The country did, it just so happened that the common enemy was whatever was obstructing Democrat power. The same thing also obstructed Islamic Jihad power and support, so natural alliances were born.

“I’m sorry” seems to be the most common response I hear when people find out I’m deploying.

I’m sorry for the terrorists. Mayhem tends to follow in the footsteps of the SF. They are not as constrained by regular ways of doing things as the regular Army or even the Marines are. There is something to be said for such flexibility in this kind of war.

To those fighting the real enemies it’s all too real and the fact that most of the United States population appears blind to them is disheartening.

The morale is to physical as is 3 is to 1. Or in our modern times, as 10 is to 1. Enemy morale raises or at least stays the same, and there’s plenty of buffer space if it does fall. Our morale lies on a knife edge. On one side is the void and the other lies something just as scary.

Even if the American people saw what was out there, JB, it would take the use of Presidential power and the focus of the office itself, to turn the raw material and energy into anything useful. I tend to think one of the President’s duty in time of war is to maintain American morale from foreign and domestic insurgencies designed to target American morale. Which in turn, targets the morale of the armed forces of America.

In every war we would expect the enemy to hit at our logistics, centers of gravity, vulnerabilities, and morale. Without the powers invested in the President by the Constitution specifically to counter such influences, Americans that focus on America’s mortal enemies are only allowed to conduct an attritional guerrilla warfare. And that takes time, time people don’t tend to have in war.

I find little use in the blame game, same as you. It just seems to me that the American system is structured in a hierarchical manner that useful and effective action doesn’t work unless it comes from the top down. America is not a nation that can function on Ayrab tribal customs and laws, where people and soldiers simply do whatever they want and then ask for forgiveness later. We don’t live in such times, not here at least.

Rome’s experience in the 2nd Punic War is a nice scenario to go back to, in my view, since it showed Rome losing much and gaining strength and unity from such loss. America perhaps suffers from too much victory disease, JB. What is true for an army would also be true for civilians.