William S. Lind :collection (merged thread)

[Fuchs]

Diplomats, businessmen, engineers, policemen - they all are burdened with secrets and are having mobile phones. The consequences of a leak can be huge, even lethal.

The military isn't special for what exists in it, but (if at all) for what exists ONLY in it.

[Bill Moore]

Can people's personal lives make them professionally vulnerable? Why do we spend six figures on a background check before giving someone a TS/SCI clearance? Would you personally be comfortable with giving a clearance to a known philanderer? A known drug user? Etc?

I also know some people who value their oath of enlistment/office more highly than any other commitment they ever made, but I'm struggling to think of any objective method by which you could differentiate them from anyone else who just didn't want to live up to the commitments they've made. The oath of office/enlistment is a lifetime commitment, in the same way that marriage vows are (or, at least, that's how they're designed). A lack of willingness to live up to one doesn't necessarily indicate a lack of willingness to live up to the other, but it does indicate a lack of good judgment on the part of that individual, and a possibility of being put into a vulnerable position by enemy intelligence services. I can't be the only Archer fan here, but the 'honeypot' is not just Sterling Archer's favorite intelligence operation; it does actually happen.

That's only one example of the sort of things that people who aren't ethically sound can be drawn into. There are lots of examples of bribes, kickbacks, embezzlements, etc., involving military personnel. All of those are, IMO, moral issues.

I suppose that while I understand your distinction between personal and professional ethics, I don't consider them separable as you apparently do.

Frankly we have thousands of men and women with security clearances that are so called philanderers, and while their behavior disappoints me I realize I live and work amongst humans whose behavior is influenced by a number of factors. None of them happen to be saints, but most strive to be good.

There may be a correlation between philandering and those who betray their country, but I suspect we make our nation more vulnerable to the honey trap when it is viewed as a career ending crime.

On the other hand, there is no gray space for the following:


There are lots of examples of bribes, kickbacks, embezzlements, etc., involving military personnel.

These are professional ethics violations, and should be prosecuted, just as travel voucher fraud should be. There is no doubt that some philanders don't have a good bone in their body, and they'll be involved in professional ethic violations also, but it doesn't apply across the board. Unfortunately our system doesn't take the total person into consideration before it passes judgment.

[JMA]

I would suggest that Viscount Slim shares my view. On page 194 of his book Defeat into Victory, he says

Slim shares your view?

I nominate this for post of the year!

[JMA]

Why should the military reflect society?

Exactly! As I asked a while ago should NASA reflect society demographics?

[AmericanPride]

Exactly! As I asked a while ago should NASA reflect society demographics?

Because the military isn't a special or elite class of society. It's not independent from the political-economic system of the country. It has changed, and will change, as the country changes. It's really only a question of how painful the military will make it for itself.

Insofar that military selectivity is based upon the merits necessary for effectively fighting and winning the nation's wars, policies and practices of exclusion and discrimination (i.e. phyical ability, mental or emotional health) are necessary. However, the military still retains vestiges of normative-driven discriminatory practices, among which is included the exclusion of women from combat positions. Another major one surrounds the treatment of PTSD and mental health. It's these norms, which are fiercely guarded but ultimately unrelated to the ability to fight and win wars, that undermine the military's capabilities to do so, and also causes unnecessary friction within the ranks and with the civilian population. And as I've pointed out earlier and elsewhere, the demographics of the country are changing rapidly. It's becoming more diverse, more urban, less religious, more social, and more independent. These are not easily translated into the current military culture.

There is somewhere a minimally required base of knowledge, skills, and abilities to be an "effective" soldier/airman, et al in the modern combat environment. And I very much doubt it has anything to do with race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sex, sexual preference or that it approximates to that of the 19th and early 20th centuries, upon which the model of our military is based. And it's from structure that culture is produced, not vice versa, meaning that a change in military culture first requires a change in structure. And that begins with dismantling the unnecessary discriminatory practices and suppressing those destructive norms that obstruct's the military's ability to adapt to the current social-political environment of the country. The geographical and demographic patterns of enlistments indicate this will be difficult from within the military institution; which only means that it will be (painfully) imposed by the political leadership rather than pre-empted by forward thinking military leaders.

So if it's the case that military knowledge, skill, or ability on the modern battlefield has nothing to do with any of the identities named above, then we have some serious questions to answer as to why there is significant social-economic divergence between the civilian population and the military. Even though the military is self-selective, which can be overcome through stronger institutional emphasis on education before and during service, self-selection is only part of the story; the other part of the story is how social structure filters a segment of society for military service through economic or social systems - why are African-Americans dispropotionately represented in the ranks? Is it because of "African-American" values (whatever they are) more closely align with the military's values than Asians and Hispanics (Paul Ryan might disagree...)?

Senior leaders need to have this kind of dialogue amongst themselves, with the public, and with the political leadership to identify exactly where the points of friction are located.

[AmericanPride]

Here's some stats for those complaining about "political correctness", equal opportunity programs, etc.

This is from the 2012 military demographics report (http://www.militaryonesource.mil/12038/MOS/Reports/2012_Demographics_Report.pdf). Here are the numbers for the Army:

O1 - O3: 19.73% female
O4 - O6: 14.24% female
O7 - O10: 6.56% female

E1-E4: 14.05% female
E5-E6: 11.62% female
E7-E9: 10.86% female

Women are not promoted at the same rate as men (or, more accurately, there is more attrition for females than males). It could be for a number of reasons - perhaps women are more likely to leave military service (why?). I think it probably has more to do with the opportunities available to women over the course of their career in addition to the normative values that attempt to regulate female behavior. What's interesting is that the attrition rate for females in the officer corps is higher than in the enlisted ranks. I wasn't expecting that. Perhaps its due to the smaller number of billets and the up or out system for officers, and since combat arms are closed to women, that translates into less key development positions for female officers.

I haven't compared the Army to DoD average or to the other branches, but that can be forthcoming.

EDIT: Here are the numbers for race (the data are not differentiated by race):

O1-O3: 26.5% minority
O4-O6: 23.4% minority
O7-O10: 13.4%minority

E1-E4 27.0% minority
E5-E6 34.0% minority
E7-E9 46.7% minority

What are your theories? If all else is equal (i.e. if race or sex doesn't matter, only merit) why do we have such skewed data on female and minority pay grades?

[JMA]

You are a reservist, right?


Because the military isn't a special or elite class of society. It's not independent from the political-economic system of the country. It has changed, and will change, as the country changes. It's really only a question of how painful the military will make it for itself.

Insofar that military selectivity is based upon the merits necessary for effectively fighting and winning the nation's wars, policies and practices of exclusion and discrimination (i.e. phyical ability, mental or emotional health) are necessary. However, the military still retains vestiges of normative-driven discriminatory practices, among which is included the exclusion of women from combat positions. Another major one surrounds the treatment of PTSD and mental health. It's these norms, which are fiercely guarded but ultimately unrelated to the ability to fight and win wars, that undermine the military's capabilities to do so, and also causes unnecessary friction within the ranks and with the civilian population. And as I've pointed out earlier and elsewhere, the demographics of the country are changing rapidly. It's becoming more diverse, more urban, less religious, more social, and more independent. These are not easily translated into the current military culture.

There is somewhere a minimally required base of knowledge, skills, and abilities to be an "effective" soldier/airman, et al in the modern combat environment. And I very much doubt it has anything to do with race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sex, sexual preference or that it approximates to that of the 19th and early 20th centuries, upon which the model of our military is based. And it's from structure that culture is produced, not vice versa, meaning that a change in military culture first requires a change in structure. And that begins with dismantling the unnecessary discriminatory practices and suppressing those destructive norms that obstruct's the military's ability to adapt to the current social-political environment of the country. The geographical and demographic patterns of enlistments indicate this will be difficult from within the military institution; which only means that it will be (painfully) imposed by the political leadership rather than pre-empted by forward thinking military leaders.

So if it's the case that military knowledge, skill, or ability on the modern battlefield has nothing to do with any of the identities named above, then we have some serious questions to answer as to why there is significant social-economic divergence between the civilian population and the military. Even though the military is self-selective, which can be overcome through stronger institutional emphasis on education before and during service, self-selection is only part of the story; the other part of the story is how social structure filters a segment of society for military service through economic or social systems - why are African-Americans dispropotionately represented in the ranks? Is it because of "African-American" values (whatever they are) more closely align with the military's values than Asians and Hispanics (Paul Ryan might disagree...)?

Senior leaders need to have this kind of dialogue amongst themselves, with the public, and with the political leadership to identify exactly where the points of friction are located.

[JMA]

Depends on the enemy.


I think it's a bit more complicated than that.

1) Everyone who carries a gun in combat is by necessity privy to a large amount of sensitive information.

2) The miracle of satellite phones and satellite internet make the transfer of information from personnel engaged in combat operations to the outside world much easier than ever before.

3) The combination of the above two circumstances makes soldiers in combat accessible to enemy intelligence in a way they never have been before.

If you don't consider the above to be a big deal... we'll have to disagree. If you don't think that the above necessitates an interest in the moral character of the people you put into that role... again, we'll have to disagree.

[wm]

Slim shares your view?

I nominate this for post of the year!

Apologies for the hubris.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Let's exclude the non-combat and non-reconnaissance troops, the air force and navy for a while.

For line-of-sight-to-threat army troops the special requirement is military discipline.



Other than that there are some slightly special requirements (firearms safety, explosives safety, secrecy, psychological stress), which have equivalents in select civilian jobs.
Gefechtsdisziplin has only remote equivalents in civilian jobs, such as some professional divers (doing welding works underwater in teams, for example), some firefighters (I wouldn't add police raid and hostage rescue teams).


note: Combat does not demand that you don't cheat on your wife. It may demand that no ill-controlled long hair creates gaps in your NBC protection, though.

You sound like the Army trying to justify why combat awards should only be given to Soldiers in combat positions. Sorry, but my clerks ran to the bunkers from the same rockets that landed in my FOB every week. You need to go downrange.:rolleyes:

Don't think those engineers, mechanics, and cooks in all those civilian equivalents had to put up with indirect fire on a regular basis.

[TheCurmudgeon]

I don't buy it.
Career soldiers have a tendency to think of themselves (or the military) as superior to the general
population - particularly if they happen to write in English. It was only a question of time till this
attitude would resurface once the topic wandered towards the civ-mil-relationship and
representativeness issue.

There's nothing that special about the military. And the people in it aren't that special either. Many of
them would be (or were) failures in civilian life, for example - and this includes officers and NCOs.

I am assuming you are a civilian. You have never been a police officer, or a fireman, or a medic. You have never held any position where your personal wants, needs, and desires were subordinate to those of the people you served. That should it come to it, your life is forfeit so that others may live.

I guess not.

What allows you to do that without fear, or remorse, is belief in a set of values. Values that transcend simple day-to-day life. That connect you to something bigger than yourself. That allow you to go to the most miserable places and do the most horrible things and then come home with honor and not kill yourself.

This value system is not something shared by the average civilian in the liberal west. The closest thing it comes to is a form of tribalism - a dedication to your tribe. But that is only the part that connects you. It is not the ideal that drives you to sacrifice for others.

I am sorry, but very few positions in the civilian world compare on any level. You are right that we do think of ourselves differently from, but not superior to, the population we serve. It is part of being a Soldier. It is part of being a service member. It is something that you take on with an oath, not a simple contract. Too bad you don't see that.

[Bill Moore]

I am assuming you are a civilian. You have never been a police officer, or a fireman, or a medic. You have never held any position where your personal wants, needs, and desires were subordinate to those of the people you served. That should it come to it, your life is forfeit so that others may live.

I guess not.

What allows you to do that without fear, or remorse, is belief in a set of values. Values that transcend simple day-to-day life. That connect you to something bigger than yourself. That allow you to go to the most miserable places and do the most horrible things and then come home with honor and not kill yourself.

This value system is not something shared by the average civilian in the liberal west. The closest thing it comes to is a form of tribalism - a dedication to your tribe. But that is only the part that connects you. It is not the ideal that drives you to sacrifice for others.

I am sorry, but very few positions in the civilian world compare on any level. You are right that we do think of ourselves differently from, but not superior to, the population we serve. It is part of being a Soldier. It is part of being a service member. It is something that you take on with an oath, not a simple contract. Too bad you don't see that.

Interesting comment, one I largely agree with. We identify with people who hold similar values. You may find the following uncomfortable, but your comments apply equally to insurgents and terrorists. As for feeling superior to the general public that is a broad claim by Fuchs, who is the general public? If it is those who wait outside a store overnight on black Friday to rush in and get a good deal on a computer, and work a 9-5 job that means little to them, so they turn to drugs and mindless T.V. to escape life, I don't necessarily feel superior, but I'm glad I chose the path I chose, because I serve among those who also seek to contribute to a higher cause. Superior? Happier? More meaningful? I don't know what label to put on it. What I described is a segment of the public, and it doesn't reflect others that I'm actually envious of, such as pathfinders in science, those who lead social revolutions (Martin Luther King), etc. General is too general of a term :-).

[Fuchs]

You sound like the Army trying to justify why combat awards should only be given to Soldiers in combat positions. Sorry, but my clerks ran to the bunkers from the same rockets that landed in my FOB every week. You need to go downrange.:rolleyes:

Don't think those engineers, mechanics, and cooks in all those civilian equivalents had to put up with indirect fire on a regular basis.

My country never handed medals out for running to cover. If we had, almost all of my grandparent generation would have had the medal since almost all of them had to run to a bunker hundreds of times. They had to put up with hostile fires - literally fires- on a regular basis.

Also
http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2013/11/12/the-15-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america/


I am assuming you are a civilian. You have never been a police officer, or a fireman, or a medic. You have never held any position where your personal wants, needs, and desires were subordinate to those of the people you served. That should it come to it, your life is forfeit so that others may live.

Actually, incorrect. I served in the military. Besides, to subordinate "wants, needs and desires to those people you serve" is the nature of every work contract. You wouldn't need to get paid otherwise.


What allows you to do that without fear, or remorse, is belief in a set of values. Values that transcend simple day-to-day life. That connect you to something bigger than yourself. That allow you to go to the most miserable places and do the most horrible things and then come home with honor and not kill yourself.

Wow, that's some nonsense. Soldiers have no fear because ... "values"?
I suppose you're the one who has no clue (or has delusions) about soldiers here.
Same for remorse.
And what drives soldiers in warfare isn't a "belief in a set of values". It's hate driven by propaganda and psychology mixed with comradeship and authority.

You're inflating "values" beyond recognition.
I understand the right wing in the U.S. does so, pretending "values" are important above all and then pretending the own team has them. I suppose you fell for this delusion and applied it to the 'team military'.


This value system is not something shared by the average civilian in the liberal west. The closest thing it comes to is a form of tribalism - a dedication to your tribe. But that is only the part that connects you. It is not the ideal that drives you to sacrifice for others.

That's not "values", but comradeship - plus a heavy dosage of bollocks. Look at underground coal miners and how they bond at work in face of constant danger. They're civilians.


I am sorry, but very few positions in the civilian world compare on any level. You are right that we do think of ourselves differently from, but not superior to, the population we serve. It is part of being a Soldier. It is part of being a service member. It is something that you take on with an oath, not a simple contract. Too bad you don't see that.

A coal miner is different from a clerk, is different from an electrician - every job is different from most jobs. The trivial difference doesn't matter and doesn't explain the obvious pattern of American soldiers thinking of themselves as so much better than the common population 'who does not really deserve their stalwart service'.
And yes, that's the impression conveyed, not the impression that they merely think of themselves as "different", not superior.

[TheCurmudgeon]

My country never handed medals out for running to cover. If we had, almost all of my grandparent generation would have had the medal since almost all of them had to run to a bunker hundreds of times. They had to put up with hostile fires - literally fires- on a regular basis.

Fuchs,

I apologize for inferring your lack of service or commitment. At this point it would seem that we are talking past each other. Since part of the problem is inter-generational shifts in values, comparing today to the past makes the case that things have changed today.

In any case, I think I am just going to have to disagree with you and leave it at that. :rolleyes:

[Fuchs]

We may agree to disagree, but let me first explain WHY I discuss this at all.


Soldiers in general aren't that much different from civilians. Their organisation is a bit more authoritarian, but even this is not always true.

Soldiers deployed in a war zone live an altogether different life - about as much different from other soldiers (even those in 'the rear' or in 'camps') as from civilian relatives who live in safety.
Yet this applies to civilians in a war zone as well.
The odds of sacrificing much - including life - were much higher for a German civilian in 1944 than for an American soldier on occupation service in Iraq, ever.
So the difference isn't that much between military and civilian, but between war and peace.

The attitude of some (many) soldiers that they are meeting higher standards than the general population, have more 'values' (which often sounds a lot like 'higher morality') goes hand in hand with the perception that they deserve 'much', and regularly 'more'.

And that's an attitude shared by almost all military forces staging a coup d'tat.

Attitudes are a matter of freedom of speech and freedom of thought and generally not to be cared about - unless there's good reason to believe they might turn harmful. And this is the case when a military thinks it's better than the civilian world. Then it's about time to set the record straight.
Military personnel merely do a different job, they're no better or more deserving people than civilians.

The same applies to journalists. They tend to assert that they deserve many privileges. Nonsense.


---------
It shouldn't surprise that this is coming from a German. To Germans, war is about the entire nation, not something delegated to a fraction of the population. We also don't have any kind of 'veteran' cult, so I only write that "I was in the military" or "I was in the Luftwaffe" and never claim to be a "veteran" or something. I also never mention my time in uniform to Germans unless asked specifically.
There's simply no value in 'having served' here. Right after WW2 everybody had served in uniform or suffered from bombing raids or more. Everybody had seen battle. Later on "I have served" was merely a code for "I am no leftie" and wasn't really about the military per se. This 1970's code fell out of use long ago, though.

The debate whether soldiers are distinct, superior, different, more moral et cetera is only provoked by anglophone sources. It is really a speciality, not a global phenomenon.
Some German troops of our time were infected with this school of thought because it's so flattering to them, of course.

[JMA]

You sound like the Army trying to justify why combat awards should only be given to Soldiers in combat positions. Sorry, but my clerks ran to the bunkers from the same rockets that landed in my FOB every week. You need to go downrange.:rolleyes:

Don't think those engineers, mechanics, and cooks in all those civilian equivalents had to put up with indirect fire on a regular basis.

I thought the US differentiated between those who qualified for the Combat Infantryman Badge and the Combat Action Badge?

The infantry demanded (not in my army) that there be a difference between those who ran for cover and those who ran at (assualted) a defended active enemy position under fire IMHO quite rightly so. I was also a paratrooper with a number of 'operations jumps' under the belt and never got paid an allowance for that either - IMHO quite rightly so as parachuting was merely a means of transport and delivery into combat of my choice.

One understands and tolerates the adolescent macho strutting of young soldiers to prove who is more badass than the next. This should not extend to senior NCOs and officers, however.

But your essential point as I seem to understand it is that yes, the risk to soldiers in time of war is in a different league than those in even the most hazzardous civilian jobs. In a hazzardous job you get a big pay check commensurate with the risk. A troopie is down there near the minimum wage. What do you make of that? You look out for #1 and you do OK but if you lay it all on the line for your country you get diddly ....

[AmericanPride]

Fuchs,

As you are aware, mythologizing military service is often a right-wing form of political correctness. This is true to an extent in the United States, and certainly within the ranks, which is to be expected as most institutions have self-reinforcing norms.

JMA,

It's not true, at least in the United States, that people are paid in accordance to the risks they take on the job. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 10 most dangerous jobs (by fatalities per 100,000) and their average hourly wages are:

1. Fishers ($13)
2. Loggers ($13)
3. Pilots
4. Iron and steel workers ($19)
5. Farmers/ranchers
6. Roofers ($16)
7. Electrical line workers ($22)
8. Drivers ($12)
9. Refuse collectors ($17)
10. Police officers

Firefighters and construction workers are in the top 15.

[JMA]

Another gem from that seminal work by Lord Moran : Anatomy of Courage (http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Courage-Classic-Psychological-Effects/dp/0786718994/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1391865813&sr=1-1&keywords=anatomy+of+courage) which gives some insight into this age old problem (written a mere six months after the armistice):


The clear, war-given insight into the essence of a man has already grown dim. With the coming of peace we have gone back to those comfortable doctrines that some had thought war had killed. Cleverness has come into its own again. The men who won the war never left England; that was where the really clever people were most useful. I sometimes wonder what some of those good souls who came through make of it all. They remember that in the life of the trenches a few simple demands were made of all men; if they were not met the defaulter became an outlaw. Do they ask of themselves when they meet the successful of the present how such men would have fared in that other time where success in life had seemed a mirage? Are they silently in their hearts making those measurements of men which they learnt when there was work afoot that was a man’s work? They know a man, for reasons which they are too inarticulate to explain, and they are baffled because others deny what seems to them so simple and so sure.




