Hi OJ -- I agree. I'm curious about your hunch as to why that is.

re-embrace instead a tradition of reluctant but resolute citizen-soldiers.

Does this mean he's going to get the Left to repudiate the 'dregs of society' and 'victims of the Pentagon' rhetoric?

Admitting that we have citizen-soldiers, not slaves in military uniforms or a warlord's private army, would be a step in the right direction and not incompatible with being the world's best.

'When did American troops become "warfighters"'

Dude, it's a brand name, not a description.

"Warfighters" is Pentagonese for combat troops. If you're looking for a DoD contract, you don't talk about how your product is useful to mere troops, but to "warfighters." Even if it's an inventory control system.

That's like asking 'When did cola become "the pause that refrershes".'

"The reality, meanwhile, is that America has fielded the world's best fighting force--regardless of whether professional or drafted--since at least the Civil War."

The Prussian\German military machine was easily the world's best up until WW2, closely followed by the Red Army. The US's firepower and industrial base give it the huge advantage it needs to overcome historically middling performance by officers and generals.

That's the myth.

QY:

Because a core assumption of the Right and Left is that a nation has to be rationally led by intellectuals of their own ilk for maximum effectiveness.

Man for man or pound for pound, the Germans were tops in WWII, but the Red Army was never that good. With a few exceptions (T-34, Il-2), they were all about quantity and ruthlessness.

WWII Pound for Pound goes to the ANZACS obviously.

OJ's right. The old "lions led by jackasses" or whatever is the old canard used by non-democracies/authoritarians to disparage the democracies.

Similarly, there isn't any real difference between the quality of officer produced under a "merit" system and one based on the purchase of commissions...

Quantity has a quality all of its own. The WW2 Reds are under-rated tactically. Their combined-arms operations during the last two years of the war were on a par with anything the Wehrmacht could do. Oj's dream of Patton sweeping through Russia is about as realistic as Obama winning Utah.

The WW2 Reds were actually pretty good tactically. Their combined arms operations during the last two years of the war were on a par with anything the Wehrmacht could pull off. Stalin's policy of shooting under-performing generals was quite the motivator.

Once we get through the Kasserine Pass, then we field the best.

Of course, the bulk of the US Army did not actually see combat in WWII until after Normandy.

It's a demigod politician we need to fear.

Don't forget the Russian winters. The little old Finns did a number on the Russians on their own winter turf. And remember, in WW2 the Soviets only fought on one front and largely on their own territory.

The burp gun was another innovative Soviet weapon that changed the infantryman's war.

Try reading Life and Fate by Grossman and you can get a picture of the motivations their capabilities were based on. They're called an underlying level of fear.

Most of the Soviet soldiers who surrendered during the war were executed as traitors after they were repatriated. Siberia had no Gitmo.

It's true, having the "worlds best" military can be unsettling, especially to those contemplating facing it."Reluctant but resolute" my @$$; What war did he ever train for or fight in?

Former "reluctant but resolute" citizen USMCR.

Carnage and Culture by Victor Davis Hanson is a good book on how democracies generally field more lethal and destructive militaries using famous battles to illustrate his points. It's not about the US specifically except for 2 battles: Midway and Tet.

Once we get through the Kasserine Pass, then we field the best.

Rommell said something to the effect that he had never seen such a steep learning curve as he saw displayed by the U.S. Army in North Africa; it started at pathetic and ended by driving his army off the continent (with plenty of British aide & support, of course).

Given how many Russians they had to murder to make the rest fight Nazis, imagine how little control they'd have had over the army when liberation instead of extermination was coming? Especially once Moscow was green glass.

That, Twn, was what I was driving at. War is a profession, it is a skill. It does take time and disaster to weed things out. Fortunately, the US is the type of nation that learns fast.

And with its logistics tail on the other side of an ocean.

Reluctant but resolute?

That is not historically supportable in its entirety. Americans have rarely been reluctant for a fight.

I love the whole alternate history of America as a stand apart non-violent we don't stick our noses in where they don't belong country...

Getting back to the linked article, we may observe that there is a great difference between what a nation of citizen-soldiers does when it rises up and crushes a substantial enemy in a world war and what the thin green line does in the savage wars of peace, out east of Suez.

To be sure, the militia can be called on to to rally against King George's jack-booted thugs, but it takes our own jack-booted thugs to shape the world lest it come to a last. desparate homeland stand. If we learned anything in Vietnam, we learned that. The citizen soldier is not for wars of policy.

Astore's credentials make it plain that he well understands these things, so it is retreat and surrender that he counsels.