the transition from an army of citizen soldiers to a standing professional army after Vietnam. The Founding Fathers warned us against this, and we see the harm it can do when our country is in the wrong hands.

An interesting Tomgram (take a lunch) on our military's fascination with the German model.

“Why do people have a fixation with the German military when they haven’t won a war since 1871?” -- Tom Clancy

The story of how Pentagon strategists and the U.S. military went from being the masters of war to a force of would-be long-haul city-builders in the backlands of Afghanistan is a strange one indeed, made stranger yet by the bizarre detour they took through modern German military lore. [...]

In the process, any sense of war as thoroughly unpredictable and enormously wasteful was lost. In this infatuation with German military prowess, which the political scientist John Mearsheimer memorably described as “Wehrmacht penis envy,” (my em) we celebrated our ability to Blitzkrieg our enemies -- which promised rapid, decisive victories that would be largely bloodless (at least for us). In 1991, a decisively quick victory in the Desert Storm campaign of the first Gulf War was the proof, or so it seemed then, that a successful “revolution in military affairs,” or RMA in military parlance, was underway.

Forgotten, however, was this: the German Blitzkrieg of World War II ended with Germany’s “third empire” thoroughly thrashed by opponents who continued to fight even when the odds seemed longest.

What a remarkable, not to say bizarre, turnabout! The army and country the U.S. had soundly beaten in two world wars (with a lot of help from allies, including, of course, those godless communists of the Soviet Union in the second one) had become a beacon for the U.S. military after Vietnam. To use a sports analogy, it was as if a Major League Baseball franchise, in seeking to win the World Series, decided to model itself not on the New York Yankees but rather on the Chicago Cubs.

"Military intelligence" has always been the very definition of "oxymoron". Our civilian 'leadership' hasn't been much better, particularly when the neocon warmongers were in charge. We'll be paying for that the rest of our lives.

Enjoy.