How is this war different? (Reason magazine) [Archive]

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Abdul Alhazred

12th September 2003, 10:20 AM

But my guess is that, aside from inconvenience at airports, more
than 99 percent of the people reading this column have not been
concretely affected by any of the new enforcement or prevention
measures introduced since the Sept. 11 massacre. The United
States military is under pretty serious strain, but nobody's talking
about drafting random 18-year-olds. There have been no ration
cards, no war bonds, no great National Program of Sacrifice.

The rest here (http://www.reason.com/links/links091103.shtml)

Reason is a libertarian magazine that has criticized the war effort, but not from the left or the right.

Posting a link to Reason does not imply 100% agreement, but Reason is always worth reading.

Jon_in_london

12th September 2003, 10:56 AM

Well its hardly been a desperate life or death of the nation struggle like WW2 was (at least WW2 was for the UK).

I dont know how much strain the war has put on the US miltary but its been a huge strain on ours. To put it bluntly: The British army was streched to the limit, if things had gone badly there would have been no choice but to either pull out or mobilize the TA and reserves en masse; conscription would have had to be introduced before very long (say 9 months).

Also there is the price we are paying but arent seeing. All of those £billions are desperately needed to get Britain working properly after decades of neglect. Instead, Bliar chose to squander this money on another man's war.

Abdul Alhazred

12th September 2003, 11:44 AM

Originally posted by Jon_in_london
Well its hardly been a desperate life or death of the nation struggle like WW2 was (at least WW2 was for the UK).

I dont know how much strain the war has put on the US miltary but its been a huge strain on ours. To put it bluntly: The British army was streched to the limit, if things had gone badly there would have been no choice but to either pull out or mobilize the TA and reserves en masse; conscription would have had to be introduced before very long (say 9 months).

Also there is the price we are paying but arent seeing. All of those £billions are desperately needed to get Britain working properly after decades of neglect. Instead, Bliar chose to squander this money on another man's war.

It's good to get instant feedback from other countries. That's one of the benefits of the internet.

I didn't know about the strain on the British military. To my way of thinking, the proper purpose of the military is defending the homeland. That may entail crushing various bad guys all over the world, but that is a non-obvious inference.

For the time being, I am satisfied with what the USA is doing militarily, but I won't presume to prescibe to other countries. I appreciate their support, of course.

American

12th September 2003, 01:48 PM

Originally posted by Abdul Alhazred
Reason is a libertarian magazine that has criticized the war effort, but not from the left or the right.

Posting a link to Reason does not imply 100% agreement, but Reason is always worth reading.

Really odd foreigner is not always worth reading, but not following Really odd foreigner's link does not imply 100% disagreement.