Mac, The Troops are Welfare Whores: Joe the entire thing is a straw man argument.
The basics of a strawman argument:
Person "A" advances statement "X."
Person "B" advances statement "Y," a distorted version of statement "X."
Person "B" concludes that statement "Y," is wrong.
By extension, since "Y," is wrong, then "X" is also wrong.
The original post contains a link to Mark's opinion. You explain that this was a case of a mall cop telling a bunch of civilians that they don't understand the risks that mall cops deal with. This may have happened in another thread or another part of the Internet.
It didn't happen in the quoted statements in your original post.
Mark is "Person A."
You're "Person B."
Mark's statement is "Statement X," and your statement is "Statement Y." The rest follows the above flow for a strawman argument. Based on this formula, and based on your actions, your statement constituted a strawman argument.
Now, the original post resulted in another post. This is a post that hinted that millions of armed civilians are needed... and that the troops wouldn't be needed. That post, the response to that post, and your response to that response, drew me in. I stayed on that specific topic during my reply.
Mac, The Troops are Welfare Whores: I'm not interested in theoretically discussing how well a bunch of totally disorganized civilians would repel an invasion, because it's not relevant to anything I believe.
First, you were interested in arguing that point. I quoted you supporting such an argument. You back peddled from it when I proved that argument wrong.
Second, my arguing something that you don't believe in doesn't constitute a strawman argument. Your reason for something being a "strawman" doesn't fit the above strawman flow.
The topic that I'm arguing against came up courtesy of other posters on this thread. You supported that concept, indirectly, when you brought up the points about the Vietnam War. My argument was against you, and those that shared your opinion.
Your arguments helped shore up the argument advanced by another poster. This poster argued that we didn't need the troops. He insinuated that millions of armed civilians, in the wealthiest country in the world, "could handle" the job just fine.
How these civilians do against a trained enemy military, or organized armed group, is evident throughout history, and even during current events.
For example, there are more armed Iraqis than the stated number of people in ISIL. I know this, as I've combat deployed to Iraq as an infantryman.
That fact, about an armed population, hasn't been effective with most Iraqi civilian effort to repel ISIS. In fact, their tribal militia are arguing that the U.S. Military should do more to intervene to repel ISIS.
There are reports that elements of Iran's standing army is providing help to Iraqi militias.
The same is also true in Afghanistan. There are more armed Afghanis than there are members of the Taliban. What would count as "civilian militia populations" in these countries haven't been effective in repelling the radical Islamic threat.
Having a standing Army on your side makes a world of difference.
Mac, The Troops Are Welfare Whores: The point of mentioning the nukes is that any country that invaded the US would be nuked immediately. You must surely know that.
Here's what I do know.
Department of Defense Policy, and US Government Policy, prohibits "first use" of nuclear weapons. There are exceptions, but these exceptions aren't the norm. The primary effort is conventional force used first.
Meaning, if a conventional military response is enough to repel the threat, no nuclear weapons will be launched.
Even the Chinese and Russians don't have the logistics and power projection capabilities to launch an invasion of any US State. Meaning, the United States, right now, would be able to repel a foreign invasion from these two countries. They'd be able to do it conventionally.
Now, if they immediately use nuclear weapons against us prior to their conventional strike, then we'd immediately use nuclear weapons in response.
Don't make assumptions about what I do or don't know simply because you don't want to admit that you're wrong.
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