Interesting comment, one I largely agree with. We identify with people who hold similar values. You may find the following uncomfortable, but your comments apply equally to insurgents and terrorists. As for feeling superior to the general public that is a broad claim by Fuchs, who is the general public? If it is those who wait outside a store overnight on black Friday to rush in and get a good deal on a computer, and work a 9-5 job that means little to them, so they turn to drugs and mindless T.V. to escape life, I don't necessarily feel superior, but I'm glad I chose the path I chose, because I serve among those who also seek to contribute to a higher cause. Superior? Happier? More meaningful? I don't know what label to put on it. What I described is a segment of the public, and it doesn't reflect others that I'm actually envious of, such as pathfinders in science, those who lead social revolutions (Martin Luther King), etc. General is too general of a term :-).

[TheCurmudgeon]

I thought the US differentiated between those who qualified for the Combat Infantryman Badge and the Combat Action Badge?

The infantry demanded (not in my army) that there be a difference between those who ran for cover and those who ran at (assualted) a defended active enemy position under fire IMHO quite rightly so. I was also a paratrooper with a number of 'operations jumps' under the belt and never got paid an allowance for that either - IMHO quite rightly so as parachuting was merely a means of transport and delivery into combat of my choice.

One understands and tolerates the adolescent macho strutting of young soldiers to prove who is more badass than the next. This should not extend to senior NCOs and officers, however.

But your essential point as I seem to understand it is that yes, the risk to soldiers in time of war is in a different league than those in even the most hazzardous civilian jobs. In a hazzardous job you get a big pay check commensurate with the risk. A troopie is down there near the minimum wage. What do you make of that? You look out for #1 and you do OK but if you lay it all on the line for your country you get diddly ....

When first proposed, the Combat Action Badge was the Close Combat Badge and you had to be in an armor, cav, or artillery MOS to recieve it. Rumsfeld changed that after he was confronted at a Town Hall by a female MP who had engaged the enemy several times on convoys but would not be elligable for the award because of her MOS.

As far as running for cover, I am not sure what else you want a Soldier who is not involved in identifing the POO and engaged in counterbattery fire to do in a rocket attack. I suppose they could stand in the open and look up. Not sure that is the wisest choice. You don't get a CAB for indirect fire attacks unless you are within the blast radius of the munition fired at you. I led a recon that was attacked by a command detonated IED, but the only people who got the award were the people in the vehicle that was hit.

But yes, you get my point. I don't think you can compare the two on any level. The only civilian jobs that come close are Police, Fire, and EMT personnel. It is the difference between having a duty and having a job. Hard to explain, but I know it when I see it.

On a seperate note, that female MP who stood up to the SecDef and asked a question that all the Army brass did not want asked demonstrates a level of intestinal fortitude that was quite impressinve. Reminds me of the old joke about the Marine, Army, and Air Force General standing around the flag pole talking about their subordinates courage.

[AmericanPride]

JMA,

Continuing the conversation of job risk, here are some more statistics.

As of January 2010, from Congressional Research Service (http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22452.pdf):

OIF: 4,410 KIA, 31,942 WIA
OEF: 2,299 KIA, 19,572 WIA

Troop levels also from CRS (http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R40682.pdf):

Cumulative FY02 -FY10:
OIF: 1,013,200
OEF: 238,300
Combined: 1,251,500

That comes out to the following hazard rate of KIA/WIA rate per 100,000 of:

OEF: 964 KIA; 8,213 WIA; 9,177 combined
OIF: 435 KIA; 3,152 WIA; 4,116 combined
OEF/OIF: 536 KIA; 4,116 WIA; 4,652 combined

Now, that's wartime. In comparison, during the eight years of the Clinton administration, there were 7,500 military deaths (I'm assuming most non-combat related). That gives an approximate rate of 53.72 deaths per 100,000.

As of 2007, the BLS had the following deaths per 100,000 rates for the jobs listed in the previous post:

1. Fishers: 111.8
2. Loggers: 86.4
3. Pilots: 70.7
4. Iron/Steel workers: 45.5
5. Famers: 39.5
6. Roofers: 29.4
7. Electrical workers: 29.1
8. Drivers: 28.2
9. Refuse collectors: 22.8
10. Police: 21.8
...
12. Construction: 19.5
13. Firefighters: 17.4

So, yes, the obvious answer is that military service during a time of war is more dangerous than any civilian job. But during a time of peace, it is more dangerous to be a fisherman, logger, or pilot.

[AmericanPride]

The only civilian jobs that come close are Police, Fire, and EMT personnel. It is the difference between having a duty and having a job. Hard to explain, but I know it when I see it.

Statistically, that's not true. No job comes close to OEF/OIF but several jobs are more dangerous than military service during peace-time. That said, does the level of hazard in an occupation indicate that occupation's value to society or its importance? Police and firefighters are generally more praised, at least post-9/11, than fisherman and loggers, even though the former two are more dangerous. So it also appears that the kind of work, not the level of hazard, is more important in determining social value.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Statistically, that's not true. No job comes close to OEF/OIF but several jobs are more dangerous than military service during peace-time. That said, does the level of hazard in an occupation indicate that occupation's value to society or its importance? Police and firefighters are generally more praised, at least post-9/11, than fisherman and loggers, even though the former two are more dangerous. So it also appears that the kind of work, not the level of hazard, is more important in determining social value.

It's not the level of hazard that distinguishes the jobs.

[AmericanPride]

It's not the level of hazard that distinguishes the jobs.

But it's the level of hazard that's used to justify compensation, benefits, and social privilege.

[AmericanPride]

Just some interesting comparisons. Deaths per 100,000:

Cancer: 191.5
Accidents (non-vehicular): 57
Vehicular accidents: 19
Violence: 9

(All causes)
Alabama: 939
Mississippi: 962
West Virgina: 933
Oklahoma: 915
Louisana: 903

(Murders)
Flint, MI: 64.9
Detroit: 54.6
New Orleans: 53.5
St. Louis: 35.5
Baltimore: 35

Living in the South is more dangerous to your health than going to war. ;)

[TheCurmudgeon]

But it's the level of hazard that's used to justify compensation, benefits, and hero-worship.

... And you have identified the difference between those who are Soldiers and those who are not. Those who are not have "hero-worship" based on perceived hazard. Bravery is associated with risk. I can't speak for all Soldiers, but risk is just part of the job. It does not bear on why I do it.

[AmericanPride]

... And you have identified the difference between those who are Soldiers and those who are not. Those who are not have "hero-worship" based on perceived hazard. Bravery is associated with risk. I can't speak for all Soldiers, but risk is just part of the job. It has bear on why I do it.

In your last sentence, are you saying that "risk" is a or is related to a value that motivates your desire for military service?

Also, I did edit my post from hero-worship to 'social privilege' since that captures more of what I'm aiming at here.

So, this brings me to my next question. African-Americans, as a group, are over-represented in the military by a couple of percentage points, enough to be significant. Does that mean the values in African-American communities are more aligned with the values of the current military culture than in white, Hispanic, or Asian communities? I suspect that there's an element of racial-cultural framing with the emphasis on "military values" in the discourse here.

There is, I suspect, a relationship between a state's level of poverty and a state's recruitment rate, as far as I can infer through the education spending data provided earlier (since education and poverty are related). This seems to contrast with Paul Ryan's recent comments:


“We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning to value the culture of work, so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with,” Ryan said.

There seems to be an underlying contradiction in values and culture here. If there is a "culture problem" or "tailspin of culture" of not working, why are African-Americans overrepresented in the military?

[carl]

It's superficial because it is a reading of history without any factual basis. It has no more evidence than any modern day conspiracy theory.

I think differently. Is there any evidence extant about how man developed fire? Not that I'm aware of. I am guessing there is only evidence that at point our ancestors didn't have it and at some other point they did. Same thing probably for cooking, spears, spears tipped with shaped stone heads, the wheel and on. What we know is those people found the implement or the practice useful and kept it. All we can do is speculate as to the details of how those things came to be. It is speculation because there is no evidence at all, that is why it is called speculation. There is no youtube video of Kronk getting a good idea and then trying it out.


And those are excellent examples of the normative barriers that I have been speaking about. Here is a good research paper addressing (http://works.bepress.com/maia_goodell/2/) these normative obstacles. Some excerpts:

Now let us take Ms. Goodell's, the lawyer, points 1 through 4.

1. "(1) stereotyping – the assumption that no woman can do the job without testing the abilities of the individual woman;"

This is great in theory but military organizations have to deal with people in the tens of thousands and in times of big wars, in the millions. Assumptions have to be made especially ones based on past experience and history. For example, it may not be fair but it is practical to assume that it wouldn't be worthwhile to take people into pilot training who only have one eye.

2. "(2) differential training – the failure to account for the potential for improvement for women who often have less prior physical activity;"

This is special pleading. It is acknowledging that women are weaker but they might be able to get stronger if they get special training. If they had less prior physical activity and can't make the standard that's their fault. As far as I know the standards aren't a secret and the streets are free to walk and run in.

3. "(3) trait selection – measuring only tasks that are perceived to be difficult for women, while ignoring equally mission critical tasks that women may be better at performing;"

This is asking that war be redefined because it isn't fair. The loader in an M-1 has to sling those rounds and do it fast or people die. The rounds weigh so much. To go back a little further, a Legionary had to throw that pilum with force a certain distance or else. He had to be strong enough to wield that 20 pound shield and punch it forward with enough force to throw the opponent off balance or else. He had to push that sword hard enough to perhaps penetrate chain mail, or else. And he had to be able to pull it out. Things like that need to be done, or else. Those things, those particular things.

4. "task definition – not considering if there are other ways to get the job done."

This is a development of #2 and #3, asking that war be redefined in response to special pleading. There may indeed be other ways to get the job done, or not. We could, I suppose, make it our No.1 research priority to develop and field a Tantulus Device so we can field flocks of woman warriors as lethal as anybody. But Tantulus Devices may be impossible to make and besides, we have to deal with the right here and the right now, or else.

[carl]

Please do not confuse the tool with the skill. Excel is a tool that provides data for decision makers. Grant most assuredly had data presented to him that helped him decide what to do. McClellan may have had too much attachment to data, producing a species of the paralysis of analysis.

I am not. That was exactly my point. Grant was Grant because he had what it took. Excel had nothing to do with it. Written and verbal messages did the trick. He also didn't have a TOC with lots of individual monitors and some really big TV screens in the front. He had a horse, a camp stool, a tent, a table, paper, pens and that new fangled telegraph, which produced written messages.

As I said, what concerns me is that nowadays proficiency with excel spreadsheet making may shade the actual fighting and leading ability. Sort of like "Promote Capt. R.S. MacKenzie? No, he can't even do the simplest spreadsheet."


I would suggest that Viscount Slim shares my view. On page 194 of his book Defeat into Victory, he says

Oh geesh WM. That's like saying "I think Jim Thorpe would agree with me that good athletes have strength and endurance."


US Army tactical SIGINT/Electronic warfare teams have had women in them since at least the mid-70s. These teams deploy well forward on the battlefield, farther forward in fact than most of the infantry, armor, and artillery soldiers. They will even be found either with or in advance of the cavalry units that are the advanced scouts of the US Army.

Oh. Right up there with the Iron Brigade and the Forrest's Cavalry. There, that is my smart aleck comment for the morning.

The point is referencing small units that aren't fighting units in a time without a big war isn't a convincing argument for much of anything.


BTW, I doubt that we will see ship to ship fighting of the type you described between the USN and IJN around Guadalcanal. I suspect future naval combat to be like the action that took place at the Battle of Midway, with a significant portion of the manned aircraft replaced by missiles of various kinds. Instead of a picture of muzzle flashes as destroyers and cruisers slug it out with cannon fire in the Slot, a more likely better image might be the sight of an Exocet slamming into the HMS Sheffield off the Falkland Islands, fired from a delivery platform completely out of the range of the ship's organic weapons.

Never say never when it comes to ship fighting because you never know. At any rate ASW will probably involve ship to ship fighting.

But if you don't like the Slot, how about the picket destroyers north of Okinawa? In either case, men drowned, were rent limb from limb or were burned up or all three, over and over and over. The point was we haven't seen any serious naval fighting since WWII.

[AmericanPride]

Carl,

Had you read the entire article, first you would know that "the lawyer" is also a former Surface Warfare Officer, and this is what the author has to say about your claims:


This is great in theory but military organizations have to deal with people in the tens of thousands and in times of big wars, in the millions. Assumptions have to be made especially ones based on past experience and history. For example, it may not be fair but it is practical to assume that it wouldn't be worthwhile to take people into pilot training who only have one eye.


Even if this study shows some differences in men’s and women’s abilities to accomplish particular tasks, it does not explain a decision to use de jure exclusions for women alone rather than individual evaluations for the exclusion of both men and women.123 Both women and men qualified, and both men and women failed to qualify in most tests⎯what purpose is served in excluding all and only women? For example, in the P250 carry, 90% of the women failed, but 10% passed. Moreover, 36% of the men failed. Certain physical tests, such as an arm pull, were relatively well-correlated to the ability to do static muscularly demanding tasks.124 The military has the advantage of a basic-training period in which to evaluate potential recruits; it could administer tests like those validated in this study and avoid de jure discrimination...

For now, the cost rebuttal to the stereotyping analysis tells us something about the contours of the strength argument. The claim must be that the differences are large enough that it is possible to measure strength traits with a single cutoff that will include most men and exclude almost all women. The claim must further be that this cutoff exactly corresponds with the military’s needs. As a “statutory scheme which draws a sharp line between the sexes,” this argument seems suspicious. Drawing such a line “solely for the purpose of achieving administrative convenience,” is arguably a purpose
“forbidden by the Constitution.”

Your second point:


This is special pleading. It is acknowledging that women are weaker but they might be able to get stronger if they get special training. If they had less prior physical activity and can't make the standard that's their fault. As far as I know the standards aren't a secret and the streets are free to walk and run in.


Such a conclusion is not supported by research; to the contrary, a substantial body of research shows that women are systematically discouraged from physical activities and sports from the day they are born.130 Therefore, it is not surprising if women show less physical prowess when they arrive at the military as young adults...

Differences in physical training are profound and go well beyond a few hours on a sports field or at a gym...Reversing a lifetime of training is no small task, but there is evidence that training women intensively can close the gap. A four-month, three-times-a-week training program for female civilian firefighting candidates produced 25% of approximately thirty-six participants in the program who passed a physical test to compete for the job as New York City firefighters.136 This result was still worse than men’s 57% passage rate,but substantially better than the overall women’s passage rate of 9.5% for the 105 women who took the test.

Your third point:


This is asking that war be redefined because it isn't fair. The loader in an M-1 has to sling those rounds and do it fast or people die. The rounds weigh so much. To go back a little further, a Legionary had to throw that pilum with force a certain distance or else. He had to be strong enough to wield that 20 pound shield and punch it forward with enough force to throw the opponent off balance or else. He had to push that sword hard enough to perhaps penetrate chain mail, or else. Things like that need to be done, or else. Those things, those particular things.


Critics often invoke women’s lower scores on the general physicalfitness tests as proof of women’s lower ability to perform in particular military positions. The military disagrees; it does not hold the general physical-fitness requirements to map onto job-specific requirements.157 In fact, the military has different requirements based on age group and sex. For example, as of 2000, in the Navy’s general Physical Readiness Test, men over 50 needed to complete 42% fewer curl-ups and had 12% more time to complete a 1.5 mile run than women 17−19 years old; the push-up requirements were the same.158 Standards were set similarly for the Army and Marine Corps fitness assessments.159 Older men are likely to be less physically capable by these measures than the women the critics claim are an intolerable liability, yet the critics do not argue that the test results should be used to exclude those men...

That study and others show that physical ability is a complex phenomenon and that men and women may have very divergent scores on some tests, but substantially overlap on others. There is not a uniform distance across men’s and women’s scores, so the scores do not justify a static line drawn precisely where it will include most men and exclude most women. For example, women were significantly closer to men in a task that involved carrying the P250 fire pump both up and down ladders in a longer time frame; 38% of women and 14% of men failed.163 Similarly, the larger rating-specific study analyzes the difference in women’s and men’s scores and finds statistical overlaps vary enormously.164 For example, the overlap between men’s and women’s scores was 90% in a task that simulated carrying molten metal between 99 and 168 pounds and moving sideways and pouring it into molds; it was 7% in a task that simulated pulling an airplane tow bar, bearing about 62 pounds of weight, for 300 feet.

And your last point:


This is a development of #2 and #3, asking that war be redefined in response to special pleading. There may indeed be other ways to get the job done, or not. We could, I suppose, make it our No.1 research priority to develop and field a Tantulus Device so we can field flocks of woman warriors as lethal as anybody. But Tantulus Devices may be impossible to make and besides, we have to deal with the right here and the right now.


Technological advancement is one of the major ways that the United States remains a world military leader.190 For example, the P250 fire pump used in the Navy study has since been redesigned to run on jet fuel instead of gasoline, to eliminate the need to store highly flammable gasoline on ships; the new model is also smaller.191 As Martha Minow has noted, redesigning the status quo for those who have been left out can result in advantages for everyone.192 “[L]ighter firefighters’ helmets” 193 would probably benefit not only women but also men who must wear them for long hours during disasters in Navy ships...

The military evidently does not turn away the men who do not meet the physical requirements that the critics advocate, because men as well as women failed each one of the tests in the studies discussed above.201 It is more likely to be cost effective to use a second alternative, based on a less partial view of the job: Select the best people for the other 99% of the job description.

It seems as if you have not done your homework. You are welcome to rely on your speculations, but I only ask that you don't expect the rest of us to do the same.

[JMA]

Thanks for the detail but I don't want to get into that detail.

My point is simple - and perhaps I should have explained more carefully...

I have sympathy with the police, fireservices and first responders in general as their sacrifice is is essentially on behalf of others. This is like the soldier who dies in combat for his friends, his unit and the country (however misguided the particular war may be). Quite frankly I see no comparison between a driver dying in a motor accident and a soldier KIA. In fact the more I think about the comparison the angrier I get. Outrageous.



JMA,

Continuing the conversation of job risk, here are some more statistics.

As of January 2010, from Congressional Research Service (http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22452.pdf):

OIF: 4,410 KIA, 31,942 WIA
OEF: 2,299 KIA, 19,572 WIA

Troop levels also from CRS (http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R40682.pdf):

Cumulative FY02 -FY10:
OIF: 1,013,200
OEF: 238,300
Combined: 1,251,500

That comes out to the following hazard rate of KIA/WIA rate per 100,000 of:

OEF: 964 KIA; 8,213 WIA; 9,177 combined
OIF: 435 KIA; 3,152 WIA; 4,116 combined
OEF/OIF: 536 KIA; 4,116 WIA; 4,652 combined

Now, that's wartime. In comparison, during the eight years of the Clinton administration, there were 7,500 military deaths (I'm assuming most non-combat related). That gives an approximate rate of 53.72 deaths per 100,000.

As of 2007, the BLS had the following deaths per 100,000 rates for the jobs listed in the previous post:

1. Fishers: 111.8
2. Loggers: 86.4
3. Pilots: 70.7
4. Iron/Steel workers: 45.5
5. Famers: 39.5
6. Roofers: 29.4
7. Electrical workers: 29.1
8. Drivers: 28.2
9. Refuse collectors: 22.8
10. Police: 21.8
...
12. Construction: 19.5
13. Firefighters: 17.4

So, yes, the obvious answer is that military service during a time of war is more dangerous than any civilian job. But during a time of peace, it is more dangerous to be a fisherman, logger, or pilot.

[AmericanPride]

Carl,

Furthermore, if it as Fuchs claims that the only distinguishing factor in military labor from civilian labor is the "combat discipline", then you will have to establish that women are not capable of achieving "combat discipline". It is clear that all of the physical requirements in the military can be completed by women, and it's irrelevant if the strongest man is stronger than the strongest woman. Can you establish that the weakest man is stronger than strongest woman? If not, then there is no factual basis on which to exclude women by using physical strength as criterea.

[AmericanPride]

I have sympathy with the police, fireservices and first responders in general as their sacrifice is is essentially on behalf of others. This is like the soldier who dies in combat for his friends, his unit and the country (however misguided the particular war may be).

So it is a normative valuation, not a factual one.


Quite frankly I see no comparison between a driver dying in a motor accident and a soldier KIA.

What if both joined their respective jobs to pay for college or for the healthcare benefits for their families? There has been extensive discussions about values here, and you have made clear that it's based upon the assumption that people join "on behalf of others" and implicitly that culture and norms surrounding that act makes service-members in some way socially or even materially privileged compared to the public. But here the top 5 reasons people enlist:

1. Education
2. Stability
3. Respect (from community, family)
4. Sense of community
5. Adventure and challenge

Seeing how people join for self-gain, and that's how the military actively recruits and retains, on what basis can you argue that there's a special military culture and that this culture ought to be preserved?

[TheCurmudgeon]

In your last sentence, are you saying that "risk" is a or is related to a value that motivates your desire for military service?

The fact that you confuse "risk" with a "value" indicates that you will never understand what I am saying.


Also, I did edit my post from hero-worship to 'social privilege' since that captures more of what I'm aiming at here.

