The Obama Administration has found a way to reduce our willingness to fight foolish wars in the Middle East: By lifting the ban on women in combat the Obama Administration will invoke instinctual desires to protect women. This will reduce popular support for foolish war ideas put forth by the neocons. What's not to like?
File this under: stupid liberal ideas that accidentally deliver big benefits.
| Share | | By Randall Parker at 2013 January 23 09:58 PM |
This country's leadership, kookier by the second. Here's a good essay currently going around:
THE NEW POWER CLASS WHO WILL PROFIT FROM OBAMA’S SECOND TERM
http://www.newgeography.com/content/003409-the-new-power-class-who-will-profit-from-obama-s-second-term
A line from the piece: Such experts, of course, see little need for give and take with their intellectual inferiors, in Congress or elsewhere.
That's one of the main problems of drone-wars: They result in less body-bags being sent back home. This again, drastically reduces popular opposition to pointless wars. Monetary costs are just numbers, numbers in the billions have no meaning to people. Dead sons in plastic bags, have meaning to people.
Thus there's a real risk that higher use of drones, will result in even more costly and pointless wars.
I doubt it will make a difference at all in our foreign interventions. All I see it doing is reducing military capability. The thing that will reduce foolish wars is the ability to pay for them.
You're probably right.
Putting the booty on the front lines is like keeping the money outside the vault.
>>File this under: stupid liberal ideas that accidentally deliver big benefits.
Agreed.
D.H.
Lucky for us we have far more military capability than we need. So the reduction in military capability won't hurt us any. The military as tool for female self actualization. Well, beats using military as a tool for neocon strategy games or liberal democracy spreading fantasies.
Gunnar,
Yes, the automation makes wars easier to do. No doubt about it. On the bright side, the drones are pretty cheap, way cheaper than the ridiculously expensive fighter jets the military is buying. So I'm thinking cheap and pointless wars. That seems like an improvement.
JT,
America no longer feels like my country. I feel like I'm an expat from a different country that no longer exists. It makes me understand the outsider much better.
I think Sasha and Malia need to set an example and be the first ones to sign up.
I sincerely doubt that putting women in combat roles will reduce our willingness to fight foolish wars.
The idea bubbled from the liberal mind and, liberal men being notoriously gutless, will have no qualms letting their women do their fighting for them.
On the plus side, we might be able to ideologically shame feminists to serve (and die) on the front lines. Plus side -> less feminists.
Randall,
Where we disagree is females on the front lines being enough of a deterrent to stop the "neocon strategy games or liberal democracy spreading fantasies". We won't see the body bags if the MSM doesn't show them. I think "female self actualization" is more important to the MSM than any resulting deaths and injuries. If anything, the deaths and injuries will be selectively reported and turned into news stories illustrating how it was such a great idea to put women on the front because women are finally equal to men.
"I think Sasha and Malia need to set an example and be the first ones to sign up."
Good luck with that. Bill Clinton made a similar move in this direction in his first term, allowing women to be fighter pilots. Chelsea didn't sign up. The Gore girls didn't sign up. The Bush girls didn't sign up. The children of our Almighty Neofeudalist Overlords don't go to war. That's for the proles.