We have no business maintaining a twelve thousand man military on our payroll. We could spend our entire GNP and still not be able to afford what is generally considered a credible defense, which in classical military thinking is one which can repel an attack. Wed be all right if we went to war with Lichtenstein or Andorra, we might even give Luxembourg a run for its money but pretty much anyone else in Europe could wipe out our military capability in a day or two. And we have no national stomach for what it would take to even delay them that long. So basically, what we have is an army that is used to clean up after floods or give a dig out during garbage strikes (something we should have people on welfare doing), guard banks (something the banks should be able to hire private security to do) and get sent to places where we have no business sending them, simply so we can pretend to be important. However, a credible defense in my opinion is the military capability to make people think twice about invading. We have no chance whatsoever of stopping a determined invader - but we have a thousand years experience of making invaders lives miserable and this is where we should concentrate our military planning. Two battalion strength commands, one each East and West of the Shannon and a third in Dublin, all dedicated to post invasion guerrilla warfare. No need for artillery or armour, no need for the huge percentage of our army that is support oriented and no need to maintain troops to be hired out as bank guards or mercenaries in conflicts that are none of our business. The rest of the personnel and equipment, including the bomb disposal squad can be offered to a beefed (read SWAT) up police force. Same with the air corps - an air force that cannot deliver a payload of bombs to a foreign enemy or shoot down a modern fighter jet is merely a flying club and the people are not in the business of subsidising wannabe top guns or the pretraining of commercial pilots. Whats not needed can be offered to the police and coast guard - as can the entire naval service. As a last job, we could decide that any place in this country where an unarmed uniformed female police officer cannot walk in, arrest any amount of people she has a warrant to arrest and march them to the nearest station, simply with the power inherent in her uniform is a place where the peoples law no longer runs - and that such a place has effectively seceded, which is enough reason to send in the army to bring it back into line. You have to think these things through, you see.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 00:02:59 +0000
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