Actually, the Military Has Plenty of Recruits

Just not enough for the Empire

In a previous post, I commented on the U.S. military’s recruiting shortage. A new story from Military.com confirms that, “Army Cuts Force Size amid Unprecedented Battle for Recruits.”

But I got to thinking, which always is dangerous: Actually, the U.S. military has plenty of recruits — to defend America. It just doesn’t have enough to man — or, nowadays, woman — the bloated U.S. Empire. According to a June tally by the Soldiers Project, the Empire boasts 700 bases around the world, “spread across 80 nations.”

As Steppenwolf shouted in “Monster”:

We don't know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole world's got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who's the winner we can't pay the cost
'Cause there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into the noose
And it just sits there watchin'.

Then it was Nam, today it’s Ukraine.

But the recruitment shortfall shows the American people have their own opinion: No more wars. No more Empire. Bring the troops home, and don’t rest until the last galoot’s ashore.

As many have observed — including yours truly, it’s just so obvious — Biden is an American Brezhnev. They even look alike.

Leonid Ilich Brezhnev was the Soviet boss from 1964, when he and others in the Politburo ousted Khrushchev, until Lenny died in 1982, a mental “vegetable,” as one insider put it. Older Soviet denizens of the day would say they lived “Ilich to Ilich,” meaning Vladimir Ilich Lenin to Leonid Ilich Brezhnev.

Leonid Ilich from the start was not a dictator in the manner of Lenin or Stalin, but the head of a collective governance. Much as Biden today loosely, if that, presides over a cabinet of those who really run the regime. It’s not a conspiracy, but what happens when a gaggle of feckless incompents gets great power. In this case, they run the gigantic U.S. economy and its government, especially the military.

I keep marveling at how this group was pro-war in the 1960s and 70s, the ones old enough anyways, and probably know that “Monster” song — yet now they’re pro-war. Yet they were too blinded by their own hubris too see Ukraine is not Russia’s new Vietnam War, but America’s.

The analogy is not exact. We’re not going to lose 58,000 troops in this war (unless it goes nuclear, and millions of people die). The draft isn’t coming back.

But there are parallels. The North Vietnamese communists had prepared for war for decades, and were backed by the Soviet Union and Communist China. The United States, then as now, wielded the most awesome military force the world had ever seen. But it couldn’t use nuclear weapons without insane unforseen circumstances.

And its military culture still was stuck in World War II and the Korean War. As Col. David Hackworth put it, top Gen. William Westmoreland still was fighting the Battle of the Bulge, where he had served with high distinction. But fighting in the forests of Northern Europe wasn’t the same as fighting in the canopy jungles of Southeast Asia.

In the current case, after Russia’s humiliation of the 1990s, much as it had done in its millenium of history, it restored itself with a strongman leader, Putin. Its global empire gone, it concentrated on what Russians call “the near abroad,” meaning neighboring countries. It reformed its economy, including with a 11% income tax — less than what Californians pay just for the state income tax, not even counting the federal levy. It reformed its economy along modern lines. And it started making alliances, in particular with China, its old enemy.

As recently as 1969, Moscow under Brezhnev was planning to nuke China, until President Nixon talked him out of it by threatening to nuke Russia. Part of the reason Nixon could do that is he didn’t resort to the kind of petty name calling Biden has against Putin, whom he often has called a “thug.” Instead, Nixon established a personal relationship with Brezhnev, allowing them to get through difficult times.

Reagan did the same. He did brand the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire,” which stung. But it wasn’t personal; it was strictly business.

Reagan never met with the first three Soviet bosses on his watch — Brezhnev, Androv and Chernenko — because, as he told top aide Pat Buchanan at the time, “Pat, they keep dying on me.”

But when the younger Gorbachev took over, they met at summits, especially in Reykjavik in 1986, established a personal relationship, and closed out the dangerous Cold War period without anybody getting nuked.

If we had a sensible U.S. government, Biden would meet Putin at Reykjavik and work out a deal over Ukraine. Instead, the regime is run by grad-school amateurs who spent their youth acquiring Ph.D’s smoking doobies while playing The Game of Risk.

After a successful summit, with the Ukraine pother over, then America could start pulling our troops home from abroad. The military could be reduced to a decent-sized Navy to protect the sea lanes, the Army to a garrison force and the Air Force to the nuclear deterrent and homeland protection.

It’s going to happen anyway, so we might as well make it orderly, if not under Biden then under a successor. The American Empire is ending. Americans don’t want it. The kids won’t fight for it.

Come home, America!