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November 10, 2012 at 4:06 pm
One thing not addressed by the bits you’ve pointed to: We don’t go into action against anyone that can actually beat us in the field. Even in the Vietnam War, the enemy could give sizable US forces bloody noses. In Korea, the US military went into action against opponents that could beat it, and did. And in WWII, the US fighting man — on the ground, at sea and in the air, frequently faced enemies they thought they might lose to. And because people would do and we would lose it was -necessary- to replace lousy generals. Now the sheer size, in terms of money spent, and might of the US military and the wars we prosecute/instigate don’t include any situations like that. It didn’t take any special skill to destroy Iraq’s pathetic military and get into Baghdad. Etc. And Ricks has a good point about the other 1 percent and the necessity of a draft. I agree with that.
November 10, 2012 at 4:47 pm
In the interview, Ricks theorizes that one thing which protects the generals is the calibre of the fighting forces on the ground. The generals screw up, but the forces are so skilled screw-ups never quite turn into a modern equivalent of the Charge of the Light Brigade.
November 10, 2012 at 5:20 pm
I’ve noticed, too, that nobody writes any books about the war in the last twelves years that anyone really wants to read. There was Ricks’ FIASCO, about the Iraq war. And soldiers and the usual hanger ons have written a number and they all disappear after a couple weeks. Even the movies flop. No one wants to read about it or see it except the pundits and it’s not hard to figure out why that might be.
November 10, 2012 at 6:10 pm
I have read that that’s not unusual. The general public doesn’t want the war movies and books while the war is going on. They want to forget. And the way our current wars are being fought makes them easy to forget.
Movies about Viet Nam flopped until well after the war was over. John Wayne’s Pork Chop Hill, the only memorable, though absurd, Korean War movie was made in 1959.
I’ve watched a lot of WWII movies. I’m too lazy to do an IMDB search, but most of them were made in the late 40s and early 50s, not during the war.
November 11, 2012 at 11:59 am
Yeah, good point. There is the joke called “The Green Berets” which was commercially successful at the time. But is now the Plan 9 From Outer Space of war movies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_films#1939
This is a startling list, all of them destined for forgetting. I don’t recall seeing any of these on Saturdays except maybe “They Were Expendable.” Casablanca, the only name movie in it. Using that criteria you’d have to also include “To Have and Have Not” in 1944.
November 11, 2012 at 1:49 pm
“Fighting Soldiers from the Sky“: John Wayne at his absolutely jingoistic worst.
I would suggest that you try to view these two WWII movies if you haven’t seen them:
Beach Red, because it’s not going to be what you expect, and
The Enemy Below, because of the strength of the performances by Robert Mitchum, who could really act when he was well-directed, and Curt Jurgens.
They are not just war movies; they are movies about war.
Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, is a nice change of pace, but lighter, until the denouement. It’s sort of like Father Goose without Cary Grant’s light touch.
November 13, 2012 at 12:46 pm
[…] I have no comment on whether Petraeus’s frat-boy conduct should have cost him his job, but the fuss does seem an eerie counterpoint to my post of several days ago. […]