There is no real complaint against the British other than they need to field their military with better gear. The British fight very well, but they need better gear.
I have the greatest respect for Mike Yon - he is, along with two or three other battlefield reporters who have come from the blogosphere, a crown jewel of the blogosphere. That said, here he is mistaking a symptom of the problem for the real problem.
Americans have the best gear in the world. Conceptually, the British soldier is expected to fight with Americans, so the general idea is that the Brits will be similarly equipped, and therefore able to keep up.
And in comparison to the Americans, the Brits are woefully ill-equipped. But then, so is every other military in the world, with the possible exception of the Israelis, and I may be wrong even about them.
Now, the reasons that the Brits aren’t up to the equipment standards of the Americans are several: primarily, though, they boil down to two, or even one. The first is money. It is enormously expensive to equip an American-style military unit. Second, will. You have to be willing to fight at the American level in order to decide to spend the money to do so.
Our military budget is a tiny fraction of our GDP. Not so with the Brits. And, sadly, the current state of mind in Britain (not Great Britain, not any longer) is that there are other, more important things they need to spend their fading revenues on. So while the warrior spirit of the individual Brit soldier may be as hot and fierce as ever, the support back home no longer exists. Which is why they are going to be further and further handicapped in their conceptual role as battlefield allies to the Americans. In the not too distant future, they won’t be able to keep up at all.
Not because of a lack of heart or bravery or training, but we don’t go into battle coordinating with 19th century cavalrymen on horseback (except in very special circumstances), and at the current growing rate of equipment imbalance, that is about what the Brits will become.
And, frankly, there are a lot of Britons who can hardly wait for that day. Which is the real problem in the first place. (via Instapundit).
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I’m pretty sure the US could defeat the rest of the world, push come to shove. For a while it looked like it might come to that, but fortunately Super Hopeychangeyman will put a stop to all this nationalism and American Exceptionalism nonsense and we’ll all just get along.
Well, except in Afghanistan….
Thank goodness such blind dopes could never, ever come to power here. Otherwise…
Oops.
The loyal opposition here owns a hell of a lot more guns than do the tranzis currently in power, or did the Brit loyal opposition.
Yeah, I know Obama will try to do something about that, but I don’t think he will succeed.