There is no "social privilege" associated with being a Soldier. Tell those that came back from Vietnam that it was their "Social Privilege" to be spat on and called "baby killer".

Like leadership is the result of the perception of the followers, any social recognition, good or bad, is a result of how the population perceived the Soldier.



There seems to be an underlying contradiction in values and culture here. If there is a "culture problem" or "tailspin of culture" of not working, why are African-Americans overrepresented in the military?

Sorry, I am not African-American, so I can’t answer that for you.

[AmericanPride]

The fact that you confuse "risk" with a "value" indicates that you will never understand what I am saying.

Then I guess I will never be privy to your wisdom. :rolleyes:

[TheCurmudgeon]

Then I guess I will never be privy to your wisdom. :rolleyes:

... few ever are ...:cool:

[JMA]

This is why I asked you if you were a reservist.

You really need to sit and listen to good Americans who joined the military to be professional soldiers over a career rather than as a hobby.

I put it to you that this is the source of problem in the military which Lind has highlighted.

The system attracts those with real potential to be professional soldiers less and less as the Congress continues to offer an easy and often cheap way to get a degree or as an option for a place of employment of last reort.

What gets lost in all the waffle is the aim of a military. What is the aim of the military of the US or any other state?

In my day the first principle (of war) was - the Selection and Maintenance of the Aim. It is against the aim that all this waffle about women, gays, intersex and demographics must be measured. It any of these aspects when measured against the impact on the military being able to meet its aim - its reason for existence - then it gets thrown out.

As a civilian you would understand that in commerce and industry any practice or procedure which reduces the bottom line gets tossed. The military's bottom line is the defense of the nation - any aspect which reduces its ability to achieve that aim should likewise also be tossed.



So it is a normative valuation, not a factual one.



What if both joined their respective jobs to pay for college or for the healthcare benefits for their families? There has been extensive discussions about values here, and you have made clear that it's based upon the assumption that people join "on behalf of others" and implicitly that culture and norms surrounding that act makes service-members in some way socially or even materially privileged compared to the public. But here the top 5 reasons people enlist:

1. Education
2. Stability
3. Respect (from community, family)
4. Sense of community
5. Adventure and challenge

Seeing how people join for self-gain, and that's how the military actively recruits and retains, on what basis can you argue that there's a special military culture and that this culture ought to be preserved?

[AmericanPride]

You really need to sit and listen to good Americans who joined the military to be professional soldiers over a career rather than as a hobby.

That does not change the factual reasons for why people joined the military in the first place. I was one of those "who joined the military to be [a] professional soldier over a career" and then decided against a full-time military career after several years, including one in Afghanistan. And the question also has to be asked: is it desirable for the US to maximize the number of "professional soldiers" or full-time careerists in the ranks?


The system attracts those with real potential to be professional soldiers less and less as the Congress continues to offer an easy and often cheap way to get a degree or as an option for a place of employment of last reort.

The inverse is true. The less that material benefits are offered, the less people are likely to join. As I pointed out in an earlier post, there is a relationship between a state's education spending and the quality of recruits from that state. There's also a relationship between education spending and declining enlistment rates - and that tells me that the military is offering insufficient incentive for quality enlistments (assuming the aim is to maximize quality enlistments). The more education people receive, the less likely they are to join the military (and this applies through all levels of education). That means they are finding opportunities perceived to be better than a full time military career. Recruitment achievements and practices since 2001 provide a good case study on incentives - and it has nothing to do with any special character of those enlisting.


What gets lost in all the waffle is the aim of a military. What is the aim of the military of the US or any other state?

That's a good question, and one I raised earlier when I discussed the military's mission(s) and functions with Carl.


It is against the aim that all this waffle about women, gays, intersex and demographics must be measured. It any of these aspects when measured against the impact on the military being able to meet its aim - its reason for existence - then it gets thrown out.

I agree - which is why it's important to establish that all of the policies of exclusion are in fact detrimental to the "Selection and Maintenance of the Aim".

[AmericanPride]

JMA,

Additionally, in looking at the enlistment and retention data I presented earlier, African-Americans present an interesting case study. They are over-represented in the services and, in the Army at least, they form a substantial portion of the senior NCO corps. These are your "professional soldiers" - but what are their qualities? What makes them professional soldiers? Is it their longevity in uniform? Their professional development? Are you going to argue that their over-representation is due to their greater patriotism than white, Asian, or Hispanic communities? I'm willing to bet that a number of them were not quality enlistments - they originated from states with few opportunities, but the military offered an opportunity that was otherwise not available. That is one of the functions of the military deliberately created by Congress and exploited by the military for enlistment and retention goals. And frankly, I think it's insulting to disparage the reasons why people enlist by mythologizing the hero-narrative and ignoring the real reasons why people actually decide to serve.

[carl]

What if both joined their respective jobs to pay for college or for the healthcare benefits for their families? There has been extensive discussions about values here, and you have made clear that it's based upon the assumption that people join "on behalf of others" and implicitly that culture and norms surrounding that act makes service-members in some way socially or even materially privileged compared to the public. But here the top 5 reasons people enlist:

1. Education
2. Stability
3. Respect (from community, family)
4. Sense of community
5. Adventure and challenge

Seeing how people join for self-gain, and that's how the military actively recruits and retains, on what basis can you argue that there's a special military culture and that this culture ought to be preserved?

None of that applies to people who join an go into a combat arm like the infantry, one where you are definitely going to be shooting at people and where they are going to shoot at you personally if there is a war. It is eminently possible to get all 5 of your reasons without going into a real combat arm. And even if you go into one in peacetime for the macho factor and change your mind when a war comes, getting out of it is easy. So any of those who go to the sharp end voluntarily, at least now, are doing for something other than the GI bill and health care.

So it seems to me that since the purpose of the military is to fight and win, the motivations of people who do that most directly are most important.

[former_0302]

AP, you have an awful lot of faith in statistics and biomedical research in light of this:

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-think-science-self-correcting-alarming-degree-it-not-trouble

In any event, even if one were to stipulate that your various research/numbers are true... why does the military need to be an instrument of societal change? To be specific, why impose women into combat arms fields as adults, when instead, you could impose them into coed sports from an early age?

Again stipulating that your research is true, choosing coed sports as your entry vehicle for change would a) bring a generation of women up from an early age raised in the environment that you seem to be perturbed that they have missed out on, b) physically prepare them for more rigorous activities as adults, and c) impose the cost of change on society in general, rather than on the military exclusively.

Would that not be better than imposing this on the military as an experiment, in which the lives of people may well be on the line?

[AmericanPride]

None of that applies to people who join an go into a combat arm like the infantry

So people who enlist into the infantry don't do so for the education benefits or the adventure?


So any of those who go to the sharp end voluntarily, at least now, are doing for something other than the GI bill and health care.

Not according to the enlistment data. Sure, I bet some do, and if you were to ask any servicemember if patriotism was important, they would answer in the affirmative; but on the whole, people enlist primarily for the 5 reasons I listed above. It is MOS immaterial.


So it seems to me that since the purpose of the military is to fight and win, the motivations of people who do that most directly are most important.

According to this thesis (www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA562838), that would be a soldier that fits this profile:


...a serviceman who is female, married, serving in the reserve forces, serving in a combat troop, between pay grades E1–E3, serving in Iraq, serving the first deployment is the serviceman with most potential to get injured or killed in the U.S. Army.

For the purposes of the linked thesis, "combat troop" includes infantry, armor, field artillery, combat engineers, and air defense artillery. Seeing how women cannot join combat arms (infantry, armor, artillery), it renders your point false.

[AmericanPride]

why does the military need to be an instrument of societal change?

I think that's a loaded question. First, the miltiary is the easiest for the political leadership to change - executive orders do not require Congressional approval, the military is subject to the oversight of Congress, etc. So like with Obama's move on minimum wage increases for federal contractors or with Congressional bashing of federal employees, the military is a target of opportunity. Is it good policy? Not always - but change is rarely neat and tidy. But it is often good politics.

Second, society changes. And those changes are eventually manifest in the electorate and in Congress - and that will change the military. It's my opinion that the military should be an active partner in this in order to help control the process, rather than have it imposed indiscriminately.

EDIT: Additionally, the military is not independent or distinct from society. It is a part of it, no matter how distant, and what it does is shaped and shapes the rest of the country. We should not be content in a democratic society with a military that claims a special place or privilege that renders it immune from society's preferences.


To be specific, why impose women into combat arms fields as adults, when instead, you could impose them into coed sports from an early age?

The better question is why are we excluding perfectly capable candidates from combat arms on the basis of their gender? It's already established that females can execute the same tasks; it's not relevant if more men than women can perform the tasks, or if the strongest man is stronger than strongest women. The fact is that many men cannot meet these same standards but they are not excluded on the basis of their gender. If women are not willining to join combat arms, that's a sociological problem, not a biological one.


Again stipulating that your research is true, choosing coed sports as your entry vehicle for change would a) bring a generation of women up from an early age raised in the environment that you seem to be perturbed that they have missed out on, b) physically prepare them for more rigorous activities as adults, and c) impose the cost of change on society in general, rather than on the military exclusively.

I agree that society has a long ways to go towards practicing full equality.


Would that not be better than imposing this on the military as an experiment, in which the lives of people may well be on the line?

There is somewhere a minimum of knowledge, skills, and abilities that an individual needs to be effective in combat. If someone meets or exceeds these knowledge, skills, and abilities, then they should be allowed to enlist in combat arms. This is not 'experimental' - it's already in practice on many levels, from education requirements, physical fitness and health requirements, and age requirements. (In some ways, I'd argue that current enlistment standards are more restrictive than this speculative standard). In any case, on what grounds can we justify the exclusion of women if they meet these standards?

[carl]

Carl,

Furthermore, if it as Fuchs claims that the only distinguishing factor in military labor from civilian labor is the "combat discipline", then you will have to establish that women are not capable of achieving "combat discipline". It is clear that all of the physical requirements in the military can be completed by women, and it's irrelevant if the strongest man is stronger than the strongest woman. Can you establish that the weakest man is stronger than strongest woman? If not, then there is no factual basis on which to exclude women by using physical strength as criterea.

I don't know what Fuchs claims. I do know the difference between Southwest Airlines and the military is nobody at Southwest can order you to die and you can quit anytime you want and they won't put you against the wall and shoot you for desertion. So much for that.

It may be clear to you that all of the physical requirements in the military can be completed by the average woman (note "average", you gotta plan for the average squadron pilot) but not to me. I would agree if you added the stipulation that they can be if much special training is given and you lowered them enough, but as of now, no.

Doesn't matter if you can establish the weakest women or the strongest man or whatever. What matters is winning because losing really sucks. And if winning wars means some individuals are excluded who might be able to make it because it is just to complicated to accomadate (sic) each individual and if that ain't perfectly fair, that's tough. Ya gotta win.

But physical strength isn't the most important reasons that women should not be in combat units. The most important reasons are social.

The first is, to me, the civilian, that the ability of units to fight effectively rests very heavily upon the social dynamics of men in groups. If you have a lot of women in there, you don't have men in a group you have a mobile small town and small towns throughout history have sent the men out to do the fighting. If you put a lot of women in there you know longer have the social dynamics of men in groups, which armies know a lot about, you have the social dynamics of a small town which armies know nothing about since nobody ever did it before. I'd prefer some other country conduct that experiment in combat.

There are even more important reasons, three that I can think of, that will result in the society or nation being rent asunder if woman in combat roles is taken fully forward.

First, if women are fully involved in combat roles there will be women who don't want to go. There are always people for whom patriotism, sense of duty, unit loyalty and the rest isn't enough and don't want to go where somebody will shoot a machine gun at their soft little pink body. The solution for this with men has been, essentially, they go and take the chance of getting killed or they don't go and definitely get hung or shot at dawn. Now if a women in a combat unit doesn't want to go the easiest thing in the world for her to do is to get pregnant. She isn't going to get hung or shot at dawn. If you do decide to do that to pregnant women there will be hell to pay in the society. You could force her to have an abortion and there will another kind of hell to pay in the society. Or you could shoot her after she delivers in which case you would be shooting a mother who just gave birth which mean more hell to pay. The upshot is there is no way around that problem if you don't want to tear the society apart. Women will always have an effective option to avoid combat that men don't have, which may tear the army apart.

Next, I was taught and teach people to the extent I can that it wrong to pick on girls. You don't hit women, you hold doors open for them, you get them out of the burning building or into the lifeboat first etc. They are in general smaller and weaker and it is wrong for the bigger and stronger to pick on the smaller and weaker. If you put women fully into combat roles because they are seen as 100% as capable as the men that deferential treatment of women no longer makes any sense. There is no reason to maintain it if women are as good at warring and participate in it as fully as men. That would not be a good thing for the average women out there. It would be tearing apart the social relationship between men and women that keeps a lot of women from getting hurt.

Related to that is this. It is hard enough for leaders to order men into a battle where they know a lot of them are going to die. Unless you completely remake the deferential treatment women are afforded it will make that leader's job even harder than it is now, so hard I think it would affect combat decision making. Would Adm Callaghan have been as likely to send the ships in against the IJN battleships? Maybe, but maybe not and the maybe not is a big thing.

Finally if women fully participate in combat roles and nothing is excluded there is no justification for excluding them from a draft and placing them into combat units. None. I was listening to the radio the other day and Mark Helprin was on. The subject of females being drafted came up and he said if that happened as far as he was concerned the social contract regarding military service was null and void and he would take his girls into the mountains and fight anybody who tried to take them. I believe he isn't the only one who thinks that. Considering the social turmoil drafts have caused in the past when only sons were taken, I can't image how bad society would be torn apart if they came after daughters.

As far as I'm concerned, none of this is worth giving the articulate and ambitious the opportunity to have their cards punched with the combat command punch.

[carl]

So people who enlist into the infantry don't do so for the education benefits or the adventure?

I don't figure so, not primarily. A dental tech gets education and if the dental tech goes to Germany to do some teching that can be viewed as plenty adventurous depending on the person. Infantry guys it seems to me, those who volunteer anyway, want to fight. There is a whopping difference.


Not according to the enlistment data. Sure, I bet some do, and if you were to ask any servicemember if patriotism was important, they would answer in the affirmative; but on the whole, people enlist primarily for the 5 reasons I listed above. It is MOS immaterial.

Asked and answered above.


According to this thesis (www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA562838), that would be a soldier that fits this profile:

For the purposes of the linked thesis, "combat troop" includes infantry, armor, field artillery, combat engineers, and air defense artillery. Seeing how women cannot join combat arms (infantry, armor, artillery), it renders your point false.

Boy talk about cherry picking stats!

But beyond that you lost me. Since women aren't in combat arms (infantry, armor, artillery) by which I assume you mean combat MOSs, does it mean when the thesis says "combat troop" people in any old MOS serving in say the 4th Infantry Division or does it mean in Combat Service troops or Combat Support Service troops or what?

[former_0302]

It's already established that females can execute the same tasks;

Patently false. So far, no woman has made it beyond day one of IOC.

Since by the speed of your response I take it you didn't read the Economist article I posted, I'll give you the cliff's notes. Just because a PhD publishes something, don't make it so.

[wm]

I am not. That was exactly my point. Grant was Grant because he had what it took. Excel had nothing to do with it. Written and verbal messages did the trick. He also didn't have a TOC with lots of individual monitors and some really big TV screens in the front. He had a horse, a camp stool, a tent, a table, paper, pens and that new fangled telegraph, which produced written messages.

:O geesh Carl--that's like saying the Captain of the Hunley was just as good a submariner s the captain of an Ohio class boomer (to paraphrase you) .

Had such technology been available to him, I suspect Grant would have had a much larger TOC. BTW, Grant also did not have UAVs, close air sport aircraft like A-10s and F-15Es, any kind of motorized or mechanized transport or armored fighting vehicles, machine guns, grenade launchers. wireless communications (unless you count carrier pigeons as such) or any technical surveillance means. When all you have to manage are men armed with muskets and early forms of carbines, His largest field artillery was smaller than the standard artillery used today with the 20 pound Parrot rifle being about Grant's largest field piece (I discount his siege train artillery.)



Never say never when it comes to ship fighting because you never know. At any rate ASW will probably involve ship to ship fighting.

But if you don't like the Slot, how about the picket destroyers north of Okinawa? In either case, men drowned, were rent limb from limb or were burned up or all three, over and over and over. The point was we haven't seen any serious naval fighting since WWII.
I didn't use "never" in my post--I wrote of likelihoods.

Modern ASW is not much about ship to ship fighting either, except in movies like the Hunt for Red October And, I submit we haven't seen serious naval fleet surface fighting since the WWI Battle of Jutland and with good reason. Those fleets cost way to much to put in harm's way any more than just a few ships in a raiding party (like Bismarck and Prinz Eugen and remember that Bismarck was basically turned into a sitting duck by a torpedo dropped by a between-the-wars-vintage biplane: a Fairey Swordfish, AKA Stringbag.) Go ahead and throw Coral Sea or Leyte Gulf at me as counter examples--then tell me just how many ships were sunk by surface gunfire. During the Leyte battles, Surigao Strait represented the closest thing to a stand up fight between surface ships as far as I know. The rest of the action was largely aircraft and submarines or destroyers using torpedoes. Sure Yamato sank a retreating escort carrier too, IIRC.
BTW, I'm not sure what the point about the horrors of dying at sea during WWII are meant to portray in the contact of this thread. Folks in a land forces Rear HQ that gets hit with napalm or VX will die just as terribly.

[Fuchs]

And, I submit we haven't seen serious naval fleet surface fighting since the WWI Battle of Jutland and with good reason.

You either have a strange idea of what's "serious" or there's a lot of naval history for you to catch up with.

The so far final engagement with more than one ship on either side was in 1973, and it was a very interesting one.

[Compost]

It is clear that all of the physical requirements in the military can be completed by women, and it's irrelevant if the strongest man is stronger than the strongest woman. Can you establish that the weakest man is stronger than strongest woman? If not, then there is no factual basis on which to exclude women by using physical strength as criterea.
The above is nonsense in assessing suitability for military labour because strength criteria are already - and necessarily - used to exclude men at about the 95% percentile.


It may be clear to you that all of the physical requirements in the military can be completed by the average woman (note "average", you gotta plan for the average squadron pilot) but not to me.
Average possibly but the underlying qualification is that an average squadron pilot may be ‘special’ to a particular type of squadron. A military pilot has to wear a helmet laden with life support, comms and sensor gear. The weight and inertia of that gear produces transverse loads during head turning and even small movement within seat restraints. One result is that fast jet pilots are especially liable to develop neck and back strains. Some pilots become disabled by the strains. Basic neck strength may not be formally measured but is nonetheless a criterion for determing suitability to become a pilot. Have heard it suggested that on the grounds of cost – for ab-initio test and for medical compensation – women be accepted only for training as pilots of ‘slow’ fixed-wing aircraft.

So just how different is female musculature ? The classic example is that of African women who carry heavy and bulky loads on top of the head directly above the spinal column. That might be described as upper body strength but does not indicate any capability to rapidly handle two 20-litre jerrycans, or even a single 25kg artillery shell.

A fast way for anyone to become a social outcast in a work environment is – other attractions notwithstanding – showing that he or she is not able to do the job.

[former_0302]

The above is nonsense in assessing suitability for military labour because strength criteria are already - and necessarily - used to exclude men at about the 95% percentile.



I'm going to pile onto Compost's point here a little bit. Our physical standards are misleading in several ways. Let's take the USMC's PFT as a benchmark, since it's what I'm most familiar with. The perfect score for a male Marine is achieved by doing 20 pullups, 100 crunches, and running three miles in 18 minutes or less. The perfect score for female Marines is currently achieved by doing a flexed-arm hang for 70 or more seconds, 100 crunches and running three miles in 21 minutes or less. They're trying to change the female standard to pullups, and when they do, the perfect score for them will be eight pullups.

What, however, does this test exactly quantify? I said upthread somewhere that performance on the PFT has little in common with being a good infantry Marine. As to why, Napoleon said it best:

“The most important qualification of a soldier is fortitude under fatigue and privation. Courage is only second; hardship, poverty and want are the best school for a soldier.”

The PFT does absolutely nothing to measure this. NOTHING.

So let's bring this back to IOC. Without giving anything about the curriculum of the school (it's not exactly fight club, but...), it is absolutely designed to make you deal with privation of several different kinds. I don't know whether or not IOC has specific standards for the sort of privation they expect graduates to be able to endure, but I do know that whatever those standards are, are the sort of thing we should be talking about when we speak of standards as related to combat units.

[former_0302]

Depends on the enemy.

Sorry it took me awhile to get back to you. Agree, but at the same time, I'd say you need to plan for the worst case, wouldn't you?

[AmericanPride]

Compost,

Your points were already addressed by an research paper I provided earlier in the thread and quoted extensively for carl.


So far, no woman has made it beyond day one of IOC.


