Quote:
Originally posted by RACooper
Wow... I'm impressed at your breadth of knowledge about the military and military history. 1) I would say that the US soldier is the best equiped..... 2) I don't know about it being the most effective military ever (if you strip away technology, is the average US soldier as effective as say a Roman legionaire, or a Spartan, or a Zulu warrior?).
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RA,
There are some who would argue that the North Vietnamese Army comprised the finest infantry in the world during the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's. I don't know if that's true, but getting field pieces over mountains and through forrests on the backs of elephants during the Dien Bien Phu siege is pretty impressive.
A big part of our ROTC training was learning to call in "TacAir and Arty," and a lot of people criticize that -- as noted by DeGaulle's comments at an earlier time.
I don't agree. If you have superior technology -- use it to save the lives of your service people. Firepower wins battles.
Do our people measure up to the rest? I'd like to think so, but have no way of proving it. And being nationalistic cetainly does not add anything to the argument.
If nothing else, I do believe that the U.S. Military has the finest technology and training in the history of warfare -- and you cannot divorce that technology from the soldiers/sailors/airpersons and Marines who use it. So, to that extent, I think it can be argued that our military is the best and most efficient in history.
By the way, although it will never be known, I suspect that if the politicians had allowed the professional U.S. military officers to run the Viet Nam "conflict" instead of politicizing it, we would have handed the NVA and VC thier a$$. But that's not the way it was, and it is difficult for historical perspective to take all of that into account.
Finally, I would be most happy if we never have to prove any of the above ever again.
I was balling my eyes out everytime the MC's wife went to tell the bad news to another wife... 
Hybrid Mode
