[Vision2020] Standing Army Not Needed

[Tom Hansen]

>From the December 19, 2005 edition of the Army Times (www.armytimes.com) -

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Standing Army not needed

The biggest mission creep the Regular Army faces is its continued existence.


Now that the Cold War is over, we have no more possessions to guard in China
and the Philippines, and the Indians, Mexicans, British and Spanish no
longer require what little constabulary forces we needed in the first 150
years of our existence as a nation.

The default peacetime defense establishment the founders originally intended
is the National Guard, whose existence is guaranteed by the Second
Amendment, plus a federal navy.

The only justification for a large standing army is to deal with foreign
threats that are overseas or directly on our borders and pose an immediate,
present and sustained threat to the continental United States.

The threats posed by weapons of mass destruction delivered through the air
do not require modular brigades or expeditionary forces, and WMDs delivered
by stealth are the responsibility of the police powers of the states and the
nation.

The biggest successes against terrorist networks have been through
cooperation among our CIA and FBI and their counterparts in foreign
countries. 

The standing force we need to keep foreign threats from developing overseas
is today more a function of nation-building than nation-busting. Even
nation-busting requires nation-building.

This is what the Army has been doing for the past 20 years, and missions
like hurricane relief are the best form of experience.

The appearance of U.S. ships, aircraft and troops in Indonesia during the
tsunami recovery totally reversed the attitudes of the Indonesian people
toward us.

The American people will not continue to support sustained rotational
expeditionary warfare with either their taxes or blood.

It may be time to restore the original peacetime establishment the founders
intended, particularly since the Guard costs one-third to one-sixth as much
to maintain the same capabilities.

Lt. Col. Gordon S. Fowkes (ret.)
Sugar Land, Texas

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Take care, Moscow, Idaho

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho


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Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching.

- Author Unknown
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