Senator Tuberville (R-AL), who has placed a blanket hold on all military promotions, continues to defend this activity in order to force the DoD to conform to his wishes when it comes to abortion. It’s worth taking a look at his ill-thought out defense of his crippling of America’s defense that he issued over the weekend, according to AL.com:
“I don’t care if we promote anybody to be honest. We got 44 four-star generals right now. We only had seven during WWII, so I think we’re a little overloaded to begin with,” Tuberville said.
In these three sentences there are a wealth of errors.
- The most general issue is the deceptive, and under-discussed, plea to common-sense. In this case, WWII was a monster of a landmark in military history, therefore there’s an unspoken assumption that, since we won, we must have done nearly everything right. So you point at how things were done then. But wars don’t work that way. Often, it’s the side that made the fewest errors that wins.
- Working off that theme, perhaps seven 4-star general was far too few during WW II.
- How do our military responsibilities compare to those before & during WWII? Yeah, most of the populace were Isolationists in the 1930s, right up until Dec 7th, 1941, when the Japanese kicked us in the teeth. Nowadays, we cover the Western Hemisphere and parts of the Eastern Hemisphere, Pole to Pole. Of course we have more generals.
- On the same theme, our military was greatly diminished by demobbing from WWI and from the Great Depression.
- Nor was the military expected to engage in nation-building, an experimental & difficult field in which we’ve mostly failed.
- Nor did the military have access to the advanced capabilities of today, which require equally advanced logistics. A general officer just to cover logistics is almost certainly not enough.
- Are general officers defined now as the same as WWII?
- Has the hierarchy structure which they’ve surmounted the same as WWII?
There’s little point in continuing, of course. The point is that the situation is far more complex today than it was in 1941, and I think the point is indisputable; Tuberville’s casual references to a war he doesn’t understand and a military he’s never served in, and probably never studied, are deceitful.
In normal times, there’d be a national expectation that Alabama would be beginning to have a discussion as to whether Tuberville is truly an adequate Senator, or if he’s just a clown who has failed to take his responsibilities seriously. As an independent voter, I can only say that he appears to be a grand-standing former coach and dubious financial advisor, who ascended to this role via the back-slapping, I’m a football coach ain’t I great approach – not by being an outstanding individual with relevant chops.
But these aren’t normal times.
