Deployments amid IOC doubts
I have to wonder, given the predominant political narrative in the mass media at least in the US - to the effect that military service and the Armed Forces generally are passe, past their points of relevance - when the turning point will arrive. Sooner or later the voting public has to awaken to the fact that if the US and similar, allied or mostly-allied countries, want to have the freedom and flexibility to keep our systems and overall way of life without undue burdens imposed by countries with diametrically different systems, we simply will have to devote more funds and people to national defense. So many degreed college grads without jobs...hmm, I wonder what the Armed Forces would do with a bunch of low-wage, needing-experience, reasonably well-prepared civilian cadres, available to free more highly trained and useful enlisted personnel for more technical roles and assignments? I know, before you pour invective and derision on this point of view, that no mechanism presently exists to require, or enable, such a civilian cadre to be pressed into service. But if there are staff shortages, and unemployed yet highly educated (even if such educations contain loads of useless crud) young people, what is so mysterious about getting from point A to point C?