The View From Olympus: What’s an Army For?

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Both the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps are failing to meet their recruiting and end-strength goals. One obvious reason is the hot economy which offers plenty of jobs. A less obvious cause, mentioned to me by a friend in the National Guard, is the effect on recruiting of the endless television ads about “wounded warriors”. These ads bring home to young men the unpleasant reality that joining the military can lead to life-changing injuries. A third cause is the endless, pointless wars we continue to pursue in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Whatever the initial rationale for these conflicts was, most people have since forgotten it, including both the decision-makers in Washington and the young men in the recruiting pool. Who wants to sign up to fight halfway around the world for a cause no one can remember?

That question points to a larger one: in today’s world, what is an army for (here I include the Marine Corps as well)? Some Third World countries may still face a threat from another state and need an army to counter it, e.g., India and Pakistan. But even there, nuclear weapons make such a conflict unlikely, at least on a large scale. European militaries have atrophied to the vanishing point because they have no obvious mission.

In Washington, the neo-libs and neo-cons together have tried to answer the question by using our Army and Marine Corps to force the dubious benefits of “democratic capitalism” down the throats of Iraqis, Syrians, Afghans, and, if they get their way, Iranians. But the attempts have all failed and, in every case, made the local situation worse. In the end, even Robespierre said that missionaries with bayonets are seldom welcome. 

So both here and in Europe, no one in the Establishment has an answer to the question, what’s an army for? No wonder our Army and Marine Corps cannot recruit. If the trumpet sounds uncertain, who will follow?

The question does, however, have an answer. It is one the Establishment refuses even to contemplate because to do so violates the dictates of cultural Marxism, aka political correctness. The real threat facing both the United States and European states is Fourth Generation war on their own soil. In both places, the most numerous carriers of that bacillus are immigrants to have not acculturated or, when we are talking about Moslem immigrants, will not acculturate. 

The threat is greatest in Europe. Islamic immigration has so far been small enough that it is not yet a major security factor in the U.S. Our Hispanic immigrants are already Christians, and most want to acculturate and become normal, middle-class Americans. That is why they came here. They have come in such numbers that they have overwhelmed the acculturating mechanisms, and President Trump is correct that we need to stop illegal immigration and limit the legal variety. We faced a similar situation in the early 20th century, which we solved by doing exactly that. Over time, those immigrants became Americans. 

But the Islamics in Europe have no intention of becoming Englishmen, Frenchmen, or Swedes. They are there to conquer the countries they have invaded and force Islam upon them. It is always to the state’s advantage to define such threats as problems for law enforcement, not the military. But the Islamic’s numbers in some European countries are so great that they already stand on the verge of civil war.

European armies, what is left of them, will discover what they are for: protecting their nation’s historic culture, patrimony, and native people from 4GW enemies. They are already doing that on the streets of France. But what about the U.S. Army and Marine Corps?

Blood is thicker than water. Will the U.S. stand aside if there is a bloody war in the cities of Britain or France or Italy or Sweden? No. At that point cultural Marxism and its “multiculturalism” will stand revealed as the lie and fraud that they are. Our families came from those countries, and we will send American soldiers and Marines to protect those we left behind. When that happens, we will have no problem finding recruits for wars that are worth fighting.