So let's bring this back to IOC. Without giving anything about the curriculum of the school (it's not exactly fight club, but...), it is absolutely designed to make you deal with privation of several different kinds. I don't know whether or not IOC has specific standards for the sort of privation they expect graduates to be able to endure, but I do know that whatever those standards are, are the sort of thing we should be talking about when we speak of standards as related to combat units.

This is an interesting read (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fourteen-women-have-tried-and-failed-the-marines-infantry-officer-course-heres-why/2014/03/28/24a83ea0-b145-11e3-a49e-76adc9210f19_story.html) from one of those female lieutenants who has failed IOC. She raises many of the points I've brought up earlier: insufficient training for females, different expectations of male and female performance, etc. The bottom line is that not all men are permitted to perform in combat roles if they cannot meet the standards - they are assessed individually; not assumed that they all will fail because some of them do fail. That same policy should hold true for women as well.

[former_0302]

This is an interesting read (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fourteen-women-have-tried-and-failed-the-marines-infantry-officer-course-heres-why/2014/03/28/24a83ea0-b145-11e3-a49e-76adc9210f19_story.html) from one of those female lieutenants who has failed IOC. She raises many of the points I've brought up earlier: insufficient training for females, different expectations of male and female performance, etc. The bottom line is that not all men are permitted to perform in combat roles if they cannot meet the standards - they are assessed individually; not assumed that they all will fail because some of them do fail. That same policy should hold true for women as well.

Yep. Read it the day it was published. She quit. I don't care why she quit. She quit.

If you aspire to lead people in combat, you don't quit. Period. And since the article didn't say anything about how she had to go to the emergency room to get care for heat stroke (which is something I've seen Marines push themselves to, even in training), I can only assume that she did, in fact, have something left in her tank when she quit.

Lost in her article is the fact that the men don't get any special preparation for IOC while at TBS either. The differing standards for men and women are, in fact, irrelevant in terms of the first event at IOC. The standards are actually exactly the same for all Marines at TBS in the stuff that matters as prep for IOC--the forced marches are the same and have the same requirement. All Marines have to do the double obstacle course and the E-course; I believe that the time standards for those are different between the sexes, but that's irrelevant; there's nothing stopping the women from trying to achieve a time on par with the men in those events. The PFT score differences are, as I previously stated, not a metric which really means anything in terms of IOC.

If you want to do well at IOC, you need to walk into the school mentally prepared to do without an awful lot that you'd really like to have for 13 weeks. Nobody gets prep for that at TBS. Most nights, you sleep in the equivalent of a dorm room, can eat and sleep quite a bit most of the time, and are generally not screwed around with too much.

Bottom line, she wasn't prepared to do without. If her male peers were better prepared for it, it wasn't because of what the Marine Corps had asked them to do for the previous six months.

Edited to add: At least, that's what it was like when I went through the two schools several years ago. I doubt things have changed substantively, but they may have.

[Compost]

I'm going to pile onto Compost's point here a little bit. Our physical standards are misleading in several ways. Let's take the USMC's PFT as a benchmark, since it's what I'm most familiar with. The perfect score for a male Marine is achieved by doing 20 pullups, 100 crunches, and running three miles in 18 minutes or less. The perfect score for female Marines is currently achieved by doing a flexed-arm hang for 70 or more seconds, 100 crunches and running three miles in 21 minutes or less. They're trying to change the female standard to pullups, and when they do, the perfect score for them will be eight pullups.

What, however, does this test exactly quantify? I said upthread somewhere that performance on the PFT has little in common with being a good infantry Marine. As to why, Napoleon said it best:

“The most important qualification of a soldier is fortitude under fatigue and privation. Courage is only second; hardship, poverty and want are the best school for a soldier.”

The PFT does absolutely nothing to measure this. NOTHING.

So let's bring this back to IOC. Without giving anything about the curriculum of the school (it's not exactly fight club, but...), it is absolutely designed to make you deal with privation of several different kinds. I don't know whether or not IOC has specific standards for the sort of privation they expect graduates to be able to endure, but I do know that whatever those standards are, are the sort of thing we should be talking about when we speak of standards as related to combat units.

Napolean’s statement and perfect PFT tests are straw targets in every sense of that term. Napolean may have stressed fortitude and courage as his most and 2nd most important criteria. He did not declare that physical attributes were of zero or little concern.

Similarly obtaining a perfect PFT score is not a prerequisite for recruiting or posting to most parts of the USMC. Passing at some level is - with the possible exception of ‘elites - good enough to indicate current and future acceptable performance in that particular criterion.

It is of course possible to obtain a different type of perfection. Totally discard a prerequisite and hence accept absolutely every applicant as suitably qualified. Less perfectly, reduce a current standard and accept a wider span of applicants.

[wm]

You either have a strange idea of what's "serious" or there's a lot of naval history for you to catch up with.

The so far final engagement with more than one ship on either side was in 1973, and it was a very interesting one.

I find the Battle of Latakia to be small potatoes in terms of naval conflict. The Israeli corvettes run about 1000 tons in displacement and are less than 300 feet long. By comparison, an Arleigh Burke class destroyer has ten times the displacement and is about twice as long. The USS Missouri displaced 45,000 tons at almost 900 ft of length, and a WWI Koenig class battleship was about 26,000 tons and 575 ft. So, I guess my use of serious irelates to a combination of the number of vessels involved and their size.

[Fuchs]

I guess my use of serious irelates to a combination of the number of vessels involved and their size.

Even then you should pay attention to the Battle of Surigao Strait (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Surigao_Strait#The_Battle_of_Surigao_Str ait_.2825_October.29).

[wm]

Even then you should pay attention to the Battle of Surigao Strait (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Surigao_Strait#The_Battle_of_Surigao_Str ait_.2825_October.29).
I did; you might recheck my post to Carl. Most of the surface fighting was destroyer torpedo runs by the US IIRC. Fuso was sunk that way. Yamashiro was sunk by battleship gunnery but that was combat of unequals as Yamashiro was a pre-WWI battleship fighting against 3 of the most modern battleships the US had.Of the 6 US BBs in action, one fired no rounds and another fired just one full salvo.

[Fuchs]

(...) but that was combat of unequals as (...)

Skagerrakschlacht/Battle of Jutland was a battle of unequal forces as well.
The German High Seas Fleet blew up some vulnerable battlecruisers, but it had no chance against the squadrons of new 15" armed QEs and Rs which came into action only at very long ranges.
The vastly weaker side slipped away after blunting the vulnerable vangaurd of the enemy.


In short; by not accepting Surigao as a serious naval ship/ship battle you discount almost every battle but Jutland, and possibly even Jutland as not serious. The same goes for the "size of ships" criterion. By today's standards the ships of the line at Trafalgar were corvettes or small frigates!


@carl
"they go and take the chance of getting killed or they don't go and definitely get hung or shot at dawn."

You understand this is bollocks, right?

[carl]

@carl
"they go and take the chance of getting killed or they don't go and definitely get hung or shot at dawn."

You understand this is bollocks, right?

Not at all. That is the ultimate step. Depending on the severity of the fight, armies will graduate the penalties they mete out but they can always take that ultimate step. Every army I've read about did that, kill their deserters, depending upon how hard the fight was.

That won't always keep things in line though since it really is prophylactic step. There are always more men than people in authority and if the men decide to act en-masse there is little those in authority can really do. The trick is to keep things from getting that bad and, to be cold blooded about, executions are one of the tools used if need be there.

[Fuchs]

Not at all. That is the ultimate step. Depending on the severity of the fight, armies will graduate the penalties they mete out but they can always take that ultimate step. Every army I've read about did that, kill their deserters, depending upon how hard the fight was.

Nonsense.
The quote was clearly in a context implying that such extreme punishments without due trial were commonplace. Now you're moving goalposts and talk about what some of the most extreme armies did at their worst times.

At best you used a hyperbole, now you're defending it as if it was a sensible statement.

Here's another piece of nonsense of yours


I do know the difference between Southwest Airlines and the military is nobody at Southwest can order you to die and you can quit anytime you want and they won't put you against the wall and shoot you for desertion.

See? "military". Not 'extreme dictatorship's military that's desperate because it's losing badly', no "ultimate step" stuff or anything like that. You contrasted civilian jobs with military jobs in general.


You do realize we can still read, copy&paste what you wrote? How could you possibly think you could get away with this incoherent counter-factual nonsense?


To serve in a military which readily shoots its own men because of whatever is clearly different from working in a non-military job in a Western democracy.
But so is working as a civilian in that military's country, too.


P.S.: Nobody in a military "can order you to die".

P.S.2: I've been in here for what? Six years? And there are still people who want to pull off the most simple rhetoric tricks like moving goalposts on me? Don't you guys make any notes?

[carl]

I did; you might recheck my post to Carl. Most of the surface fighting was destroyer torpedo runs by the US IIRC. Fuso was sunk that way. Yamashiro was sunk by battleship gunnery but that was combat of unequals as Yamashiro was a pre-WWI battleship fighting against 3 of the most modern battleships the US had.Of the 6 US BBs in action, one fired no rounds and another fired just one full salvo.

I think you have mixed up your battleships. The newest of ours in that fight was I think the West Virginia, launched in 1921. All had been considerably modified of course and the West Virginia was sunk on Dec 7 and brought back to life.

[carl]

Nonsense.
The quote was clearly in a context implying that such extreme punishments without due trial were commonplace. Now you're moving goalposts and talk about what some of the most extreme armies did at their worst times.

My statement was simple, plain and true. Armies, every one that I've read of, kill their deserters if they feel the need. With due process or without, commonplace or not, they do it. That is a simple fact.


See? "military". Not 'extreme dictatorship's military that's desperate because it's losing badly', no "ultimate step" stuff or anything like that. You contrasted civilian jobs with military jobs in general.

No, that is the difference between military and civilian. You can be ordered to go out and die in a military organization and you can't quit if you feel like it. A banzai charge was effectively an order to die, gloriously maybe in the eyes of Imperial Japanese militarists, but it was an order to go out and die. When the Union soldiers got the warning order for the attack at Cold Harbor they knew that for many of them it was an order to die. They didn't write their names on pieces of paper and pin them to their uniforms for nothing. At Waterloo a unit was ordered by some peer to attack in line when a cavalry unit was plainly in sight on the flank of their route. That was an order to die. They did as they were ordered and most of them did.

So yea, soldiers can be ordered to die. And soldiers can't leave when they feel like it. There may be some exceptions to the leave when they feel like it part but in general it's a no go, especially in war.

[carl]

:O geesh Carl--that's like saying the Captain of the Hunley was just as good a submariner s the captain of an Ohio class boomer (to paraphrase you).

Good riposte! It made me laugh out loud.


Had such technology been available to him, I suspect Grant would have had a much larger TOC. BTW, Grant also did not have UAVs, close air sport aircraft like A-10s and F-15Es, any kind of motorized or mechanized transport or armored fighting vehicles, machine guns, grenade launchers. wireless communications (unless you count carrier pigeons as such) or any technical surveillance means. When all you have to manage are men armed with muskets and early forms of carbines, His largest field artillery was smaller than the standard artillery used today with the 20 pound Parrot rifle being about Grant's largest field piece (I discount his siege train artillery.)

Maybe he would have. I suspect not, at least not all of it, maybe even not most of it. He was a very plain just the basics kind of guy I've read. From what I've read an awful lot of what we use is there only because it is shiny and new, not so much because it is useful.

I think you very much underestimate the complexity of running those old armies. The Union Army was very large so you had all the complexities that go with feeding, clothing, paying, providing medical care hundreds of thousands of men in any era. Plus you had horses back then, tens of thousands of them. If you ever stopp and think what it takes to fully train and fight a cavalry unit, it is quite complicated. So I think it quite unwise to think that because the didn't have to sling trons, those guys had it simple.

Those armies did have motorized transport, steamers, both river and ocean going, and railroads.


Modern ASW is not much about ship to ship fighting either, except in movies like the Hunt for Red October And, I submit we haven't seen serious naval fleet surface fighting since the WWI Battle of Jutland and with good reason. Those fleets cost way to much to put in harm's way any more than just a few ships in a raiding party (like Bismarck and Prinz Eugen and remember that Bismarck was basically turned into a sitting duck by a torpedo dropped by a between-the-wars-vintage biplane: a Fairey Swordfish, AKA Stringbag.) Go ahead and throw Coral Sea or Leyte Gulf at me as counter examples--then tell me just how many ships were sunk by surface gunfire. During the Leyte battles, Surigao Strait represented the closest thing to a stand up fight between surface ships as far as I know. The rest of the action was largely aircraft and submarines or destroyers using torpedoes. Sure Yamato sank a retreating escort carrier too, IIRC.
BTW, I'm not sure what the point about the horrors of dying at sea during WWII are meant to portray in the contact of this thread. Folks in a land forces Rear HQ that gets hit with napalm or VX will die just as terribly.

First off, you're wrong about that last serious surface actions being Jutland. They didn't call it Iron Bottom Sound for nothing, and many of those ships were sunk in a long series of night surface actions.

But that isn't really important. The point was we haven't seen serious naval fighting since WWII.

As far as ship to ship action goes, I doubt we've seen that last of that by a long shot. I understand sinking subs will mainly be the job of other sube, a ship to ship action. And if a surface combatant shoots an Asroc type weapon at a sub or a sub shoots anything at a surface ship that is a ship to ship action. (Fuchs says airplanes aren't that good at ASW anymore. If he is right then ASW will be mostly ship to ship. I think he said that.)

Big time naval fighting doesn't come around very often as you say. It has been 70 years since WWII and it was about 100 years between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and WWI or 90 if you count the Russo-Japanese War. But it does come around. And often it doesn't matter if you want to keep the ships out harm's way. Harm's way tends to seek them out.

I always bring up what actual sea fighting entails for the sailors because people often just see the machines. There it is. Oops it sunk. People are on those things and they have experiences. That matters.

Now it is time for my smart aleck remark of the afternoon. The historical casualty rate in land forces rear HQs hasn't been so high as to make people in the infantry count their lucky stars that they didn't have the misfortune to be posted back at D-Main.

[AmericanPride]

But physical strength isn't the most important reasons that women should not be in combat units. The most important reasons are social.

Thank you for finally admitting that the problem is social and therefore subject to change by policy.

Your remaining points are humorous at best and very paternalistic. Women shouldn't be allowed into combat arms because female deserters will get pregnant to avoid getting shot? And because people shouldn't pick on girls? So therefore we should exclude all women from combat arms? I thought we were talking about war, not grade school. :p


Bottom line, she wasn't prepared to do without. If her male peers were better prepared for it, it wasn't because of what the Marine Corps had asked them to do for the previous six months.

It seems to me from her article, and my understanding of the dozen or so women who have attempted IOC, that she accepts that answer. But that 12 women failed one course is not indicative of all women failing all combat arms courses for all time.


Yep. Read it the day it was published. She quit. I don't care why she quit. She quit.

Did she quit because she was a woman?

[Fuchs]

No, that is the difference between military and civilian. You can be ordered to go out and die in a military organization and you can't quit if you feel like it. A banzai charge was effectively an order to die, gloriously maybe in the eyes of Imperial Japanese militarists, but it was an order to go out and die. When the Union soldiers got the warning order for the attack at Cold Harbor they knew that for many of them it was an order to die. They didn't write their names on pieces of paper and pin them to their uniforms for nothing. At Waterloo a unit was ordered by some peer to attack in line when a cavalry unit was plainly in sight on the flank of their route. That was an order to die. They did as they were ordered and most of them did.

So yea, soldiers can be ordered to die. And soldiers can't leave when they feel like it. There may be some exceptions to the leave when they feel like it part but in general it's a no go, especially in war.

You're dealing in extremes here. (Besides, every soldier who can fight 'the enemy' also has the capacity to fight against who truly takes his freedom instead of doing as ordered).

You're mistaken if you think I couldn't find similar in the realm of civilian work.


Military Mi-8s were used to lower supplies to ground workers. Later, fitted with external spray systems, they helped drop a bonding mixture over the (Chernobyl) reactor area to prevent contaminated dirt from spreading. Aeroflot-supplied versions executed precise drops of the chemical in bulk form, using their own pilots who were trained for Arctic oil-pipe laying and fire-fighting control in the former Soviet Union.

The Mi-8's four-axis autopilot gives it added yaw, pitch and roll stabilisation under any flight conditions. This made it ideal for precision flying close to the exploded reactor.
http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/operation-chernobyl-12245/

Ever read about who fought the fires in German cities 1944/45? Hint: not only soldiers. In fact, few if any soldiers. Do you have an idea about what it's like fighting a firestorm? Or what it's like staying in the control centre bunker of a coal powerplant during an air raid? Again, civilians. And yes, they would not have improved their odds of survival if they had said "####, I'm outta here".


What's next? A claim that these civilians were exceptions?
Well, let me count the Banzai charges of the U.S.Air Force during the Iraq occupation then so I can establish the ratio of "Banzai!" to airmen...
Oh, wait. "Civilians" were the only ones who blew themselves up in that conflict. Many airmen were enjoying air conditioning meanwhile.


You argue for special status of military personnel based on extremes which rarely ever affect them, but which affect a few civilians as well.
Your case is incoherent because military personnel isn't that special. Some soldiers developed a certain class conceit about their trade, though.


Besides, most incidences of such class conceit are not about soldiers supposedly accepting greater risks. Most of what examples I saw were snobbier than that: They were pretending a superior morality.
There was usually a huge influence by right wing attitudes sniffable - particularly conceit about "moochers", "liberals", and the like.

The idea of military personnel being special or superior to the general population is more an authoritarian-leaning political attitude almost always found in military forces staging a coup d'tat than it is a justifiable assertion.

[wm]

I think you have mixed up your battleships. The newest of ours in that fight was I think the West Virginia, launched in 1921. All had been considerably modified of course and the West Virginia was sunk on Dec 7 and brought back to life.
You answered your own point--Except for the Arizona, the battleships sunk/damaged at Pearl in 1941 were all substantially recapitalized, which was also my point about new--particularly with regard to fire control radar. The reason that the three other battleships were only minimally engaged at Surigao Strait was that, being without the new radar, they were unable to derive timely firing solutions to engage the Japanese.


Skagerrakschlacht/Battle of Jutland was a battle of unequal forces as well.
The German High Seas Fleet blew up some vulnerable battlecruisers, but it had no chance against the squadrons of new 15" armed QEs and Rs which came into action only at very long ranges.
The vastly weaker side slipped away after blunting the vulnerable vanguard of the enemy. Most of the British fleet never got into action. The first engagement between Beatty's and Hipper's battlecruisers was pretty much of an even match. The 4 QE battleships supporting Beatty did not get in range. In the main event, only 2 of Jellicoe's battle squadrons were really engaged. Capital ships (heavy cruiser and above) in the two fleets numbered 45 Brit to 27 German while capital ship loss was 6 Brit to 2 German.



The same goes for the "size of ships" criterion. By today's standards the ships of the line at Trafalgar were corvettes or small frigates! Trying to compare an 18th century sail-powered ship of the line to a 20th century diesel powered armored battleship or even a guided missile frigate is comparing tree frogs to kangaroos.

[carl]

You answered your own point--Except for the Arizona, the battleships sunk/damaged at Pearl in 1941 were all substantially recapitalized, which was also my point about new--particularly with regard to fire control radar. The reason that the three other battleships were only minimally engaged at Surigao Strait was that, being without the new radar, they were unable to derive timely firing solutions to engage the Japanese.

You said "3 of the most modern battleships the US had". None of those battleships were modern. None could be considered among the most modern the US had. All were old and refurbished.

[carl]

You're dealing in extremes here. (Besides, every soldier who can fight 'the enemy' also has the capacity to fight against who truly takes his freedom instead of doing as ordered).

Yes, the difference between civilian and military is extreme. That is the point. And yes every soldier can rebel against authority, that is why every army I've ever read of tries to nip that in the bud by killing those of their own who desert or disobey when things get hard enough.


You're mistaken if you think I couldn't find similar in the realm of civilian work.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/operation-chernobyl-12245/

Check the same thing for all the policemen and firemen who went into the twin towers on 9-11 and didn't come out. They went in on their own. They could have quit on the spot if they wanted to and not gone in. My point wasn't at all about the bravery that many people exhibit very often. My point was about people who want to run away can be forced to stay in the military and while civilians can mostly scoot.


Ever read about who fought the fires in German cities 1944/45? Hint: not only soldiers. In fact, few if any soldiers. Do you have an idea about what it's like fighting a firestorm? Or what it's like staying in the control centre bunker of a coal powerplant during an air raid? Again, civilians. And yes, they would not have improved their odds of survival if they had said "####, I'm outta here".

Yeah, I did read about them, in Bomber by Len Deighton. That was a really good book. Very brave people. But were they drafted and forced to stay in those jobs if they didn't want to? I don't know.


What's next? A claim that these civilians were exceptions?
Well, let me count the Banzai charges of the U.S.Air Force during the Iraq occupation then so I can establish the ratio of "Banzai!" to airmen...
Oh, wait. "Civilians" were the only ones who blew themselves up in that conflict. Many airmen were enjoying air conditioning meanwhile.

You lost me.


