The real problem with the Military-Industrial Complex is that we have one. Having a large, standing Army is a mistake. If you read military history of the United States, the universal refrain is how deplorable it was that we relied on a small Army and large Militia. You’ll read of the many military disasters created when poorly trained Militia was sent into battle – and there were some pretty major catastrophes. But, using the small Army/large Militia model did win us every single war to World War II. Since World War Two? Well, we’ve had a large, standing military force and the Militia doesn’t even exist any more…and we’ve lost every war.

There are a host of reasons for the defeats, of course: but what benefit have we accrued by maintaining at very high expense this large Army organism?

Naturally, I’m bringing this up because of Trump’s feud with the brass. The Democrats, now leaving off calling them War Criminals, is rising to the defense of the brass, thinking that this will some how get us rank-and-file veterans to abandon Trump. This, more than anything, proves that Democrats are very unfamiliar with military service.

We have nuclear weapons so it is highly unlikely that anyone would dare nuke us. We have a massively armed population, so foreign invasion is simply impractical (it would take many millions just for the occupation forces). We don’t need this monstrosity where officers are placed on a path to promotion (and a juicy Defense Contractor career post-service) by their ability to please their political masters. A smaller and genuinely professional military force – where the officers are dedicated to the service, not their careers – seems to me to be the better way to go. A revived Militia would provide the means of rapidly expanding the Army in case of a major war…as well as providing a leaven of trained people in the civilian population who can act against enemies, foreign and domestic, at need.

Think of it: a voluntary, civilian militia (which can be used for a host of functions) would probably be some millions strong. It would mostly arm itself (though some weapons would be provided by the government; mostly crew-served weapons). Sure, it wouldn’t be nearly as good as a professional military force: but say there were five million Militia members organized into five thousand regiments scattered here and there around the country? No one is going to mess with that; not foreign enemies, not domestic enemies. Invasion and revolution would both be permanently impossible (unless the Militia was the revolutionary force…but that means that the people are conducting a revolution for themselves). And we wouldn’t have this large, bloated military force which tempts politicians into foreign adventure while also being institutionally incapable of winning a war because the price of victory is too high for politicians to contemplate.