Chile Forum

Then we or is it "they" after me being an expat for a decade are truly f'ed.

RIP USA.

momof3 wrote:.....veterans from this war, They signed up to defend their country and as part of their training, their lives depended on unit cohesion and respect for their leaders. .

Partly true.

I was a shooter in one of those recent wars. I personally don't care for the term "veteran."

Not everyone signs up to "defend their country. "

Some are not even from "their country." (Canadians can get into US combat arms unit assignments very easily, along with Secret-level clearances needed for certain weapons and grades). And I knew U.S. Marines who were Argentines, not even US citizens nor planning to become citizens. Straight-shooters call them what they are: mercenaries.

And some who are from "their country" are really doing it not so much for patriotism as for a job or for something else, such as humanitarian or professional purposes. Even my son, who was with Danish UNPROFOR forces, was there because he made a ton of money in a short time. And later his mother (who is a Danish doctor) was in Afghanistan, certainly not defending anyone's country.

BTW, the lapis lazuli from Afghanistan is every bit as interesting as the stuff that comes from Chile. Don't ask me how I know this.

A quote from one more articulate than I:

"Reality is a harsh mistress. She insists that you pay attention and then, having done so, take care of business"

chernandez wrote:You ladies sure do have your panties in a bunch. Only time will tell if Iraq will be able to get back on its feet. The world is better off without Saddam, but was the cost of 4500 Americans and way over 100000 Iraqis a fair price? Doubtful. As to politicians, do you think that it's better anywhere else? You are truly blind if you think that. For me, I'm happy my brother does not need to go back to Iraq and I'm hoping that it will also be the case for Afghanistan in the near future.

Only time will tell.....? Fair enough, but perhaps you trust that the unintended consequences of the "mission" have been and will be benign. Americans have been insulated from the consequences of their actions for many years- long enough to get us thinking we are exceptional.

The states is the 800lb gorilla in the room. When it goes to war, the ordnance flies. Didn't we drop more tonnage on Iraq than was dropped in all of WW2? (I'd have to check on it to be sure, but I think I remember that to be the case). Yeah, when we go in, we go big. That's why the political threads tend to be US-centric. It's fine for anyone to start a thread on the latest saber-rattling of Rwanda, Colombia or the Mindanao rebels, but good luck sustaining the thing. As to the politicians, in many ways they are better than the rest of the world. But they (and we) are on a downhill slope and will eventually reach the level of the majority of the rest of the world. It's called the 3rd world.

Glad your brother made it. The military no doubt taught him many things about war. He'd be well served to start his self-education, if he hasn't done so already.

patagoniax wrote:

momof3 wrote:.....veterans from this war, They signed up to defend their country and as part of their training, their lives depended on unit cohesion and respect for their leaders. .

Partly true.

I was a shooter in one of those recent wars. I personally don't care for the term "veteran."

Not everyone signs up to "defend their country. "

Some are not even from "their country." (Canadians can get into US combat arms unit assignments very easily, along with Secret-level clearances needed for certain weapons and grades). And I knew U.S. Marines who were Argentines, not even US citizens nor planning to become citizens. Straight-shooters call them what they are: mercenaries.

And some who are from "their country" are really doing it not so much for patriotism as for a job or for something else, such as humanitarian or professional purposes. Even my son, who was with Danish UNPROFOR forces, was there because he made a ton of money in a short time. And later his mother (who is a Danish doctor) was in Afghanistan, certainly not defending anyone's country.

BTW, the lapis lazuli from Afghanistan is every bit as interesting as the stuff that comes from Chile. Don't ask me how I know this.

Mercenaries. Money is a big part of it in the armed forces. Show me the soldier who has read the Constitution which he swears to defend. In 1990, Red trained 30 USMC non-coms at the Mtn Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport CA (my initial attack area) in basic wildland firefighting. Even then about 1/4 of them were foreigners. Their officers told them to attend. They had no real interest in any of it

You guys sound like a bunch of commies. The US is not the great evil that so many, not to name names, portray them to be. They're just incompetent. How do make people, again not to name names, stop complaining about the cost of gas AND justify the billions of dollars in untested millitary equipment? How else?