You argue for special status of military personnel based on extremes which rarely ever affect them, but which affect a few civilians as well.
Your case is incoherent because military personnel isn't that special. Some soldiers developed a certain class conceit about their trade, though.

I am arguing that the military is fundamentally different from the civilian world. My case is quite solid in that respect.


Besides, most incidences of such class conceit are not about soldiers supposedly accepting greater risks. Most of what examples I saw were snobbier than that: They were pretending a superior morality.
There was usually a huge influence by right wing attitudes sniffable - particularly conceit about "moochers", "liberals", and the like.

The idea of military personnel being special or superior to the general population is more an authoritarian-leaning political attitude almost always found in military forces staging a coup d'tat than it is a justifiable assertion.

I don't know what this is about or who it is directed to.

[carl]

Thank you for finally admitting that the problem is social and therefore subject to change by policy.

No, I said among the reasons, and some I consider the most important are social. Even those reasons are matters of social construct that were created to deal with the fact that women in general are smaller and weaker than men.


Your remaining points are humorous at best and very paternalistic. Women shouldn't be allowed into combat arms because female deserters will get pregnant to avoid getting shot? And because people shouldn't pick on girls? So therefore we should exclude all women from combat arms? I thought we were talking about war, not grade school. :p

AP, if you can't follow the arguments I made just don't reply. Replies to arguments I didn't make are too tiresome to refute.

[former_0302]

It seems to me from her article, and my understanding of the dozen or so women who have attempted IOC, that she accepts that answer. But that 12 women failed one course is not indicative of all women failing all combat arms courses for all time.

Haha. Well, she should accept that answer, because it's the truth. It is also why, IMO, you're much better off fighting your crusade in a younger demographic of women. Stipulating that the various research you've posted in this thread has any real merit at all (of which I'm somewhat dubious), the way to correct the problem is not when the women are already adults; it's too late by then. Their formative years have been spent in less competitive environments, so they haven't mentally and physically developed to be on an even playing field. If they had... I'd still argue that it would take generations to "fix," but they would certainly be in a better position to be on a level playing field by the time they were adults.

As for the 12 failures (I think it's actually 14), no, it's not indicative of that. However, it's not encouraging that it's a 100% failure rate on the first day of a 13 week-long school, in an event which is not among the five toughest events at said school.


Did she quit because she was a woman?

Since the only reason I can think of for you asking me this question, in context of what you quoted, is that you're trolling me, I'm going to bid you farewell AP. It's not all you; I've got a deadline for something coming up anyway.

Thanks all for the banter, it's been interesting...

[JMA]

This is an interesting read (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fourteen-women-have-tried-and-failed-the-marines-infantry-officer-course-heres-why/2014/03/28/24a83ea0-b145-11e3-a49e-76adc9210f19_story.html) from one of those female lieutenants who has failed IOC. She raises many of the points I've brought up earlier: insufficient training for females, different expectations of male and female performance, etc. The bottom line is that not all men are permitted to perform in combat roles if they cannot meet the standards - they are assessed individually; not assumed that they all will fail because some of them do fail. That same policy should hold true for women as well.

In reading this article there are some key issues of interest IMHO:


I was one of four women in the group, bringing the number to 14 female officers who had attempted the course since it was opened to women in the fall of 2012. All the women so far had failed — all but one of them on the first day.

and


I reflected: Why did I fail?

and


Female lieutenants aren’t as prepared as male lieutenants for the Infantry Officer Course’s tests of strength and endurance because they’ve been encouraged to train to lesser standards.

and finally


I also would have liked to have had the opportunity to try the course again. The Marine leadership has said it doesn’t want female lieutenants taking the course multiple times, at least until combat positions are available to women, because it doesn’t want to delay the rest of their training. Yet many of the men who failed alongside me in January are back at Quantico, training to retake the course in April.

Firstly, where I come from if a soldier takes a service related problem to the media there would have been consequences. Secondly, whoever drafted the regulations with different rules for females in being allowed to take the course again should be fired (just like the incompetents who were unable to draft hair regulations for African-American females should have been drummed out of the service).

She knew that all but one of the females who had attempted the course before had failed on the first day yet she arrived in boots that gave her a bloodblister on day one. This is not a smart person we are dealing with here.

When she fails she looks elsewhere for blame thereby refusing to take personal responsibility for her actions. How did she get commissioned with this fatal character flaw? Is there some sort of quota system for females on the officers course?

Baseball is an American game. Make it three strikes and you are out. If she or any other male or female fails three times they get booted out of the service - and not 'dumped' elsewhere. Better still make it two strikes.

It is of interest to me that people get commissioned before their MoS or corps has been decided. The British have followed this crazy idea as well where you do your Platoon Commanders training after having been commissioned. The problem comes that you end up with a bunch of 2Lt running around looking for a job. If they don't make it in the Infantry they get 'dumped' somewhere else. In this case she wants to be a pilot. My question would be why would entry to pilot training be less arduous than for the Infantry?

Fire this whining failure, fix the regulations and move on.

[carl]

JMA:

The reason this type of thing happens is twofold. The progressives, liberals, chattering class elites, superzips or whatever you want to call them are very enthusiastic about using the military as a laboratory for social experimentation and engineering. Who can blame them for being so excited? They get into a position of political power and when they tell soldiers what to do, they have to obey them. "What a trip dude, we don't have to cajole them they just have to obey." Civilians are so bothersome in that respect, so many of them have opinions of their own and insist on thinking for themselves, but the military has to obey. The superzips don't concern themselves about the effect these things will have on US ability to fight and win wars because they believe wars won't happen again especially since wars are our nasty fault anyway and if we are nice enough they won't occur.

This is stupid but the 'zips are civilians too so they get to have dopey ideas. The real problem is the most important thing Lind mentioned, the moral rot at the heart of the American officer corps. That rot manifests itself in a general officer corps that will not provide a counterweight to the dangerous enthusiasms of the superzips. They will not because honest, principled opposition would be dangerous to their careers. And their careers are the most important thing because they do not view the military as thing that is there to defend the country by fighting when needed, they view the military as a vehicle to advance their careers. To them that is why the Army exists, the Navy exist, the USMC exists and the USAF exists; to provide opportunities for one stars to be two stars to be three stars and if the stars align properly and Gen. Massingale plays his cards right, to be four stars. These guys aren't stupid, just morally corrupt. They pose a mortal danger to the nation, one that when the next big war comes, the good officers of moral fibre, and there are a lot, who haven't been weeded out yet may not have time to overcome before defeat comes.

(Great point about the boots. I never thought of that.)

[JMA]

Carl we can look at this piece from 1926:


"We am make a catalogue of the moral qualities of the greatest captains but we cannot exhaust them. First there will be courage, not merely the physical kind which is happily not uncommon, but the rarer thing, the moral courage which Washington showed in the dark days at Valley Forge, and which we call fortitude — the power of enduring when hope is gone, the power of taking upon one's self a crushing responsibility and daring all, when weaker souls would play for safety. There must be the capacity for self-sacrifice, the willingness to let worldly interests and even reputation and honour perish, if only the task be accomplished. The man who is concerned with his own prestige will never move mountains. There must be patience, supreme patience under misunderstanding and set-backs, and the muddles and interferences of others, and the soldier of a democracy especially needs this. There must be resilience under defeat, a tough vitality and a manly optimism, which looks at the facts in all their bleakness and yet dares to be confident. There must be the sense of the eternal continuity of a great cause, so that failure and even death will not seem the end, and a man sees himself as only a part in a predestined purpose."
Homilies and Recreations by John Buchan 1926


I'm afraid most countries militaries have long since lost it so this is not a situation perculiar only to the US officer corps.

Looking deeper into all this I believe soldiers are indeed a breed apart from the average citizen which is why both careful and stringent selection processes are vital. This would be for a standing army as opposed to during a general mobilisation when just about anyione gets accepted into the military.

Again here there are those who will maintain you can make a soldier out of anyone... I would ask then what is the definition of a soldier?

[Fuchs]

The reason this type of thing happens is twofold. The progressives, liberals, chattering class elites, superzips or whatever you want to call them are very enthusiastic about using the military as a laboratory for social experimentation and engineering.

There was no need to elaborate so much on how much your opinion is really a right wing ideology rather than descriptive of the actual relative nature of military jobs.

[wm]

Homilies and Recreations by John Buchan 1926

An interesting choice of authority. Here are some career highlights for the 1st Baron Tweedsmuir PC GCMG GCVO CH, from Wikipedia.


Buchan then enlisted in the British Army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Intelligence Corps, where he wrote speeches and communiqus for Sir Douglas Haig. Recognised for his abilities, Buchan was appointed as the Director of Information in 1917, under the Lord Beaverbrooka job that Buchan said was "the toughest job I ever took on" and also assisted Charles Masterman in publishing a monthly magazine that detailed the history of the war, the first edition appearing in February 1915 (and later published in 24 volumes as Nelson's History of the War). and as Governor General of Canada,

Buchan's experiences during the First World War made him averse to conflict, he tried to help prevent another war in coordination with United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt and Mackenzie King. But he apparently sold out and

authorised Canada's declaration of war against Germany in September, shortly after the British declaration of war and with the consent of King George; and, thereafter, issued orders of deployment for Canadian soldiers, airmen, and seamen as the titular commander-in-chief of the Canadian armed forces.

Talk about your moral courage or fortitude . . .Seems like a "do as I say, not as I do" kind of guy.

[carl]

There was no need to elaborate so much on how much your opinion is really a right wing ideology rather than descriptive of the actual relative nature of military jobs.

There's always a need.

[carl]

An interesting choice of authority. Here are some career highlights for the 1st Baron Tweedsmuir PC GCMG GCVO CH, from Wikipedia.

and as Governor General of Canada,
But he apparently sold out and

Talk about your moral courage or fortitude . . .Seems like a "do as I say, not as I do" kind of guy.

Ok now we know what you think of the man. What do you think of his words as quoted? I thought they were pretty good.

[JMA]

And all that from a quick Google search... I wonder if you are able to substantiate your indictment of the man?



An interesting choice of authority. Here are some career highlights for the 1st Baron Tweedsmuir PC GCMG GCVO CH, from Wikipedia.

and as Governor General of Canada,
But he apparently sold out and


Talk about your moral courage or fortitude . . .Seems like a "do as I say, not as I do" kind of guy.

[JMA]

There was no need to elaborate so much on how much your opinion is really a right wing ideology rather than descriptive of the actual relative nature of military jobs.

Carl has an opinion rather like you appear to support 'militant pacifism'.

[JMA]

Looking deeper into all this I believe soldiers are indeed a breed apart from the average citizen which is why both careful and stringent selection processes are vital. This would be for a standing army as opposed to during a general mobilisation when just about anyione gets accepted into the military.

Carl,in support of this contention I borrow from Lord Moran in his Anatomy of Courage (http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Courage-Classic-Psychological-Effects/dp/0786718994/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1399618224&sr=1-1&keywords=Anatomy+of+courage)


It is a grey world these clever people live in; they see in human nature only its frailty. These little servants of routine, these poor spirits whose hearts are with their bankers, who sought safety in life and still seek it in the turmoil of a bloody strife, can they impart the secret of constancy in war? ‘All warlike people are a little idle and love danger better than travail.‘ That love of danger has the ring of another day, but it is still true that the pick of men, as we knew them in the trenches, were not always the chosen of more settled times. These clever people when it came to the choice between life and death called vainly to their gods, they helped them not at all. Success, which in their lives had meant selfishness, had come in war to mean unselfishness. If we once believe that the capacity to get on in life is not everything, we shall be in a fair way to employ in peace tests of character as searching as those which the trenches supplied in war.

I contend that fortitude in war has its roots in morality", that selection is a search for character, and that war itself is but one more test - the supreme and final test if you will - of character. Courage can be judged apart from danger only if the social significance and meaning of courage is known to us, namely that a man of character in peace becomes a man of courage in war. He cannot be selfish in peace and yet be unselfish in war.

Here I repeat my theme from my earlier posts in SWC that recruiting needs to be carefully targeted and certainly no reliance on the use of 'walk-in' recruiting offices - on Times Square for example - made to draw the 'right' candidates into the service.

I add this link: Charles Wilson, 1st Baron Moran (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Wilson,_1st_Baron_Moran) to allow wm to provide a rapid character assessment of the author.

[wm]

Ok now we know what you think of the man. What do you think of his words as quoted? I thought they were pretty good.

I agree that the words read well. I am not so sure of the need for patience, but then I am one of those impatient Americans. I also am not of a mind to support the "sense of the eternal continuity of a great cause.". That sort of attachment can lead us to excessive "missionary zeal" of the kind found in things like Hitler's 1000 year Reich, AQ efforts to restore the Caliphate, or the Spanish Inquisition.

The US Army used to teach the 4 C's: courage, candor, competence, and commitment, as military virtues (and I hope it still does). However, please remember Aristotle's definition of a virtue: the mean between two extremes of a passion. Courage, for example is not the absence of fear. Rather it is having the appropriate amount of fear. What that amount is will vary from person to person and situation to situation, which, by the way, is why one cannot exhaust the catalogue of moral qualities as Buchan noted in the quotation's opening sentence.

[wm]

Looking deeper into all this I believe soldiers are indeed a breed apart from the average citizen which is why both careful and stringent selection processes are vital. This would be for a standing army as opposed to during a general mobilisation when just about anyione gets accepted into the military.

Again here there are those who will maintain you can make a soldier out of anyone... I would ask then what is the definition of a soldier?

A soldier is one who defends non-soldiers from the attacks of others. Soldiers are a breed apart because society has authorized them to violate the prohibition against killing other humans. However, that authorization comes at a price. Soldiers may also be killed. The right to kill is limited to other combatants, however, and we must still respect the human being that is wearing the uniform. The right to kill is granted to soldiers because they serve as defenders by proxy for all those others in the soldiers' countries who are not soldiers. This includes the civilians in your opponents' country as well. This last constraint requires that soldiers must expose themsves to additional risks to protect any and all non-combatants. Otherwise soldiers are not performing their primary duty of protecting non-combatants. Too often the focus shifts, wrongly, from protection to winning. The aim, then, of any military is to defend civilians. This is codified in the Preamble to the US Constitution with the phrase, "provide for the common defense."
I refer folks to Jaspers' The Question of German Guilt for a reasoned position on why a country's non-combatants are innocents.

[Fuchs]

A soldier is one who defends non-soldiers from the attacks of others.

Much of the time, they themselves are the ones attacking. Your description fits better to policemen, bodyguards and bouncers than soldiers.


Soldiers are a breed apart because society has authorized them to violate the prohibition against killing other humans.

No, this only applies to warfare - and many non-military combatants are then authorised to do the same.
A normal soldier is not authorised to kill anyone during almost his entire career.


You guys keep mistaking "war" for "military".


Challenge:

You guys claim soldiers are substantially different (or superior) to civilians in general. I write "in general" because you keep writing "soldiers" without much qualifiers (at war, in combat arms etc.) attached.

Show how this soldier is special:

An airman works in an air force depot, doing inventory and equipment checks on spare parts. The inventory starts again once it's done, week after week. He's working with a civilian there who does the exact same thing.

What's so substantially different about this soldier to justify any special attitude or expectations for rewards?

[carl]

An airman works in an air force depot, doing inventory and equipment checks on spare parts. The inventory starts again once it's done, week after week. He's working with a civilian there who does the exact same thing.

What's so substantially different about this soldier to justify any special attitude or expectations for rewards?

I don't know about any justifications or expectations but what is different is the airman can be ordered to leave the depot and go to the front and fight as an infantryman and he has to go or face penalty. The civilian doesn't.

[carl]

Wm:

Most all good words in your two posts above.

There is one small thing I would sort of disagree with and it is about "sense of the eternal continuity of a great cause." A great cause is not confined only to big politics and big ideology I think. I think a great cause could also be that soldiers and soldiering be what you enunciated in post #190. That is a great cause worth pursuing for as long as there are men.

[Fuchs]

I don't know about any justifications or expectations but what is different is the airman can be ordered to leave the depot and go to the front and fight as an infantryman and he has to go or face penalty. The civilian doesn't.

Not if there's peace. Besides, airman? A civilian can be drafted and be ordered to go fight at the front as well, and that's in many countries much more likely to happen than this happening to an airman.

Again, the difference is not mil/civ, but 'mil at war'/'civ away from war'


Why is it so hard to think logically about this, instead of blurring lines all the time and then drawing an allegedly unblurred conclusion?

[carl]

Not if there's peace. Besides, airman? A civilian can be drafted and be ordered to go fight at the front as well, and that's in many countries much more likely to happen than this happening to an airman.

Again, the difference is not mil/civ, but 'mil at war'/'civ away from war'

Why is it so hard to think logically about this, instead of blurring lines all the time and then drawing an allegedly unblurred conclusion?

Soldiers are soldiers because they are to fight and they don't have the option to refuse sans penalty when ordered. Civilians do.

If a civilian is ordered to the front he in effect just got drafted.

Lots of German airman got sent to the front as well as many American Army Air Corps guys at Bataan.

[Steve Blair]

Challenge:

You guys claim soldiers are substantially different (or superior) to civilians in general. I write "in general" because you keep writing "soldiers" without much qualifiers (at war, in combat arms etc.) attached.

Show how this soldier is special:

An airman works in an air force depot, doing inventory and equipment checks on spare parts. The inventory starts again once it's done, week after week. He's working with a civilian there who does the exact same thing.

What's so substantially different about this soldier to justify any special attitude or expectations for rewards?

This is actually a very good challenge/question. I've worked with military folks for a great percentage of my life, and this fairly recent attitude of exceptionalism is disturbing. I do think it's worth looking at and discussing without references to exceptional situations like Bataan and the like.

Folks seem to forget that for a great many years the Army in the United States was seen as alternately unnecessary, a mercenary force composed mainly of foreigners, or an instrument of Government oppression. Most popular acclaim was saved for state-based Volunteer units. Much of the glorification of the military gained momentum after the First Gulf War (for a variety of reasons, including some delayed guilt on the part of elites when it came to memories of their denouncement of the troops during Vietnam), and it's only gained steam ever since.

The military is in many ways an institution like any other large organization. You're going to have good folks, bad folks, and those who just do their job and go home. But the system's also set up to reward those who can "work the system" and doesn't reward or advance the sort of people they like to laud in hindsight (a Patton or an Olds wouldn't make it very far these days). And certain segments of the culture are seriously broken. To give one example, anyone who was surprised by the recent problems the Air Force's ICBM force is experiencing simply hasn't been paying attention to the culture.

I'll dismount the soapbox now, but I still think the original challenge/question is a good one. Having worked on a post during the late '90s, I saw a fair number of soldiers find ways to avoid deployments or other unfavorable assignments. They may not have a "check the box" option, but there are certainly ways to do it without significant penalty.

[wm]

Fuchs,
US military members are authorized to use deadly force outside the battlefield as well. The restrictions are very explicit, but that, as well as being subject to a special penal code, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, in the US anyway, make military members a separate group from most folks in the country.

[Fuchs]

Fuchs,
US military members are authorized to use deadly force outside the battlefield as well. The restrictions are very explicit, but that, as well as being subject to a special penal code, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, in the US anyway, make military members a separate group from most folks in the country.

I noted how Floridian civilians "are authorized to use deadly force outside the battlefield" in general and in ways soldiers in New York State aren't. The restrictions in Florida infamously are not very explicit. I also heard about how bodyguards, guards, policemen, executioners and in many countries also hunters/park rangers are authorized to use deadly force outside the battlefield", and in often ways soldiers aren't.

Killing is no military monopoly - and certainly not so in peacetime. In fact, intentional kills by soldiers are in peacetime again extremely uncommon and rather the extreme exception compared to the many legal kills by civilians.
So no, the big difference regarding "killing" is also about war/no-war, not mil/civ.

Besides; even in wartime civilians are hardly going to be prosecuted by their own country for killing a hostile soldier.

-----

Did you know tenured civil administrations, policemen, seamen and plenty other civilian job groups are under a special penal code in many countries all over the world? In fact, the penal code of German policemen is by its nature a twin of the Bundeswehr's. As is in fact the penal code for all German tenured public servants. Teachers, for example. Yes - a first grade teacher who teaches children the alphabet is under a special penal code in some countries!

I made a quick google search, and it confirmed that in the United States there's a huge legal difference between a public servant in a utilities institution and a normal employee in the same job.
Did you ever hear about a conviction for "abuse of office" by a non-government employee?
Me neither.
Non-governmental jerks can be fired, but never charged with "abuse of office".

-----

Besides, even IF soldiers were different/special because of special penal code or killing authorization:
That would still not support all the attitude stuff about it. No support for higher morality, hardly support for requirement of higher morality such as no cheating on spouses, no 'deserving' much respect et cetera.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Since you all have lost any connection with the original intent of the thread, I will throw this out:

Let women fight on the front line: Defence Secretary tells Army to end macho image

Tory Cabinet Minister reveals plan for women to be given combat roles
Review was due in 2018 but will be brought forward to this year
Chief of the General Staff will report to Hammond by end of year
Hammond says current ban sends bad signal Army not 'open to women'
Says 'macho image' of the Army is wrong. Claims reality 'very different'

By Daniel Martin and Ian Drury

Published: 09:56 EST, 8 May 2014 | Updated: 19:01 EST, 8 May 2014

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Women soldiers could be allowed into frontline combat roles, it was announced yesterday.

