Thread by @6Voodoo

1/ For centuries, sons followed their ancestors into armies, often at the recommendation of those ancestors. Nations are strong when this chain remains unbroken. What happens when that chain breaks? Let us talk for a minute about the U.S. and the Mutiny of Hyphasis in 326 BC.

2/ We all know Alexander the Great. Macedonian, good general, got it. Moving on. What you might not know is that Alexander faced not one, but two mutinies from his Macedonian troops. Most famously at Opis in 324 BC, but also two years earlier on the banks of the Hyphasis River.

3/Alexander’s soldiers fought for money, power, and a love of conquest. They gained tangible reward from their sacrifice. War to them was profitable, if they survived it. Men who fought under Alexander’s father Phillip willingly sent their sons to the young king's Phalanxes.

4/ Alexander and his men had fought through the known world, grinding their enemies into bloody charnel at the end of their sarissas. Shoulder to shoulder they had conquered nearly all of what was known of the world at the time. Then, they were done.

5/ At Hyphasis, standing on the doorstep of India, Alexander’s veteran troops mutinied for a variety of reasons, but one was the bond between King and soldier was fraying. His lust for conquest and glory was out pacing their ability to enjoy their gains.

6/ Marching further into the Indian Sub-Continent did nothing for them. They didn't know why they were fighting and dying there. Alexander didn’t listen to his troops at first. He screamed at them, and called them cowards, and threatened to march off and leave them in shame.

7/ Amid the King’s tirade Coenus, son of Polemocrates, a man in his 20s and one of Alexander’s best generals stood: and told his King he was wrong. He stood up and told the man to whom he owed almost everything in his life that he could follow him no further on this path.

8/ Seeing his troops united, Alexander finally listened, and pulled his army back from the brink to fight on closer to home.

Imagine that, a general who cared for his troops so much that he listened to their feed back, put his own desires aside and took care of them...

9/ This thread is a redux, but the timing is important and there are now new challenges at the doorstep of our nation, and without Toby Keith to guide us, we are alone in the world.

10/ I come from a military family. Two very old ones. My family never told me that they wanted me to join the military. I do not think they thought they needed to. I’ve talked before about the lack of noblesse oblige in our society, and how it is tearing us apart.

11/ It is tearing the rich apart from everyone else, but I was raised that you served your country, then you served yourself. Feed your horses, feed your men, then feed yourself. But gradually, our "elites" stopped sharing the sacrifice with us.

12/ My grandfather was the one who taught me about Nelson’s signal before Trafalgar: “England Expects That Every Man Will Do His Duty”.

These weren’t peacetime soldiers either. They had all seen war. Some of them had seen the type of war that GWOT veterans can only imagine.

13/ They knew it was hard. They knew it was dangerous. They had all served in far more dysfunctional armies than the American one (and some in more than one). But this was our society and we were going to fight for it.

14/ Today, I would never recommend anyone join the military for any reason other than absolute necessity.

15/ It isn’t entirely because of the betrayal of GWOT, it isn’t because of the “woke stuff”, it is because the army doesn’t care about you, and it doesn’t care about itself. It has absolutely no incentive to perform better. It has no incentive to retain warfighters.

16/ Yes, there is a growing belief that the government and what it is allowing to fester in our society is no longer worth dying for (which I share), but I make that choice for no man but myself. You pick what you are willing to die for.

17/ The US Army is unique in the armies of history. It expects its soldiers fight for a cause other than themselves. (I am not saying the war is always fought for noble reasons, I'd never say that shit to anybody, but they are reasons given to soldiers and society).

18/ This type of army requires a motivated core consenting to do horrifying deeds in the name of that greater good. The Greatest Generation turned Dresden into a hurricane of fire because they believed it served their nation, and not themselves.
This was once true:

19/ That link between veterans and the military is fraying, nearly to the point of rupture. And it is because of stories like this one:

I spent a long time in the Army, until one day I was simply done. I transferred to the IRR, and a year later decided to resign my commission.

20/ I had completed my service obligation; the Army and I were just breaking up. (despite their constant stream of recruiters, one in a soft shoe profile promising if I went to the USAR they could find me a job where I “didn’t even have to do anything just show up and get paid”).

21/ I submitted my letter of resignation... twice. I never heard anything back. I emailed HRC, I called HRC: nothing. Almost a year and a half later, a manila envelope arrived with my Separation Orders, and a Certificate of Honorable Discharge. It had the wrong branch on it.

22/ I emailed HRC back and requested correct orders and a new certificate with the correct branch. I had grown up seeing men frame their honorable discharges in their homes, I wanted to do this simple thing too. New orders were emailed to me. No certificate ever arrived.

23/ I gave the best years of my young life to that army and they couldn’t even send me a piece off fucking paper.

Maybe it is just me. Maybe I just can't see why you would fight for what General Smedley Butler called "a Racket".

24/ But looking at you all I don't see most of my brother veterans disagreeing with me, and with us breaks the first link in that chain.

It isn't even about furries in uniform, or about the Army telling me a man can cut his dick off and now do PT on the female standards.

25/ It isn’t about new metrics, it isn’t about female officers bringing breast pumps to the field and being incensed they can’t convince a 20 year old male private to carry her breast milk back. It is about demanding we keep the faith, and then betraying that faith in return.

26/ "A nation which forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten."
"I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me." Isiah

6-8
Send someone else. I see no reason to kill anyone for this government.

27/ There are real challenges out there, and real enemies, and things we need to fight as one people, and we can’t… because the same Generals who lied about how GWOT was going are now lying about the status of the military.

28/ There are enemies of what I believe are my people, and real threats to what I hold dear, things I would gladly fight, yet the government that asks young people to die in some tent in Syria cant even get it together long enough to convince us it is worth it.

29/ I believe in America. I believe in our greatness, and like @Partisan_O and @maphumanintent say, I bet on America. But we need to stand together and right our ship. We need one one, but a thousand Coenuses to stand together and push back.

30/ If the Putin:Biden dichotomy showed anything last night, is that America, the America we believe in, will need its champions if we want what we love to continue. The America we love is still out there somewhere, cold and scared in the darkness waiting for us. Lets go get her