Just how bad were things in the 1970s? Private Ralph Peters remembers:
IN 1976, I joined the U.S. Army as a private. Our military was broken. My first unit, in Germany, had trucks built in the 1940s, inadequate winter clothing, inept medical care and an atmosphere of pessimism. We were not "combat ready."
Crippled by Vietnam, the non-commissioned officer corps had hit bottom — despite a cadre of stalwarts who would not give up. Officers ranged from the shoulder-shruggers to the grimly determined. The barracks were pits. Soldiers made their own survival rules — for example, hashish was OK, but no junkies were allowed on our barracks floor.
Then there were the drunks. Of all ranks. And the overweight and out of shape. As well as good men simply worn out by a long, bitter war.
Had "the balloon gone up," our Infantry would have entered battle in death-trap M113s that were no match for Soviet infantry combat vehicles. Our tanks couldn't rival the firepower of the new Russian models. Our radios were unreliable and the antique encryption devices rarely worked.
Our war games weren't about winning but about losing as slowly as possible. We always had to resort to nukes in the end.
How good did things get in the '80s? Read the whole thing to find out.
How DARE HE burden our future by spending more than we have????
Yeah, what Sandy said!
Besides, you'll notice that we didn't mount preemptive wars or invade countries (very much) during the Carter Administration, now did we?
(Which raises the interesting point, if you look at Congressional debates on things like the C-5 airlifters in the mid-1970s, Congress opposed them, on the grounds that we could then get to our wars.)
And, besides, aren't they saying that it was Carter's human rights policy that really gave us the advantage in the Cold War? What need we for tankers and the like, then?