Signalling the historic change, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said it was time for the Armed Forces to abandon the ‘macho’ image and show they were open to everyone who was fit enough.

He said the US, Canadian and Australian armies allowed women to serve in combat roles – and so should Britain.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2623429/Time-ditch-macho-image-allow-women-fight-frontline-Defence-Secretary-Philip-Hammond-says.html#ixzz31GHLvQXF
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[wm]

I noted how Floridian civilians "are authorized to use deadly force outside the battlefield" in general and in ways soldiers in New York State aren't. The restrictions in Florida infamously are not very explicit. I also heard about how bodyguards, guards, policemen, executioners and in many countries also hunters/park rangers are authorized to use deadly force outside the battlefield", and in often ways soldiers aren't.

Killing is no military monopoly - and certainly not so in peacetime. In fact, intentional kills by soldiers are in peacetime again extremely uncommon and rather the extreme exception compared to the many legal kills by civilians.
So no, the big difference regarding "killing" is also about war/no-war, not mil/civ.

Besides; even in wartime civilians are hardly going to be prosecuted by their own country for killing a hostile soldier. Too bad you have chosen to use mockery and equivocation to try to make points.

On a serious note, the US has a history of fear of standing armies, choosing instead to rely on the call up of militia forces in time of need. I submit that European nations have a fear of militias (but I cannot substantiate this other than by appeal to the rest of Europe's reaction to Napoleon's armies of the people and the results of the Congress of Vienna). Does Germany having anything like the US National Guard, which is a military force in each state under the control of the governor of that state? In some states, a state militia also exists alongside the National Guard. The National Guard primarily provides support to local (state) law enforcement and disaster relief agencies when it has not been called into Federal service.

I also suspect that most European nations are federal unions with little to no states rights (although I seem to remember that the Bavarian Free State is or was somewhat unique in its relationship to the rest of Germany and Switzerland is a confederation.) The US started as a confederation, not a federal union, which may explain some of the differences between the US military and that of European nations or the former colonies of European nations.

Did you know tenured civil administrations, policemen, seamen and plenty other civilian job groups are under a special penal code in many countries all over the world? In fact, the penal code of German policemen is by its nature a twin of the Bundeswehr's. As is in fact the penal code for all German tenured public servants. Teachers, for example. Yes - a first grade teacher who teaches children the alphabet is under a special penal code in some countries!

I made a quick google search, and it confirmed that in the United States there's a huge legal difference between a public servant in a utilities institution and a normal employee in the same job.
Did you ever hear about a conviction for "abuse of office" by a non-government employee?
Me neither.
Non-governmental jerks can be fired, but never charged with "abuse of office."

Besides, even IF soldiers were different/special because of special penal code or killing authorization:
That would still not support all the attitude stuff about it. No support for higher morality, hardly support for requirement of higher morality such as no cheating on spouses, no 'deserving' much respect et cetera.
American business executives can be tried for abuse of office, although it is not called that. Still things like insider trading are exactly such abuses of office in the private sector.. (Check out Bernie Madoff or Jeff Skilling for examples.)

In American English at least, "special" can just mean different, it does not always have a connotation of "better." The attitude you are describing is, I think, an outgrowth of the attitude about the great cause described in the JMA quotation from Buchan (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showpost.php?p=156214&postcount=181) to which I expressed concern in a later post (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showpost.php?p=156236&postcount=189)in response to Carl

(Aside to The Curmudgeon--I'm trying to get back to the critique by Lind.) The last few lines above may be of use as an explanation for some of the officer failings Lind asserts. I believe that much of the US military does not have this overinflated sense of self-worth. Rather, my experience with them is that they are a humble and self-effacing group of folks. In fact, I think that were the US to follow the proposals made by JMA for selection and training, the expression by military members of their superiority and entitlement to special privilege would be even worse, in the American military at least.

[JMA]

And all that from a quick Google search... I wonder if you are able to substantiate your indictment of the man?

wm... I am waiting for a response to this.

Your cheap shot should not go unchallenged as you are not setting the example of the 'morality' of officers which you espouse.

[JMA]

I agree that the words read well. I am not so sure of the need for patience, but then I am one of those impatient Americans. I also am not of a mind to support the "sense of the eternal continuity of a great cause.". That sort of attachment can lead us to excessive "missionary zeal" of the kind found in things like Hitler's 1000 year Reich, AQ efforts to restore the Caliphate, or the Spanish Inquisition.

OK... now you need to share your war experience - briefly - so others can understand the context and where you are coming from as this does not make sense.


The US Army used to teach the 4 C's: courage, candor, competence, and commitment, as military virtues (and I hope it still does). However, please remember Aristotle's definition of a virtue: the mean between two extremes of a passion. Courage, for example is not the absence of fear. Rather it is having the appropriate amount of fear. What that amount is will vary from person to person and situation to situation, which, by the way, is why one cannot exhaust the catalogue of moral qualities as Buchan noted in the quotation's opening sentence.

I submit you have missed the essential point.

The characteristics mentioned in my quotes from Buchan and Moran should be used during the selection process prior to officer training starting.

You talk of teaching virtues . Now the bad news is - using your example - is that you can't teach the 4 Cs.

This I suggest is the greatest fallacy and probaby the main reason behind the moral and intellectual collapse Lind speaks of.

My contention is that the selection and training of potential officers is the most critical aspect which in the case of the US seems to attract the least attention. See thread Initial Officer Selection (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=14027&highlight=Initial+Officer+selection)

To cover the fatal flaws in the US officer selection system the fallacy "made, not born" has become the mantra of those unable or unwilling ro make the necessary changes to fix the system ... or worse, those who don't even realise the system is broken.

If you wish to take this discussion further please indicate your exposure with selection and training of officers ... training in the real sense and not teaching officer cadets trivial aspects such as English and Geography (for example).

[JMA]

The convention is to cite the source of what you post. Just so I understand you, is this your personal opinion or where did you get this from?


A soldier is one who defends non-soldiers from the attacks of others. Soldiers are a breed apart because society has authorized them to violate the prohibition against killing other humans. However, that authorization comes at a price. Soldiers may also be killed. The right to kill is limited to other combatants, however, and we must still respect the human being that is wearing the uniform. The right to kill is granted to soldiers because they serve as defenders by proxy for all those others in the soldiers' countries who are not soldiers. This includes the civilians in your opponents' country as well. This last constraint requires that soldiers must expose themsves to additional risks to protect any and all non-combatants. Otherwise soldiers are not performing their primary duty of protecting non-combatants. Too often the focus shifts, wrongly, from protection to winning. The aim, then, of any military is to defend civilians. This is codified in the Preamble to the US Constitution with the phrase, "provide for the common defense."
I refer folks to Jaspers' The Question of German Guilt for a reasoned position on why a country's non-combatants are innocents.

[JMA]

Challenge:

You guys claim soldiers are substantially different (or superior) to civilians in general. I write "in general" because you keep writing "soldiers" without much qualifiers (at war, in combat arms etc.) attached.

Show how this soldier is special:

An airman works in an air force depot, doing inventory and equipment checks on spare parts. The inventory starts again once it's done, week after week. He's working with a civilian there who does the exact same thing.

What's so substantially different about this soldier to justify any special attitude or expectations for rewards?

Badly worded, very badly worded.

First of all a 'soldier' is a fighting man. An army in the field requires logistic supply in the form of both lethal and non-lethal stores and equipment. In the old days the commissariat looked after the non-lethal stuff.

Perhaps the only reason to put the commissariat and other rear elements in uniform is sothat they can be subjected to military discipline. In other words if the troops in the field need stuff urgently you just instruct them to work through the night and over the weekend if necessary to dispatch the goods to the soldiers in need. If they don't comply they you jail them. If they were civilians they would say, "Well I'll have to speak to my union first". Get the point?

Is your example based on your military experience?

Same applies. That storeman would be in uniform only because of the need to subject him to military discipline. There is no comparison between this store man and a fighting man. There is no problem IMHO for fighting men to put these rear eschelon types in the picture - physically if necessary - to remind them of their position in the pecking order when necessary.

[JMA]

Why is it so hard to think logically about this, instead of blurring lines all the time and then drawing an allegedly unblurred conclusion?

Yes indeed, it is difficult to understand why you are so confused about this issue.

[JMA]

Soldiers are soldiers because they are to fight and they don't have the option to refuse sans penalty when ordered. Civilians do.

If a civilian is ordered to the front he in effect just got drafted.

Lots of German airman got sent to the front as well as many American Army Air Corps guys at Bataan.

This is really a non-issue.

[JMA]

This is actually a very good challenge/question. I've worked with military folks for a great percentage of my life, and this fairly recent attitude of exceptionalism is disturbing.

Please help me understand where you are coming from here.

This work you have done with 'military folks' has it always been stateside or also in combat?

There is an essential issue here and that is the 'grunts' or GIs can't be faulted for their efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan. On the other hand the performance of the senior officers - home and away - has been questionable and that of the politicians has been disgraceful.

[wm]

wm... I am waiting for a response to this.

Your cheap shot should not go unchallenged as you are not setting the example of the 'morality' of officers which you espouse.
In the original post I noted the quotations were from Wikipedia. Here is the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Buchan,_1st_Baron_Tweedsmuir. Perhaps you would like to refute the claims made therein and thereby prove my post was a "cheap shot.". (BTW, it has quite a bit more content to chew on than what is found at the Wikipedia link you provided for Lord Moran.) I also note that the source indicates Buchan was one of Alfred Milner's proteges in South Africa during Buchan's early career. Wasn't Milner responsible for management of the concentration camps where thousand of women and children died during the 2nd Boer War?

The convention is to cite the source of what you post. Just so I understand you, is this your personal opinion or where did you get this from?
This is my opinion. I "got" it from many years of reading, thinking, and talking with others in a wide variety of venues about the morality of war. I was going to start listing the sources, but came to the conclusion that compiling such a list covering about 50 years of such activity would be subject to error by exclusion and well outside the scope of this thread.


I submit you have missed the essential point.

The characteristics mentioned in my quotes from Buchan and Moran should be used during the selection process prior to officer training starting.

You talk of teaching virtues . Now the bad news is - using your example - is that you can't teach the 4 Cs.

I do not believe I missed the point. When I mentioned the 4C's, I tried to express (apparently not well) that the US Army taught that the 4C's were virtues, not that the Army taught others to be virtuous. (I hope I know my Aristotle well enough not to make that mistake.) Back in the day, the US Army's Leadership Field Manual FM22-100 portrayed examples of leaders demonstrating the 4Cs as part of its "Be, Know, Do" process, which, by the way, focuses on training not teaching, two very different things.

Please explain exactly how you would assess candidates for officer training prior to starting it. In the US Army, candidates are assessed during their training as officer candidates and cadets for such qualities. They may be terminated from commissioning programs for lack of aptitude--mental, physical, and/or leadership. They may also leave the programs voluntarily. A USMA graduate has been assessed for 4 years prior to receiving a commission, a ROTC candidate is assessed for at least a year, more usually 2-4 years. The shortest assessment time frame is for Officer Candidate School (OCS) graduates at 12 weeks, but they have also had prior active service time as an enlisted member, which was used as part of the assessment for selection into OCS in the first place. Candidates for ROTC and USMA are also subject to assessment prior to being accepted into those programs.

A more important concern is who assesses the assessors? What qualities should they display?
USMA cadets are required to learn what they know as Worth's Battalion Orders ([url]http://www.west-point.org/academy/malo-wa/inspirations/buglenotes.html]):

But an officer on duty knows no one -- to be partial is to dishonor both himself and the object of his ill-advised favor. What will be thought of him who exacts of his friends that which disgraces him? Look at him who winks at and overlooks offenses in one, which he causes to be punished in another, and contrast him with the inflexible soldier who does his duty faithfully, notwithstanding it occasionally wars with his private feelings. The conduct of one will be venerated and emulated, the other detested as a satire upon soldiership and honor.

Brevet Major William Jenkins Worth
One trusts that the cadets "internalize" the sentiments expressed by Major Worth. But as President Reagan said, "Trust but verify." In the course of their education and training, cadets are also evaluated by the tactical and academic faculty on their character development and expression. A significant portion of their academic instructors and all their tactical instructors are military members for just this reason.

[carl]

...(a Patton or an Olds wouldn't make it very far these days).

That is our very great problem and one of the things Lind was driving at.

Perhaps another thing he was driving at is exemplified by the punishment given Adm Giardina. He is still in uniform. He will still get the big pension. It may never happen but I wonder what the effect on things would be if Adm Giardina got a general discharge and no pension.

[carl]

Please explain exactly how you would assess candidates for officer training prior to starting it. In the US Army, candidates are assessed during their training as officer candidates and cadets for such qualities. They may be terminated from commissioning programs for lack of aptitude--mental, physical, and/or leadership. They may also leave the programs voluntarily. A USMA graduate has been assessed for 4 years prior to receiving a commission, a ROTC candidate is assessed for at least a year, more usually 2-4 years. The shortest assessment time frame is for Officer Candidate School (OCS) graduates at 12 weeks, but they have also had prior active service time as an enlisted member, which was used as part of the assessment for selection into OCS in the first place. Candidates for ROTC and USMA are also subject to assessment prior to being accepted into those programs.

A more important concern is who assesses the assessors? What qualities should they display?
USMA cadets are required to learn what they know as Worth's Battalion Orders ([url]http://www.west-point.org/academy/malo-wa/inspirations/buglenotes.html]):

One trusts that the cadets "internalize" the sentiments expressed by Major Worth. But as President Reagan said, "Trust but verify." In the course of their education and training, cadets are also evaluated by the tactical and academic faculty on their character development and expression. A significant portion of their academic instructors and all their tactical instructors are military members for just this reason.

This is good in theory but how many are actually removed because of lack of character? I don't know but I ask because of something I read in Rick's Best Defense a few years ago.

A guy wrote a story about how an upperclassman broke his arm during some kind of training evolution. It was an avoidable thing, the upperclassman was just a meathead who got real enthusiastic when given the chance to thump people with no possibility of getting hit back. People here probably all know the type. The point was, aside from some sour looks, nothing happened to the upperclassman. He was not removed despite what seems an obvious character flaw and went on to be commissioned.

That is only one story but the guy wrote it to illustrate the point that the system doesn't seem well equipped to remove the meatheads and perhaps the game players too.

[Fuchs]

First of all a 'soldier' is a fighting man.

First of all, you deal too much in counter-factuals:


sol•dier (ˈsoʊl dʒər)

n.
1. a person engaged in military service.
2. an enlisted man or woman, as distinguished from a commissioned officer.
3. a person of military skill or experience.
4. a person dedicated to a cause.
5. a low-ranking member of a crime organization.
6. a member of a caste of sexually underdeveloped female ants or termites specialized, as with powerful jaws, to defend the colony from invaders.

[wm]

This is good in theory but how many are actually removed because of lack of character? I don't know but I ask because of something I read in Rick's Best Defense a few years ago.

A guy wrote a story about how an upperclassman broke his arm during some kind of training evolution. It was an avoidable thing, the upperclassman was just a meathead who got real enthusiastic when given the chance to thump people with no possibility of getting hit back. People here probably all know the type. The point was, aside from some sour looks, nothing happened to the upperclassman. He was not removed despite what seems an obvious character flaw and went on to be commissioned.

That is only one story but the guy wrote it to illustrate the point that the system doesn't seem well equipped to remove the meatheads and perhaps the game players too.
I cannot tell you how many get removed for the various reasons, nor can I tell you how many choose to leave voluntarily or somewhat involuntarily. However, you might recall that in America we live with the assumption that people are innocent until proven guilty and that it is better to let a thousand criminals go free than to punish an innocent person. I submit that the system is set up to work within those assumptions.

For example , cadets who are members of the Cadet Honor Committee investigate and try other cadets for honor code violations. However the dismissal authority for an honor violation is the Secretary of the Army, a political appointee. Make your own judgment.

Here is a counter anecdote to your story: At his 40th USMA class reunion, a retired colonel asked whether he would have time to get to the cadet bookstore to buy a copy of a certain book. The reason he wanted this book was because he had borrowed a copy of it from one of his classmates while they were still cadets and had failed to return it. Since he knew this classmate would be at the reunion, he wanted to be sure he could return the book. I find that to be a rather strong expression of duty and honor--the first two words in the USMA motto. YMMV

[carl]

I cannot tell you how many get removed for the various reasons, nor can I tell you how many choose to leave voluntarily or somewhat involuntarily. However, you might recall that in America we live with the assumption that people are innocent until proven guilty and that it is better to let a thousand criminals go free than to punish an innocent person. I submit that the system is set up to work within those assumptions.

That works well enough in the criminal justice system. I don't think it works so well in officer selection. It is in my view far worse to let a thousand bad apples become second lieutenants than get rid of one who might not deserve to go.


Here is a counter anecdote to your story: At his 40th USMA class reunion, a retired colonel asked whether he would have time to get to the cadet bookstore to buy a copy of a certain book. The reason he wanted this book was because he had borrowed a copy of it from one of his classmates while they were still cadets and had failed to return it. Since he knew this classmate would be at the reunion, he wanted to be sure he could return the book. I find that to be a rather strong expression of duty and honor--the first two words in the USMA motto. YMMV

Well and good, but as a civilian that is what I expect to be the norm. That is what I pay for and that is what the services advertise they produce and imply is the norm. Judging by what we see so very often, it isn't.

[JMA]

OK... back to your question then.

You are absolutely correct, there is absolutely no reason why your airman who is a spare-parts storeman can ever be 'special'.

But... soldiers who have seen combat and aquitted themselves well will always be special.


First of all, you deal too much in counter-factuals:


sol•dier (ˈsoʊl dʒər)

n.
1. a person engaged in military service.
2. an enlisted man or woman, as distinguished from a commissioned officer.
3. a person of military skill or experience.
4. a person dedicated to a cause.
5. a low-ranking member of a crime organization.
6. a member of a caste of sexually underdeveloped female ants or termites specialized, as with powerful jaws, to defend the colony from invaders.

[JMA]

In the original post I noted the quotations were from Wikipedia. Here is the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Buchan,_1st_Baron_Tweedsmuir. Perhaps you would like to refute the claims made therein and thereby prove my post was a "cheap shot.". (BTW, it has quite a bit more content to chew on than what is found at the Wikipedia link you provided for Lord Moran.) I also note that the source indicates Buchan was one of Alfred Milner's proteges in South Africa during Buchan's early career. Wasn't Milner responsible for management of the concentration camps where thousand of women and children died during the 2nd Boer War?

Your cheap shot was:


Talk about your moral courage or fortitude . . .Seems like a "do as I say, not as I do" kind of guy.

I asked you to explain how you reached that conclusion. Clearly you would rather duck-and-dive and worm your way out of that.

[JMA]

This is my opinion. I "got" it from many years of reading, thinking, and talking with others in a wide variety of venues about the morality of war. I was going to start listing the sources, but came to the conclusion that compiling such a list covering about 50 years of such activity would be subject to error by exclusion and well outside the scope of this thread.

Then we are so far apart on the definition of a soldier better we leave it there.

[JMA]

I do not believe I missed the point. When I mentioned the 4C's, I tried to express (apparently not well) that the US Army taught that the 4C's were virtues, not that the Army taught others to be virtuous. (I hope I know my Aristotle well enough not to make that mistake.) Back in the day, the US Army's Leadership Field Manual FM22-100 portrayed examples of leaders demonstrating the 4Cs as part of its "Be, Know, Do" process, which, by the way, focuses on training not teaching, two very different things.

Yes you have missed the point.

I said:


The characteristics mentioned in my quotes from Buchan and Moran should be used during the selection process prior to officer training starting.

The 'virtues' you speak of should be selected for - prior to commencement of training - and not taught during the course.


Please explain exactly how you would assess candidates for officer training prior to starting it.

I gave you the link of the thread earlier: Initial Officer Selection (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=14027&highlight=Initial+Officer+Selection)


In the US Army, candidates are assessed during their training as officer candidates and cadets for such qualities. They may be terminated from commissioning programs for lack of aptitude--mental, physical, and/or leadership. They may also leave the programs voluntarily. A USMA graduate has been assessed for 4 years prior to receiving a commission, a ROTC candidate is assessed for at least a year, more usually 2-4 years. The shortest assessment time frame is for Officer Candidate School (OCS) graduates at 12 weeks, but they have also had prior active service time as an enlisted member, which was used as part of the assessment for selection into OCS in the first place. Candidates for ROTC and USMA are also subject to assessment prior to being accepted into those programs.

The thread I mentioned covers all this, but suffice it to say that the in comparison to the other NATO countries the US army has the least efficient pre-course officer selection process. The evidence and the argument is in that thread.

