Why Are We Decimating The US Army ???

The US Army plans to cut 40,000 troops over the next two years, and some think this is a bad idea:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/07/07/army-plans-to-cut-40000-troops/29826423/

There are a lot of factors which led to this decision, but some of them are spelled out in my novella No More Patriots:

And not only had the Global War on Terror failed to achieve its stated goals, it had become extremely expensive. The estimated cost to date had risen to $5 trillion, and since there was no end in sight it was impossible to know what the final price tag might be. If the war could not be ended, its cost had to be significantly contained.

One thing that was obvious from today’s speeches is that the citizen-soldiers who had fought our previous wars were being replaced with mercenaries. The percentage of contract personnel in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars had been significantly higher than in World War Two. That percentage would continue to grow in an effort to contain costs.

Although we buried our war dead with honors, we also buried our living and dying veterans in a Department of Veterans Affairs which at times seemed to treat them in a dishonorable manner. The VA response to Agent Orange and Gulf War Syndrome had been too little and too late. The response to the flood of traumatized veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in many cases had been to just hand them a few pills and send them home. More of our troops had died from suicide than had died on the battlefield. There always seemed to be plenty of money for more wars, but little left over to care for the wounded. Shifting the burden of “boots on the ground” to mercenary armies whose CEOs and bankers would have to bear the cost of the wounded would help relieve the pressure on the VA, even if it was a cynical way to do so.

And instead of boots on the ground, our future wars would be fought using weapons and methods which would keep our forces as removed from harm’s way as possible, such as unmanned aircraft, drones, other long-range weapons, and snipers. Some day we would even use autonomous killer robots. Such changes required that our sense of “righteous warrior” had to be shifted from the GI Joe foot soldier to the mercenary, the drone operator, the sniper, and the robot. The movie “American Sniper” had done much to help in this regard, but so far it had proven difficult to glorify mercenaries and drone operators.

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Yes, Uncle Sam is trying to cut costs. But don't for a second think this will lead to a more peaceful world. The killing will go on, with or without GI Joe.

And to those of you who believe that "boots on the ground" are necessary to win a war, I would say this: Wars are now unwinnable, unfightable, and even unthinkable. These are no longer "wars"; they are the intentional and complete destruction of nation states. The powers that be don't want to "win", they want to destroy. Yes, groups like ISIS/ISIL will pop up from the rubble, but that just helps the process of destruction.

Please compare the "leadership" of ISIS/ISIL to the people who meet at Davos, Switzerland to decide how to carve up the world amongst themselves. Are the two groups really all that different in terms of what they are trying to achieve?

By the way, the US government will consider those 40,000 ex-Army personnel to be a greater threat to the US than are ISIS/ISIL and al-Qaeda. Go figure.