Theophilus wrote: It seems to me that there is a further distinction between on the one hand career full time professional soldiers, and non-combatant civialians defending their persons and personal property possibly as an armed mob or gang. The group between these ends are organized citizen soldiers - people who come out of civilian life to serve in their affiliated military, whether national or state as they are needed to either previal in an active war or serve as a potential deterant. The tradition America historically used at least until the Cold War was to maintain a very tiny professional full time career army, and amore able navy, to serve as a cadre to train up the much larger force of citizen soldiers called upon to become soldiers when the nation was at war even if you call them militia such as in 1812-15, the Civil War, WW-1, WW-2 and so on until recent years. Yada appears to favor a "Red Dawn" model of national defense, where the nation has no organized military so is powerless to oppose armed invasions so would non-military armed civilians to resist via small arms eventually convincing invaders to depart, no?
I don’t know Yada’s position, so I will only speak of my own. I think a small full time military has its benefits, particularly as you point out in being able to lead and train a civilian army, as well as maintain and operate equipment. This by the way seems to me to be all the constitution provides for, most certainly not a military that takes up nearly half of our budget. In the end the Red Dawn model is the best thing America has going. Making it virtually impossible to occupy America. That said ideally stopping an occupation is better. Again I would favor a small full time military and I think this, and not a huge economy crushing military that is stretched around the world acting as police, is the best way to defend our country.
This has the added benefit of us not creating and arming our enemies, as has been America’s habit.
Theophilus wrote: Your comments led me to check the details on wiki and learned that the US was paying a tribute to the Muslims of about $1 million per year before the 1st Barbary War and at its conclusion agreed to pay $60,000 to reclaim the Americans then being held. Jefferson thought the difference between tribute and ransom significant. The USN ships like Constituition where then available to do battle with the Royal Navy in 1812-15 and again in the 2nd Barbary War soon after which did end with the US paying no tribute or ransom - so the US Navy and Marines seem worth the investment espeically when you consider that that $1 million tribute = 1/10 of America's federal revenue - and served as a powerful deterent to piracy.
And had that military been raised, secured its goal and then shrunk and retired the argument that it was good would be a slam dunk. That is the way such things should be handled, we raise the military, secure the goal, and then slowly decrease the military until such time as it is needed again. That was how it was done largely in the beginning too. The ships built for the Barbary wars were maintained and kept because that made more sense than scraping them, but new ships were not built until needed.
Theophilus wrote: While I'm truly torn on many contentious aspects of the Civil War, once the Confederates opted to go beyond legal / constituitional arguements by peaceful means and decided instead to wage war on the United States beginning with their bombardment of Fort Sumter the war was on and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclaimation has to be viewed as both a political aim and as Commander-In-Chief as a military tool to depreive the South of their illlegitimate labor force while recruiting many freed slaves to serve in the Union Army completing the liberation of peersw stil held in bondage. Unless I'm grossly misunderstand Yada's comments that Licoln's Emancipation Proclaimation freed no slaves, doesn't square with the histroical record, no?
While I agree that unintended consquences should not be ignored, I think it sound to judge these secondarily and within the context of their primary decision making, espcially when the secondary consequences once recognized can be address subsequently.
I would have disagree with you about the bombardment of Fort Sumter. While the confederates did fire the first shot, the question is where they in the right in doing so.
The events leading up to the bombardment are:
1) Fort Sumter was a Union base located in Confederate territory.
2) The Confederates obviously could not tolerate having another nation’s military outpost in their territory.
3) The Union was sending relief, food and soldiers, to the base.
4) The Confederacy sent two envoys to demand the surrender of the Fort and the evacuation of the soldiers. A reasonable claim the same as the US had made of British soldiers in Forts when it fought the revolutionary war.
5) The Union Major refused to surrender, but unofficially commented that they would be starved out in a few days anyways.
6) The Confederate General was content to let them wait and be starved out, provided the Union agree not to open fire on them, unless they fired first. 'Do not desire needlessly to bombard Fort Sumter. If Major Anderson will state the time at which, as indicated by him, he will evacuate, and agree that in the meantime he will not use his guns against us, unless ours should be employed against Fort Sumter, you are authorized thus to avoid the effusion of blood. If this, or its equivalent, be refused, reduce the fort as your judgment decides to be most practicable.' –General Beauregard
7) Union Major Anderson indicated that he would evacuate the fort on the 15th, provided he did not in the meantime receive contradictory instructions from his Government, or additional supplies, but he declined to agree not to open his guns upon the Confederate troops.
8) The Confederate General found this unacceptable, and gave an hour notice that he would begin bombardment of the Fort.
The Confederates made every attempt to not open fire, but peacefully remove the Union soldiers.
As for rather the EP freed slaves the argument would be that Lincoln had not authority in the South and so no slaves in the South were freed by it, and since it excluded slaves in the region that he did have authority then no slaves were freed by it. It would be as if Obama today declared that all slaves in Africa are freed, he has freed no one because he had not authority there. Lincoln had absolutely no authority over the South and therefor the EP freed no one at the time it was proclaimed. Furthermore even if Lincoln had authority in the south it was still an illegal order as the constitution gave him no authority to issue it.
So while it may have been an effective military strategy, it was still a usurpation of power and an expansion of the federal government to the greatest extent that we had ever seen. And allowed precedent for future expansions leading us to where we are today.
Quote: James, I'm surprised that if you have even a pssing interest in hostory, much less a love of the subject, that you would not take at least a breif time to check into the causes for WW-1 genrally and America's entry specifically. It's easy to at least verify when Lusitania was torpedoed (1915) and when the US decalred war (1917) and ask if this could possibly be the pricinple cause linking the two? That would be the equivilent of FDR waiting until Novmeber 1943 to ask Congrees to declare war on the Japanese Empire due to the dasterdly manner of the sinking of the Arizona, no?
I love history, I love reading about it and learning from, not just American history but world history. That said history spans a vast portion of time with many, many intricacies and details, and my time to spend in it is limited so there are many areas where I am ignorant. I have not had a lot of time to invest in an in depth study of WWI and what lead to our involvement. Everything I know comes from cursory study and I do not feel comfortable enough in my knowledge to debate the intricacies of our involvement or the lead up to it.
Speaking of WWII you say that we can address the outcome of it, and this is true. But the outcome is an extremely mixed bag. Yes we stopped Hitler and the Nazi part from spreading, but this lead to the rise of the USSR, thus us creating our next enemy. We stopped Japan from expanding, but then we have the rise of Mao Zedong. If Japan had taken China would the world have been better than if Mao had not risen to power? We created the nuclear bomb which lead to the cold war. The cold war gave us Vietnam and Korea, as well as Afghanistan and the rise of the Mujahidin and Al Qaeda which brings us to where we are today.
It is very hard for me to say that WWII lead to a better world especially since we don’t know the results if America had not gotten involved. What if America had not been threatening involvement? Pearl Harbor was an attempt to keep America from getting involved. If we had not been threatening involvement we may not have been attacked. What if instead of retaliating America built up our navy and just patrolled our boards and didn’t get involved. We have no way of knowing what would have happened. My guess it would have been a mixed bag of bad and good just like the result of us getting involved.
But really this is all we can do is look at the results of our actions and say X was good and Y was bad, we can debate over rather the good outweigh the bad, but that doesn’t change anything. All we can really hope to do is learn from the mistakes and do better in the future. This is really why the America is always right attitude that is taught today is so harmful, it keeps us from looking at the mistakes and learning from them.