I suggest that this initial fatal flaw - in officer selection and training - contributes to what Lind alleges manifests itself later in the careers of the officer corps.


A more important concern is who assesses the assessors? What qualities should they display?

Good question. Why you asking me?


USMA cadets are required to learn what they know as Worth's Battalion Orders ([url]http://www.west-point.org/academy/malo-wa/inspirations/buglenotes.html]):

One trusts that the cadets "internalize" the sentiments expressed by Major Worth.

While I would have selected other words and a slightly difference nuance that sounds fair enough.


But as President Reagan said, "Trust but verify." In the course of their education and training, cadets are also evaluated by the tactical and academic faculty on their character development and expression. A significant portion of their academic instructors and all their tactical instructors are military members for just this reason.

Sounds good but do yourself a favour and read through that thread it may just assist you to see these matter more clearly.

[JMA]

I cannot tell you how many get removed for the various reasons, nor can I tell you how many choose to leave voluntarily or somewhat involuntarily. However, you might recall that in America we live with the assumption that people are innocent until proven guilty and that it is better to let a thousand criminals go free than to punish an innocent person. I submit that the system is set up to work within those assumptions.

Wow... I guess this is what you would call inflation.

[I sought some advice from someone who used to post here]

William Blackstone said in the 1760s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_formulation): "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"

Then your Benjamin Franklin got ahead of himself:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Ben-franklin-blackstone.jpg/382px-Ben-franklin-blackstone.jpg

Now with you it gets to 1,000!

I guess we need to get our feet back firmly on the ground with this (http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm):


The story is told of a Chinese law professor, who was listening to a British lawyer explain that Britons were so enlightened, they believed it was better that ninety-nine guilty men go free than that one innocent man be executed. The Chinese professor thought for a second and asked, "Better for whom?"

[wm]

Then we are so far apart on the definition of a soldier better we leave it there.
I suspect your "soldier" would be much more like what I might call a "warrior. " Militaries need some warriors at the pointy end of the spear, but the spear has a lot more to it than just the point. When a military has too many of them, it must create "special" forces of various kinds and keep pumping up their membership's egos by telling them just how "special" they are.


I guess we need to get our feet back firmly on the ground
When it comes to services academies, that is probably not going to happen. You said it quite well here (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=14027&highlight=Initial+Officer+Selection&page=13).

West Point like Sandhurst are national institutions which are almost impossible to tinker with... say no more
I would note, however, that USMA was partly formed to provide a Republican Party (the party Americans now know as the Democrats) counterweight to the predominantly Federalist officer corps of the time. Jefferson, the primary author of the sentiment found in the Declaration of Independence "that all men are created equal," was President when USMA was created. USMA graduates did much to help grow America in the 1800s and much of what they did and still do would not fit under the definition I think you ascribe to the term "soldier."
Because of this fact, your proposal for officer initial selection would probably not provide America what it wants from its military officers. The American military does more than just fight and win the nation's wars or "provide for the common defense." (Ask your legal advisor to tell you about the various titles in the US Code that apply to the military.)

While many have been at odds with American Pride's posts about the need of the American army to reflect the country's population, that, in fact, has been a policy goal since Jefferson. Warriors may not like it, but soldiers accept it and do the best to accomplish it along with their other assigned missions. It is one of the dilemmas those who choose a career of military service in America must face. I would not doubt that similar dilemmas exist in other militaries, but I can only speak to the military that I know.

[wm]

Your cheap shot was:




Talk about your moral courage or fortitude . . .Seems like a "do as I say, not as I do" kind of guy.



I asked you to explain how you reached that conclusion. Clearly you would rather duck-and-dive and worm your way out of that.
Your original request was rather different. viz.:

And all that from a quick Google search... I wonder if you are able to substantiate your indictment of the man?




Buchan's experiences during the First World War made him averse to conflict, 1.he tried to help prevent another war in coordination with United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt and Mackenzie King.

But he apparently sold out and



authorised Canada's declaration of war against Germany in September, shortly after the British declaration of war and with the consent of King George; and, thereafter, issued orders of deployment for Canadian soldiers, airmen, and seamen as the titular commander-in-chief of the Canadian armed forces.

Here's a formalization of the proof that I used:
1. Buchan does not like wars and tries to stop them (true from Wikipedia)
2. Buchan authorized Canada's declaration of war (true from Wikipedia)
3. If a person claims to have certain beliefs about what is right but behaves in a way that disagrees with those beliefs, then that person is a hypocrite. (Paraphrase into a conditional of the meaning of hypocrite-true by definition.)
4. Buchan said one thing/claimed certain beliefs, and he behaved differently (from premises 1 and 2 above by instantiation and conjunction introduction)
5 Buchan is a hypocrite (from 3 and 4 by Modus Ponens)

So the "cheap shot" I posted was actually much more watered down than what I actually concluded from what I read.

[carl]

I would note, however, that USMA was partly formed to provide a Republican Party (the party Americans now know as the Democrats) counterweight to the predominantly Federalist officer corps of the time. Jefferson, the primary author of the sentiment found in the Declaration of Independence "that all men are created equal," was President when USMA was created. USMA graduates did much to help grow America in the 1800s and much of what they did and still do would not fit under the definition I think you ascribe to the term "soldier."
Because of this fact, your proposal for officer initial selection would probably not provide America what it wants from its military officers. The American military does more than just fight and win the nation's wars or "provide for the common defense." (Ask your legal advisor to tell you about the various titles in the US Code that apply to the military.)

While many have been at odds with American Pride's posts about the need of the American army to reflect the country's population, that, in fact, has been a policy goal since Jefferson. Warriors may not like it, but soldiers accept it and do the best to accomplish it along with their other assigned missions. It is one of the dilemmas those who choose a career of military service in America must face. I would not doubt that similar dilemmas exist in other militaries, but I can only speak to the military that I know.

We could get away with picking officers based upon things other than leadership ability, character and fighting talent but I don't think we can do that anymore. We got away with it up until the end of the Second World War because we had the oceans between us and the rest of the world and as importantly the Royal Navy sailed upon those oceans to keep the world away and help us hugely when we needed it. The war ended and the Royal Navy was there no more. But that didn't matter because the war had broken everything in the world outside the Western Hemisphere and it took them decades to catch up.

Now they have caught up and our fighting services will be called upon to fight without the Royal Navy and the time and options it gave us. That lack of time and options will have to be made up by the ability of our fighting services to fight, effectively, especially the Navy. The ability of our services to fight depends directly upon the quality of the officer corps and how its members are selected and promoted. Though we probably will we really can't afford to dink around anymore.

Also, I don't see how good character isn't prerequisite for any officer in the services whether that officer is a civil engineer, passes out socks or maybe leads one of my nephews into battle.

[carl]

Here's a formalization of the proof that I used:
1. Buchan does not like wars and tries to stop them (true from Wikipedia)
2. Buchan authorized Canada's declaration of war (true from Wikipedia)
3. If a person claims to have certain beliefs about what is right but behaves in a way that disagrees with those beliefs, then that person is a hypocrite. (Paraphrase into a conditional of the meaning of hypocrite-true by definition.)
4. Buchan said one thing/claimed certain beliefs, and he behaved differently (from premises 1 and 2 above by instantiation and conjunction introduction)
5 Buchan is a hypocrite (from 3 and 4 by Modus Ponens)

So the "cheap shot" I posted was actually much more watered down than what I actually concluded from what I read.

Can I try some sophistry too?

Here goes.

Mother of the year is a pacifist and wouldn't hurt anybody or anything anywhere for any reason. She lived her life by that and never wavered. She didn't swat mosquitoes, she gently brushed them away and wished them well. One day she comes home and a home invader has her 14 year old daughter down and is beating her and from the state of dishabille of both parties, the home invader is about to have his way with the girl. Mother picks up a golf club and cracks the home invader's head like a melon and keeps on swinging. The club breaks and she sticks the sharp end into the guy's heart.

Conclusion: Mother is a hypocrite.

[JMA]

Your original request was rather different. viz.:

Here's a formalization of the proof that I used:
1. Buchan does not like wars and tries to stop them (true from Wikipedia)
2. Buchan authorized Canada's declaration of war (true from Wikipedia)
3. If a person claims to have certain beliefs about what is right but behaves in a way that disagrees with those beliefs, then that person is a hypocrite. (Paraphrase into a conditional of the meaning of hypocrite-true by definition.)
4. Buchan said one thing/claimed certain beliefs, and he behaved differently (from premises 1 and 2 above by instantiation and conjunction introduction)
5 Buchan is a hypocrite (from 3 and 4 by Modus Ponens)

So the "cheap shot" I posted was actually much more watered down than what I actually concluded from what I read.

Wow... and you were teaching ethics and logic at some point?

On this you get a Fail grade.

Lets start here with your man:


I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity.

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, speech, Jan. 10, 1946

So Eisenhower shared Buchan's belief based on experience of personal exposure to war.

Therefore his attempts to prevent another war are understandable, acceptable and logical.

But what role did Buchan personally have in the Canadian Declaration of War against Germany which led to your labelling him a hypocrite?

I don't wish to humiliate you and you can curse the inaccuracies of Wikipedia if you wish but...

A little education:

Going to war? 'Parliament will decide' (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/going-to-war-parliament-will-decide/article4287580/)


The Statute of Westminster of 1931, negotiated by King's government but enacted in Britain when the Conservative government of R.B. Bennett was in office, had been a declaration of independence, giving Canada the powers in foreign policy to accompany its full control over domestic policy.

But if the nation was independent in fact, it did nothing to exert itself on the international stage. In power again from 1935, King said little as the world drifted toward war. If they listened at all, the Nazis, the Fascists and the militarists in Tokyo heard only "Parliament will decide" from Ottawa.

And Parliament did. Summoned back to Ottawa, the members of the House of Commons and the Senate heard the governor-general, Lord Tweedsmuir, tell them that the government proposed to go to war at Britain's side. Yes, the country's tiny regular military and naval forces and weak reserves had been called to the colours; yes, action had begun to round up potential subversives under authority of the War Measures Act of 1914; but no, Canada was not yet at war and would not be at war until the Speech from the Throne was accepted by Parliament. Then, and only then, could George VI, king of Canada, declare war on behalf of the Dominion of Canada.

So Buchan was not in any position of authority to 'authorise Canada's declaration of war' as he was merely the Governor General at the time. See this for how the system worked:

Declaration of war by Canada (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_Canada)

I quote:


Nazi Germany
After Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, the United Kingdom and France declared war on September 3. To assert Canada's independence from the UK, as already established by the Statute of Westminster 1931, Canada's political leaders decided to unnecessarily seek the approval of the federal parliament to declare war. Parliament was not scheduled to return until October 2, but returned to session early on September 7 to consider the declaration of war.

The Senate approved a declaration of war on September 8 and the House of Commons approved it on September 9. The following day, Prime Minister Mackenzie King and the Cabinet drafted an Order in Council to that effect. Canadian diplomats brought the document to King George VI, at the Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, for his signature, whereupon Canada had officially declared war on Nazi Germany. In his capacity as the government's official recorder for the war effort, Leonard Brockington noted: "King George VI of England did not ask us to declare war for him—we asked King George VI of Canada to declare war for us.

Let's complete your education with the radio broadcast by Prime Minister Mackenzie King:

1939: Canada declares war on Germany (http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/politics/federal-politics/addressing-the-nation-prime-ministers-of-canada/canada-declares-war-on-germany.html)

He begins with:


For months, indeed for years, the shadow of impending conflict in Europe has been ever present. Through these troubled years, no stone has been left unturned, no road unexplored in the patient search for peace.

So ends the lesson.

I would suggest that John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir PC GCMG GCVO CH is innocent of the hypocrisy you accuse him of. Only an apology and retraction from you remains necessary.

Finally, Google is indeed your friend and the Internet is powerful but the golden rule to confirm your sources before sticking your neck out is the most powerful of all.

[JMA]

I suspect your "soldier" would be much more like what I might call a "warrior. " Militaries need some warriors at the pointy end of the spear, but the spear has a lot more to it than just the point. When a military has too many of them, it must create "special" forces of various kinds and keep pumping up their membership's egos by telling them just how "special" they are.


It is not my 'soldier'. It is in fact your - a US - soldier.

I hate to find it necessary to refer you to your own - US - manual FM 1 where contained in Army Values is the Soldier's Creed which starts with:


I am an American Soldier.
I am a Warrior and a member of a team.
I serve the people of the United States and live the Army Values.

May I suggest to you that it is rather you who is out of step with your own doctrine.

In order for an army to act as a deterrent to foreign aggression and be able to defeat foreign military aggression to the country or its national interests it is the combat arms of the service that stand ready to engage in combat. Yes there are supporting services which are necessary for success but never should the tail be allowed to wag the dog.

I suggest to you that this is exactly the problem with the US military which contributes to Lind's criticism.

While the US has been involved in wars for the last 12 or so years the deployed troop levels have never been at the level where the stateside institutions have been forced out of their peacetime mode of operation and importantly ... the peacetime thought pattern.

I'm sure that stories abound in the US as they do in the UK and elsewhere where the garratroopers put the soldiers returning from war in the picture.

The NCOs - who have never been ti war - waiting to smarten up returning soldiers with hours of drill in order to get 'back to some real soldiering'. Then a WW2 returning officer at a job interview being admonished for galavanting across Europe while the interviewing manager did the real work and battled to keep the wheels of commerce and industry turning at home.

Yes indeed, the tail is certainly wagging the dog when one hears that the army has too many 'fighting soldiers' and supposedly therefore too few 'real soldiers' in stores, academia and anywhere else far from the irritation of gunfire.

Lind is correct the US is in big trouble.

[JMA]

USMA graduates did much to help grow America in the 1800s and much of what they did and still do would not fit under the definition I think you ascribe to the term "soldier."

Well I don't know this aspect of US history so can't comment other than to ask you if there are periodic reviews carried out across the services and the institutions to make sure that outdated nonsense is not being perpetuated. The Brits are not good at this so I would assume neither are the yanks.


Because of this fact, your proposal for officer initial selection would probably not provide America what it wants from its military officers.

I support initial officer selection very much along the British lines so it is not my personal proposal. Just to put that straight.

Does America know what it wants from its officers? Who speaks for America? The more I read the less certain I am that anyone knows what is actually going on. Does anyone know what is going on... especially in this regard? Not sure it is in America's best interests to let liberal non-combatants define their military and its design their officer selection and training.


The American military does more than just fight and win the nation's wars or "provide for the common defense." (Ask your legal advisor to tell you about the various titles in the US Code that apply to the military.)

Does this provide jobs and careers for those who never get near 'the sharp end' in time of war by any chance?


While many have been at odds with American Pride's posts about the need of the American army to reflect the country's population, that, in fact, has been a policy goal since Jefferson. Warriors may not like it, but soldiers accept it and do the best to accomplish it along with their other assigned missions. It is one of the dilemmas those who choose a career of military service in America must face. I would not doubt that similar dilemmas exist in other militaries, but I can only speak to the military that I know.

He like you are way out in left field... you don't support your own doctrine.

Go read FM 1 again and you will find this:


1-40. The purpose of any profession is to serve society by effectively delivering a necessary and useful specialized service. To fulfill those societal needs, professions- such as, medicine, law, the clergy, and the military-develop and maintain distinct bodies of specialized knowledge and impart expertise through formal, theoretical, and practical education. Each profession establishes a unique subculture that distinguishes practitioners from the society they serve while supporting and enhancing that society. Professions create their own standards of performance and codes of ethics to maintain their effectiveness. To that end, they develop particular vocabularies, establish journals, and sometimes adopt distinct forms of dress. In exchange for holding their membership to high technical and ethical standards, society grants professionals a great deal of autonomy. However, the profession of arms is different from other professions, both as an institution and with respect to its individual members.

Simple and straightforward. What exactly do you not understand?

[wm]

I am reminded of that piece of doggerel about the devil quoting scripture for his own purposes.
It is not my 'soldier'. It is in fact your - a US - soldier.
I hate to find it necessary to refer you to your own - US - manual FM 1 where contained in Army Values is the Soldier's Creed which starts with:


What do you make of the very first sentences of the Foreword of the 2005 version of FM-1? (http://www.army.mil/fm1/index.html) ( I presume that is the version from which you were drawing your quotation.)

The Army is the primary landpower arm of our Nation’s Armed Forces. It exists to serve the American people, protect enduring national interests, and fulfill the Nation’s military responsibilities. (emphasis added)
And from Chapter 1

1-1. First and foremost, the Army is Soldiers. No matter how much the tools of warfare improve, it is Soldiers who use them to accomplish their mission. Soldiers committed to selfless service to the Nation are the centerpiece of Army organizations. Everything the Army does for the Nation is done by Soldiers supported by Army civilians and family members. Only with quality Soldiers answering the noble call to serve freedom can the Army ensure the victories required on battlefields of today and the future.

1-2. The Army, a long-trusted institution, exists to serve the Nation. As part of the joint force, the Army supports and defends America’s Constitution and way of life against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
. . .

1-8. Army forces are versatile. In addition to conducting combat operations, Army forces help provide security. They supply many services associated with establishing order, rebuilding infrastructure, and delivering humanitarian support. When necessary, they can direct assistance in reestablishing governmental institutions. Army forces help set the conditions that allow a return to normalcy or a self-sustaining peace.

The section from paragraph 1.62 that you selected and reported out of context uses the term "warrior" as a set up for introducing the warrior ethos. This discussion of the warrior ethos continues in paragraph 1-63 as follows

1.63. The Warrior Ethos describes the frame of mind of the professional Soldier. It proclaims the selfless commitment to the Nation, mission, unit, and fellow Soldiers that all Soldiers espouse.

With regard to your other quotation, paragraph 1-40, the paragraphs that follow it in the Section entitled THE AMERICAN PROFESSION OF ARMS are much more instructive regarding the uniqueness claim with which paragraph 1-40 concludes. Additionally, I consider paragraph 1-46 as supporting my assertion that your/British system of selection/training of leaders is not for the US Army (I suspect your mileage will vary):

1-46. A final aspect that distinguishes the American profession of arms is the professionalism of its officers and noncommissioned officers. Both are given considerable authority early in their careers. Both are expected to exercise initiative to identify and resolve unforeseen circumstances. Both are developed through a series of schools that equips them for greater responsibilities as they are promoted. This combination of professional development and experience in making decisions within general guidelines rather than rigid rules develops flexible and self-aware leaders. It has resulted in an agile institution able to conduct decentralized operations and obtain extraordinary results.

As an aside, you might note that in my original post your response to which I quoted above, I put both the words 'soldier' and 'warrior' in double quotation marks (or scare quotes) while just above I put them in single quotations. Both of these uses of punctuation are part of a convention. The use of scare quotes is to alert the reader that the word so marked is being used with non-standard definitions (the scare quote convention is also used in speech when people use their fingers to make quotation marks in the air as they speak, usually a little emphatically, the word or phrase being used in a non-standard way; oftentimes this speech habit is accompanied with a derisive tone, ) , while the use of single quotation marks indicate that the word is being mentioned (or named) rather than used as part of the sentence.

[JMA]

There is nothing in what you have quoted here nor anything I have read in FM 1 that undermines anything I have posted or refutes any of my criticism of the nonsense you continue to post on this matter.

What you need to post to achieve this is provide the quote where it is clearly stated that the US military's function is to serve as a human laboratory for social engineering experiements to be carried out either by leftist or liberal elements within the system or enforced through law and or regulation by legislators of the same ilk.

I submit that it is the social engineering and the failure of the officer corps to challenge this march of lunacy or actively participate which has contributed to what Lind terms: "the moral and intellectual collapse of the officer corps".



I am reminded of that piece of doggerel about the devil quoting scripture for his own purposes.

What do you make of the very first sentences of the Foreword of the 2005 version of FM-1? (http://www.army.mil/fm1/index.html) ( I presume that is the version from which you were drawing your quotation.)

And from Chapter 1


The section from paragraph 1.62 that you selected and reported out of context uses the term "warrior" as a set up for introducing the warrior ethos. This discussion of the warrior ethos continues in paragraph 1-63 as follows


With regard to your other quotation, paragraph 1-40, the paragraphs that follow it in the Section entitled THE AMERICAN PROFESSION OF ARMS are much more instructive regarding the uniqueness claim with which paragraph 1-40 concludes. Additionally, I consider paragraph 1-46 as supporting my assertion that your/British system of selection/training of leaders is not for the US Army (I suspect your mileage will vary):


As an aside, you might note that in my original post your response to which I quoted above, I put both the words 'soldier' and 'warrior' in double quotation marks (or scare quotes) while just above I put them in single quotations. Both of these uses of punctuation are part of a convention. The use of scare quotes is to alert the reader that the word so marked is being used with non-standard definitions (the scare quote convention is also used in speech when people use their fingers to make quotation marks in the air as they speak, usually a little emphatically, the word or phrase being used in a non-standard way; oftentimes this speech habit is accompanied with a derisive tone, ) , while the use of single quotation marks indicate that the word is being mentioned (or named) rather than used as part of the sentence.

