Our military is so absurdly powerful that we might as well be aliens as far the people we're fighting are concerned. Remember that video that was online a few years ago from an AC-130 gunship, where the crew is talking to each other about taking out individual cars, buildings, etc., while being careful to avoid a mosque, as tiny little figures ran around helplessly before being picked off one by one? Who would be so stupid as to sign up on the other side?

b:

And it's only getting worse. In twenty years our opponents will still be using RPGs and AK47s, but the Predator will look positively quaint.

All well and good, but let us not forget that we must retain real counter-value deterrence capabilty in the form of SSBN's or equivalent delivery systems, to insure that we ourselves are not deterred from employing our PGM supremacy by the threat of nuclear attack. The other side must believethat's what credibility refers to--that the use of a nuclear weapon against the United States will result in massive retaliation.

The new Chinese sub-launched nuke is not something to be ignored.

Nor is the Chinese intent to soon have the capability to sink a CVN.

china is a sacrificial lamb; what we are going to do to them shouldn't happen to a dog. on the plus side it will get the world population back under 6 billion.

To answer the host's question: Embassy guards.

We have Marines because we like having Marines. Whether we'll bother to have an Army in the future is a different question.

David. Yes, the Marines will continue to be wonderful embassy guards after OJ's 100% Predator military is fully realized.

Hey, debating "OJ style" is kind of fun ...

Who was it who said, after seeing the pictures of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, "This insures that there will be a Marine Corps for the next thousand years."
I'd like to see someone try to get the Republican nomination on a "dissolve the Corps" platform.

The lesson of the GWoT is that you cannot replace men with machines. Think about where we would be if we didn't have the manpower. Machines cannot go door to door and search under beds and in hidey holes. Machines cannot gather humint. Machines cannot hand out toys to kids or learn to work with tribal cheifs. Insurgencies are combined military and political operations, that is why we have Marines.

The toys are neat, but they are just tools. Men must use the tools to shape the operations.

Forrestal, then the secretary of the Navy.

What Robert said.

I am old enough to remember Vietnam, and somehow I am not persuaded that all the corpses of insurgents that are being counted were really insurgents.

If we cannot identify them reliably when they are still alive, how do we know what they were after they were dead.

Our ability to kill is not in doubt. Our ability to discriminate is.

To the extent that there's a serious point in here somewhere, it would be that the Army is becoming more and more like the Marines, a process that is being driven both by doctrine and budgets.

Harry:

Not discriminating wins wars quicker.

You don't know the difference between a campaign and a war.

Interesting thing for you to say. Which was Viet Nam?

Harry:

It's pretending there's a difference that leads to losing them.

Vietnam?

Both. We lost every campaign, but the key defeat was the declaration, just before Tet, that the insurgency was over and that it was safe for the fencesitters to come out for the Saigon regime.

The war was lost then, even if we had won a campaign or two.

To the contrary, we won every campaign, but because we left the North intact lost the war. An excellent illustration of the point though. Folks who think they're separable lose.

Funny you should think that way. I can remember walking around under the Brandenburg Gate in August of 1990, watching the (former) East Germans selling off their gear (and litle pieces of the Wall in ziploc bags.) Based on that experience I'd call Viet Nam a lost campaign in a war we won, though admittedly not by much.

Vietnam doesn't have elections.