As to Marines and armed forces in general. I have met my share of that are not US citizens, and one of the reasons most given as to why they joined was to become US citizens!!! They might not give a shit about the patriotic duty, but their goal in the end is the same. They are still putting themselves in harms way even for those few people on here that might not fully appreciate it. And one more point, you don't become a Marine "just for a job". That might be the case for the Army, but not the Marines. Much easier was to accomplish that.

chernandez wrote:... They're just incompetent. .

It is clearly possible to be both evil and incompetent. Just ask any of my (former) construction workers. Or almost any other construction worker in Chile.

chernandez wrote:They might not give a shit about the patriotic duty, but their goal in the end is the same. .

Thus they are, by definition, mercenaries.

BTW, just being in the Marine Corps as a foreigner is no assurance of getting US citizenship, since keeping one's nose clean is also needed, and that has never been a strong suit among enlisted Marines. In fact it is probably one of the best arguments that income equality breeds crime.

I knew a a lot of Marines. A few of the proud even knew who their parents were.

The Argie Marines I knew apparently had no interest in citizenship but instead in making some good money. That, and the opportunity to acquire about one square metre of tattoos. That some of these mercenaries have performed valiantly and bravely is not contradictory, but rather, in the best traditions of mercenaries through the ages.

I have no qualms about my own time as a mercenary. Heck, I also wrote for CBS publications, and how much more mercenary can that be?

There is some interesting related history in the end of the draft in the US near the end of the Vietnam war. A significant block of the US Democratic party was opposed to a volunteer army, insisting that it would take on the character of a mercenary force. The Democrats, in fact, were promoting the indefinite continuation of conscription, that poorly-paid conscripts in short-term unprofessional roles were in the best democratic and Democratic traditions. (Teddy Kennedy was nearly drafted in peacetime after being thrown out of university for cheating in a Spanish course and subsequently losing his student deferment. He somewhat ironically went on to lead the congressional movement to oppose the end of the draft). This is the same Democratic party that had, through presidents Kennedy and Johnson, initiated and massively escalated the Vietnam war. And both evilly and incompetently, I might add.

Very little to do with Chile, except perhaps a reminder of the evil and incompetent nature of Chilean construction workers, which hardly needs reinforcing.


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Red wrote: Didn't we drop more tonnage on Iraq than was dropped in all of WW2? (I'd have to check on it to be sure, but I think I remember that to be the case).

This silliness gets thrown around all the time and it's almost always false. People forget that a significant amount of the ordnance (you get credit for spelling that correctly) in the last 25 or so years has not been dumb gravity bombs (about 1,613,000 tonnes just from the US and just in the European theatre of operations during WWII) but instead the precision guided munitions, which achieve the same military effect with generally less collateral damage. It's been famously said that three PGMs do the work of 1000 gravity bombs.

And where dumb/gravity bombs have been used, the precision available with current methods allows much greater economy in terms of tonnage. The Desert Storm aerial ordnance was also in its day said by the clueless American press to exceed WWII tonnage, but that amount turned out to be only about 88,000 tonnes, according to Gen McPeak. And the Iraq conflict involved even greater percentages of precision guided aerial munitions. The Vietnam war, on the other hand, was said to have involved about 7 million tonnes of aerial ordnance, with most of it being dumb gravity bombs and other unguided non-precision ordnance. You can thank President Johnson, a Democrat whose civilians took part in specifying the bombing targets, for most of that.

USAToday, hardly a real source, did cite a report that between 2001 and 2009, there were 18,858 tonnes of air ordnance used in Iraq.

BTW, the Spanish are generally credited with pioneering the business of aerial bombing of civilian cities with little military import (Madrid, 1936). It was brought to a matter of high art by the British during WWII, with perhaps some moral justification.

Since Red was a trainer at MWTC, he may know that the Chilean Army spec ops people have done cold-weather training there. If you have access to the SIPR you can read about it. Might even be on wikileaks by now, or headed there. Why the observations on the CL military spec ops cold-weather training is classified as Secret, I have not a clue.

Nothing to do with Chile, of course.

Um, point taken Red. I'll sit down and reflect for a while.