Dramatic shift in Pentagon's thinking

Discussion in 'Politics' started by kmguru, Feb 1, 2010.

  1. kmguru Staff Member

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    Washington (CNN) -- The Pentagon will no longer shape the U.S. military to fight two major conventional wars at once, but rather prepare for numerous conflicts and not all in the same style, according to a draft of a new strategic outlook the Pentagon is announcing on Monday.

    The new mantra for military planners will replace the almost 25-year-old combat planning style of fighting and winning two major conventional wars in two different locations in favor of a fighting force that is capable of protecting U.S. interests around the world from a range of threats, from terrorism to cyber attacks.

    ...............

    According to Pentagon officials, Defense Secretary Robert Gates will be asking for $708 billion, including funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- $44 billion more the 2010 budget of $664 billion.

    http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/01/us.pentagon.review/

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    The way our economy is heading, there may not be any reason "to fight two major conventional wars at once"...and military knows it.
     
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  3. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    Gee i'm sure glad they Cancelled the Space missions. Prepare for war without end...gotta keep that bullshit economy going somehow.
     
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  5. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    You have to admire their predictable nature.

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  7. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    When does the Jihad end? With you and me either subjugated or converted to Islam.
     
  8. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    Please stay on topic. this thread isn't a platform for you and yours to launch your anti islamic bigotry.
     
  9. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Gettin' Jiggy With the Boobirds

    Or when all the Muslims become greedy, hypocritical, pathetic, carcinogenic cynics, and then we can just call wars something else. Um ... police actions, or proxy fights, or something stupid. Oh, I know. "American Civil War: Extreme Challenge".

    I think it would be a lot easier to hate the Muslims like you do if I was stupid enough to believe there were any good guys in the fight. As it is, I have a choice between rabid, hateful, uneducated, brain-dead cultists ... and Muslims.

    • • •​

    As to the topic itself

    I'm trying very hard to not fall into that ugly sort of cynicism that cheers the fact that the Pentagon is ready to dip a toe into reality. The upshot, of course, is that if we do this right, we will actually think about things like sand before our guns jam or trucks break down. The downside is more small wars police actions economic maneuvers.
     
  10. superstring01 Moderator

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    Yeah. Thinking of new and creative ways to fight wars is sorta' the job of the military. Don't know if you've all heard. It happens in all nations, not just the Pentagon. For the past 50 years, the Pentagon usually has done a good job of keeping up with the times (though, not always: Vietnam); but as military's go, it's pretty run of the mill. Just a lot bigger.

    ~String
     
  11. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    Nice avatar

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    Oh, I mean, fracking pentagon!
     
  12. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    The list of military commands that are formally and overtly and physically preparing to simultaneously fight a bunch of small wars all over the planet is a short one.

    The Pentagon has too much money to play with already.

    But they have solved the problem of Russia's collapse, and the vanishing of the necessary scale of enemy. Lots of little enemies need just as big a budget as one big enemy - and are just as easy, maybe easier, to exaggerate.

    In any case, I don't want the people who overlooked the potential problems with digital phones and laptops in their torture prison "softening up" squads, or the potential consequences of running their super secret surveillance drone communications on an open and unencrypted broadcast channel, put in charge of cyber security for the US.
     
  13. kmguru Staff Member

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    Interesting...more money into the rabbit hole....

    http://defensesystems.com/articles/2010/01/27/cover-story-long-cyber-march.aspx?s=ds_010210

    Would not it be cheaper to regulate the software and hardware companies who build homes with no doors, such that guards would not be needed? Or is that the plan by the guard union?
     
  14. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    It is the topic, war without end is more than just a facet of the American military industrial complex, it is also hard wired into Islamic ideology. It's not bigotry if it's true.
     
  15. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Sarcasm and reality

    It's a good line, and worthy sarcasm, but in truth I think it's a bit beside the argument. We should have been on the case in 1995 at the latest, but our focus was elsewhere. We should have had a strategic outline by 2000, but our focus was elsewhere. The dynamics of those errors, of course, are complex. But it still seems strange to a good many people that cost is the mother of our invention. Doing something because it is right, smart, prudent, or otherwise beneficial is not our forte. Making adjustments on the fly because we've cornered ourselves, however, is. Standing at a crossroads, looking forward to our possible futures, some will wonder why we make the change now. Because we must, obviously, is the first answer to mind. But we had some downtime after the Cold War, and did nothing. We didn't adapt when we had the luxury of calculating that adaptation. Now we will adapt because we must, and very possibly in response to erroneous long-term projections.

    As to that last, consider KMGuru's point:

    Depending on how one assigns the context of what the military knows ... well, none of the outlooks I've come up with are very positive.

    Are we in a decline of such proportions that we won't have to defend our spot atop the charts anymore? Perhaps, but at this point such a perspective seems resigned to an unfortunate sense of inevitabiliy. Are we reposturing ourselves to secure our hegemony through a series of smaller elective wars? Even setting aside the ethical concerns I would have about the general principle, it's still not a reassuring thought insofar as the perspective views the new world according to many terms defining the prior era.

    A bellwether might be our presuppositions about the role of petroleum in the future. Perhaps once our "green revolution" is well and truly underway, people's outlooks will change significantly. But if we're still focusing on oil as if it was 1990, we're going to have to tap our own reserves and accept a significant decline in our international influence, or else go forth and conquer with an iron fist in defense of our "freedom".
     

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