[JMA]

Additionally, I consider paragraph 1-46 as supporting my assertion that your/British system of selection/training of leaders is not for the US Army (I suspect your mileage will vary):

You clearly have no idea of the British system.

To assist you herewith the following videos:

AOSB Briefing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUmwWAalwws&list=PLEC6601B527E730E0)

AOSB Main Board (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpH0L0XaM5c&list=PLEC6601B527E730E0)

This two phase exercise takes place before the start of the Officer Course and is designed to identitfy those with the necessary characteristics required by an aspirant officer. This precourse selection process aids with weeding out unsuitable candidates before the actual training begins. The benefits which accrue are in time, effort and cost savings during the training period from which an unsuitable candidate will have to be removed. It is assessed that removal from the course has a greater negative self esteem impact than rejection at an officer selection board.

Once you have informed yourself as to the aim, role and function of the British AOSB (Army Officer Selection Board) you will realise that the process can not possibly be in conflict with any US cultural aspect.

I would suggest that your opposition is more along the lines of a mix of your ignorance of the British system and the "not invented here" syndrome and has no intellectual basis or foundation for this personal expressed opposition. To further compound this you go so far as to express based on your personal opinion that the British - and most of NATO - system/s of precourse selection is not suitable for the US Army.

I would appreciate your providing your career experience which would qualify you to make such a determination on behalf of the whole of the US Army. I wait with bated breath.

[wm]

There is nothing in what you have quoted here nor anything I have read in FM 1 that undermines anything I have posted or refutes any of my criticism of the nonsense you continue to post on this matter.

What you need to post to achieve this is provide the quote where it is clearly stated that the US military's function is to serve as a human laboratory for social engineering experiements to be carried out either by leftist or liberal elements within the system or enforced through law and or regulation by legislators of the same ilk.

I submit that it is the social engineering and the failure of the officer corps to challenge this march of lunacy or actively participate which has contributed to what Lind terms: "the moral and intellectual collapse of the officer corps".

I would not have expected any different response from you. However, you might want to look at ADP 1 The Army, dated September 2012, with Change1, 7 Nov 12 and Change 2 dated 6 Aug 13. This document replaced the FM 1 from which you and I previously quoted. While not exactly what you requested, paragraph 1.21's statement to accomplish all missions assigned by POTUS and SECDEF covers the request in your second paragraph above. BTW, chapters 2 and 4 are particularly enlightening.

[JMA]

Come on, enlighten me.

Where does it state that the military will function as a laboratory for social engineering?



I would not have expected any different response from you. However, you might want to look at ADP 1 The Army, dated September 2012, with Change1, 7 Nov 12 and Change 2 dated 6 Aug 13. This document replaced the FM 1 from which you and I previously quoted. While not exactly what you requested, paragraph 1.21's statement to accomplish all missions assigned by POTUS and SECDEF covers the request in your second paragraph above. BTW, chapters 2 and 4 are particularly enlightening.

[wm]

You clearly have no idea of the British system.

To assist you herewith the following videos:

AOSB Briefing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUmwWAalwws&list=PLEC6601B527E730E0)

AOSB Main Board (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpH0L0XaM5c&list=PLEC6601B527E730E0)

This two phase exercise takes place before the start of the Officer Course and is designed to identitfy those with the necessary characteristics required by an aspirant officer. This precourse selection process aids with weeding out unsuitable candidates before the actual training begins. The benefits which accrue are in time, effort and cost savings during the training period from which an unsuitable candidate will have to be removed. It is assessed that removal from the course has a greater negative self esteem impact than rejection at an officer selection board.

Once you have informed yourself as to the aim, role and function of the British AOSB (Army Officer Selection Board) you will realise that the process can not possibly be in conflict with any US cultural aspect.

I would suggest that your opposition is more along the lines of a mix of your ignorance of the British system and the "not invented here" syndrome and has no intellectual basis or foundation for this personal expressed opposition. To further compound this you go so far as to express based on your personal opinion that the British - and most of NATO - system/s of precourse selection is not suitable for the US Army.

I would appreciate your providing your career experience which would qualify you to make such a determination on behalf of the whole of the US Army. I wait with bated breath.

I only responded to what you previously suggested I review from the Officer Selection thread. Apparently your posts there did not provide the correct information.
I offer only my own opinions on this thread. I do not speak on behalf of "the whole of the US Army."

[JMA]

I only responded to what you previously suggested I review from the Officer Selection thread. Apparently your posts there did not provide the correct information.

Apparent to whom?

What information did I not supply?

This post covers what I have stated here and more:

http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showpost.php?p=126390&postcount=148

[Steve Blair]

Please help me understand where you are coming from here.

This work you have done with 'military folks' has it always been stateside or also in combat?

There is an essential issue here and that is the 'grunts' or GIs can't be faulted for their efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan. On the other hand the performance of the senior officers - home and away - has been questionable and that of the politicians has been disgraceful.

If you look at Fuchs' original comment/question, you'll note that he was speaking specifically about non-combat personnel. This idea of exceptionalism has spread well beyond traditional combat arms, and that's a fairly recent development. So is the use of the term 'warrior' in official writing and publications.

I'll also remind everyone to keep the discussion civil and respectful. Lind's comments are worth discussing, but I think we can do it without sniping.

[JMA]

It is understandable that after many years of opportunity for involvement in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan those who have served abroad will tend to look down on those who have made little or no effort to leave their comfort zone stateside.

As stated before I would suggest that if the Army is looking to cut costs they should get rid of all those who managed to avoid combat duty on overseas service over this period unless they can produce a rock solid reason/excuse.




If you look at Fuchs' original comment/question, you'll note that he was speaking specifically about non-combat personnel. This idea of exceptionalism has spread well beyond traditional combat arms, and that's a fairly recent development. So is the use of the term 'warrior' in official writing and publications.

I'll also remind everyone to keep the discussion civil and respectful. Lind's comments are worth discussing, but I think we can do it without sniping.

[Steve Blair]

It is understandable that after many years of opportunity for involvement in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan those who have served abroad will tend to look down on those who have made little or no effort to leave their comfort zone stateside.

As stated before I would suggest that if the Army is looking to cut costs they should get rid of all those who managed to avoid combat duty on overseas service over this period unless they can produce a rock solid reason/excuse.

Some of this was actually happening before Iraq. There was a great deal of angst, for example, about people who were avoiding deployments to KFOR and other overseas commitments.

Fuchs' study case also comes from the Air Force, not the Army. Quite a bit of the Air Force remains untouched by deployments, yet they have tried to latch onto the "warrior ethos."

I tend to agree with the idea that in theory that you get rid of those who didn't deploy without good cause, but (as also happened after Vietnam) those who stayed close to headquarters are often best-placed to work the system. And they will work to protect their own interests. And the idea of exceptionalism put forward by Fuchs can actually help them in that effort, since anyone outside the system who complains can be written off as "not supporting the troops" or something similar. Those inside the system will be less likely to take action against someone who is perceived as being close to the 'levers of power or influence,' so things go on as they have during most of the U.S.'s major military drawdowns.

[wm]

After reflecting on the Army's values as found in the old FM-1 and its replacement, ADP 1, I have come to the conclusion that Lind has it just wrong. Moral courage is alive and well in the U.S. Army.

A small part of my reason for saying that is the number of emotional responses to Lind’s article, which prompted JMA to start this thread. The US military does have its problem children; this is demonstrated in some of the posts made by JMA that quote negative comments about the U.S. military by some present or former U.S military members. However, even some of those posts may be forgiven if the posters thought they were only addressing fellow members of their military.

The visceral reactions displayed on this thread and others on this board to critical comments by Lind, and to Carl, Fuchs, and JMA to name a few, exemplify the institution’s moral strength.

Readers might reflect for a moment on the implications of adhering to the Warrior Ethos. The 4th tenet of that ethos specifies “I will never leave a fallen comrade.” This tenet exemplifies the Army value of loyalty, which is further explained in FM-1 as ”bear true faith and allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, the Army, your unit, and other Soldiers.”

Instantiating loyalty involves defending the institution to which one is loyal against criticism by outsiders. Thus, Lind, Carl, Fuchs, and JMA are responded to emotionally because they, as outsiders, do not have the right to criticize the institution to which American Pride, Bill Moore, The Curmudgeon, and I currently belong or have belonged in the past. JMA and Fuchs also do not have the right to criticize the US President or any other member of America's leadership because they are not Americans. This exercising of loyalty ought to be obvious to both JMA and Fuchs as they have expressed it themselves—Fuchs when JMA has castigated the Bundeswehr and the German people, to neither of which has JMA ever belonged; JMA when I, an American, criticized John Buchan, apparently one of his icons (and a former senior leader of a Commonwealth nation), or when I discounted his officer pre-selection process (excuse me, the British system which he espouses) without having been a selectee under that process.

Current and past members of the U.S. Army have the privilege, perhaps even the duty, to critically evaluate their Army, within the context of their Army. From the perspective of loyalty, Carl and JMA, having never served in that Army, do not have that privilege. Similarly, I, having never served in the Rhodesian Light Infantry, do not have the license to criticize JMA’s service therein, however much I might wish to do so; only he and his RLI mates have that privilege. To allow outsiders to make negative comments about the U.S. Army, and the United States in general, without response is to be disloyal to that institution and that nation.

Soldiers have a right to complain (perhaps it is the only right they have). However they have limits on how they may express that right, limits set by the Army’s values and American public laws. Airing the U.S. military’s dirty laundry by running off to the press with stories about the problems in the U.S. Army is equally disloyal, at least until such time as no other recourse exists within the appropriate chain of command. One might view that now infamous Rolling Stone article involving GEN McChrystal in such a light. I do not know enough to say one way or another and reserve judgment.

The very things that Lind finds indicative of moral rot are the things that seem to represent moral vigor. If Lind were to see the kind of critique he says is missing from the military, then he would indeed be witnessing the moral collapse he bemoans. He would be witnessing disloyalty. The fact that he doesn’t suggests that the U.S. Army still has a vigorous adherence to its values.

[JMA]

wm,

I will leave a response in terms of US 1st Amendment issues arising from your post to your fellow Americans.

But for you to suggest that non-Americans do not have the right to criticise anything US is quite delusional. What non-right would this be and where is it enshrined?

Then you misinterpret the value of 'loyalty' to use it to propose censorship. A truly horrifying thought pattern.

Buchan is no icon of mine. You libeled him in an attempt to undermine the point I was attempting to make through the use of that particular quotation of his. My defence of Buchan's reputation against your slander was not on the grounds of his being a Brit and you being an American. That should have been obvious.

I will not comment further as I find your thinking so far out in left field that it is not worth the effort.

[JMA]

This discussion is worth a quick scan through:

An Officer Corps That Can’t Score - Corvette Forum (http://forums.corvetteforum.com/politics-religion-and-controversy/3453886-an-officer-corps-that-can-t-score.html)

A couple of comments:


Originally Posted by VetVetter
One thing he doesn't mention is that is very significant is that a volunteer army is very susceptible to reflecting too much of its societies civilian fabric core. I've always thought that a detriment to a true fighting force .... either you are a fighter .. or you are not. No in between.



Originally Posted by HOTXFIL
Well, I'm a retired Air Force O-5. 23 years in, retired in December 2010. Combat pilot, not a paper-pusher. Career flyer, 6+ years in ACC, 13+ in AFSOC. One tour on the ACC staff. I can't speak to the service academy parts, but I did see a LOT in this that had me nodding in the affirmative.



Originally Posted by Rule292
It's no longer a military bred to fight and win, it's a social experiment in equality and diversity.

[slapout9]

Another article by Bill Lind from The American Conservative from 2013 on the failure of our senior leadership (Generals). At one time there were 60.....60 Generals in the Marine Corps alone. We are creating a Military 1% of Millionaires at the General level while creating a Marxist/Socialist 5th column in the rest of the Military.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/rank-incompetence-434/

[carl]

Wm:

What a remarkable piece you've written. It not only illustrates one of Lind's main points, it also manages to remind us why the Founders had such a distrust of a standing army.

Let us go through your post in detail.


The visceral reactions displayed on this thread and others on this board to critical comments by Lind, and to Carl, Fuchs, and JMA to name a few, exemplify the institution’s moral strength.

That is a remarkable statement. That some of the reactions to statements criticizing the US officer corps are visceral, in accordance with Lind's statement "They feed this swill to each other and expect it from everyone else. If they don’t get it, they become angry. Senior officers’ bubbles, created by vast, sycophantic staffs, rival Xerxes’s court. Woe betide the ignorant courtier who tells the god-king something he doesn’t want to hear."; exemplify moral strength. I think the visceral reactions are perfectly consistent with Lind's words.


Instantiating loyalty involves defending the institution to which one is loyal against criticism by outsiders. Thus, Lind, Carl, Fuchs, and JMA are responded to emotionally because they, as outsiders, do not have the right to criticize the institution to which American Pride, Bill Moore, The Curmudgeon, and I currently belong or have belonged in the past. JMA and Fuchs also do not have the right to criticize the US President or any other member of America's leadership because they are not Americans. This exercising of loyalty ought to be obvious to both JMA and Fuchs as they have expressed it themselves—Fuchs when JMA has castigated the Bundeswehr and the German people, to neither of which has JMA ever belonged; JMA when I, an American, criticized John Buchan, apparently one of his icons (and a former senior leader of a Commonwealth nation), or when I discounted his officer pre-selection process (excuse me, the British system which he espouses) without having been a selectee under that process.

Your first sentence is the classic argument of bad cops and bad police forces, or bad armies, "It's our business not yours. You are not one of us." There are several things wrong with that. I'll list them.

1. You work for me, the citizen/civilian, not the other way around. I, the citizen/civilian, pay you, equip you and feed you. In return, I (carl, this particular citizen/civilian) expect you to win and not get too many of my relatives killed and for you to tell the truth.

2. When you fail to do what I pay you to do, you will hear from me, and you will not whine about being criticized. I am the boss, not you.

3. Your loyalty is not to the officers corps. You are not a member of the El Salvadorian Army. If you want to be in an organization where officers owe their first loyalty to each other, leave. Your loyalty is to the Constitution, the country its citizenry.

4. If you can't handle that, leave. I, the citizen/civilian, will find somebody else to do the noble job of defending the country and the Constitution. I don't need whiners.

5. If you can't handle that and don't want to leave, we will have a major problem and you will lose, not me, the citizen/civilian.

6. One of the reasons the Founders distrusted standing armies I think is that such armies might tend to consider themselves better, apart from the citizenry and above the law, as exemplified by the suggestion (below) that carl does not have the privilege of criticizing the military because he never served.

7. I pay you to lead and think. Part of thinking is to look at things in other places, see what is good and adopt it. When people from other places make criticisms I don't want to you bow up and say how dare you?! I expect you to look and think about what they have to say. The Romans didn't refuse to adopt a short thrusting sword because it Spanish.


Current and past members of the U.S. Army have the privilege, perhaps even the duty, to critically evaluate their Army, within the context of their Army. From the perspective of loyalty, Carl and JMA, having never served in that Army, do not have that privilege. Similarly, I, having never served in the Rhodesian Light Infantry, do not have the license to criticize JMA’s service therein, however much I might wish to do so; only he and his RLI mates have that privilege. To allow outsiders to make negative comments about the U.S. Army, and the United States in general, without response is to be disloyal to that institution and that nation.

See above. No don't see above. I'll say it again. I am an American citizen. The US military was created to serve my needs, not me its. I pay for it. Any officer who takes exception to that is reflecting an imperial attitude, one of Lind's points I think.


Soldiers have a right to complain (perhaps it is the only right they have). However they have limits on how they may express that right, limits set by the Army’s values and American public laws. Airing the U.S. military’s dirty laundry by running off to the press with stories about the problems in the U.S. Army is equally disloyal, at least until such time as no other recourse exists within the appropriate chain of command. One might view that now infamous Rolling Stone article involving GEN McChrystal in such a light. I do not know enough to say one way or another and reserve judgment.

Another example of the classic argument of the bad cop.


The very things that Lind finds indicative of moral rot are the things that seem to represent moral vigor. If Lind were to see the kind of critique he says is missing from the military, then he would indeed be witnessing the moral collapse he bemoans. He would be witnessing disloyalty. The fact that he doesn’t suggests that the U.S. Army still has a vigorous adherence to its values.

Moral vigor if moral vigor is corrupted to mean mindless parochialism. If it is not, you have an a very nice illustration of one of Lind's points.

[carl]

We are creating a Military 1% of Millionaires at the General level while creating a Marxist/Socialist 5th column in the rest of the Military.

Slap, that is a brilliant sentence.

[AmericanPride]

Carl,

Your inconsistency is humorous. On the one hand, you want the military to reflect fighting "values" - on the other, you want the military to respect your [civilian] values. These are not necessarily the same thing. The problem, as I have pointed out repeatedly, is that as society changes, so does its values. And as those values change, so will society's expectations of the military. The internal view that the military has become a "5th column of socialists" or a social experiment in "equality and diversity" is in fact a minority view and is at odds with society's perceptions of the armed forces. The very problem that you are ascribing to wm is a result of your own insistence that the military maintains a strict, insulated, and privaleged culture carved out and standing apart from the rest of society.

[carl]

Carl,

Your inconsistency is humorous. On the one hand, you want the military to reflect fighting "values" - on the other, you want the military to respect your [civilian] values. These are not necessarily the same thing. The problem, as I have pointed out repeatedly, is that as society changes, so does its values. And as those values change, so will society's expectations of the military. The internal view that the military has become a "5th column of socialists" or a social experiment in "equality and diversity" is in fact a minority view and is at odds with society's perceptions of the armed forces. The very problem that you are ascribing to wm is a result of your own insistence that the military maintains a strict, insulated, and privaleged culture carved out and standing apart from the rest of society.

Like I said before, if you can't follow what I say, don't reply because it is tiresome to refute arguments I didn't make. But tiresome is an occasional hallmark of the quotidian (yea! I got to use that word in a sentence) life so here goes.

First off I assume you are referring to post #240, my reply to Wm.

My primary point in that post was the military is subject to civilian command. The military must obey civilian leaders. That is a Constitutional or a chain of command matter. It has nothing to do with lack of martial values. There is no conflict with having and exemplifying classic martial virtues and recognizing the primacy of civilian command as dictated by the Constitution. In fact in our system it is a martial virtue to recognize the primacy of civilian command.

That is a matter of whose orders must be obeyed, it is not a matter of whose values must be adopted, especially if those values radically vary. The martial values must remain to the forefront in the military because the ultimate purpose of the military is to kill people and break things. In order to do that in a controlled way, as we strive to, a certain set of values must be held high in the military despite all. The reason for that is what the citizen/civilians expect and want from the military, to win wars. That is the prime expectation the citizen/civilian has of the military, to win and to do it without getting too many young relatives killed in the process. That may not be the prime expectation of the chattering classes and would be social engineers during peace time, but it is the primary expectation of us flyover people at all times. And I suspect that those chattering social engineers would suddenly expect the same of the military when they actually see the bloody face of war staring at them hungrily one day, as they inevitably will.

My "own insistence that the military maintains a strict, insulated, and privaleged culture carved out and standing apart from the rest of society."? Well refuting arguments I didn't make is a burden I said I would undertake this morning. Strict? Hell yes, as far martial virtues and values are concerned. Insulated? I don't understand where that one came from so I'm a little flummoxed on how to respond. Let's say that given soldiers are citizens and will again one day be civilians, many of the civilian citizens have been or will be soldiers and we are all under the Constitution (not to mention base housing can't hold everybody) that is a moot point.

Privileged culture? Again provenance unknown, but I will say this. When I was a policeman, I never figured I had any perqs or privileges beyond anybody else. What I had were responsibilities and duties beyond everybody else, duties and responsibilities that I was honor bound to fulfill.

[JMA]

Came across this piece by Lind going back to february 2009.

On War #293: The Price of Bad Tactics (http://dnipogo.org/2009/02/24/on-war-293-the-price-of-bad-tactics/)


In Congressional testimony, Secretary of Defense Gates said that unless we stop killing Afghan civilians in airstrikes, “we are lost.”

Then this issue will overlap with the issue of the type of aircraft used for CAS (close air support) which has been the subject of another debate.

Interested to hear from those who served as infantry in close combat as to this multi-faceted issue.

[former_0302]

Came across this piece by Lind going back to february 2009.

On War #293: The Price of Bad Tactics (http://dnipogo.org/2009/02/24/on-war-293-the-price-of-bad-tactics/)



Then this issue will overlap with the issue of the type of aircraft used for CAS (close air support) which has been the subject of another debate.

Interested to hear from those who served as infantry in close combat as to this multi-faceted issue.

To address his three points:

1) "Hubris and intellectual sloth" is, I think, a bit harsh, though not entirely unjustified. I think most of the guys I've known as infantry officers are reasonably well-read for 20 to 30-something year old people. The particular problem with our tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan, IMO, is that the tools we have and have been taught to use from the beginning of our service, are analogous to using sledgehammers to kill flies against the enemies we face there. You don't build Javelin, TOW and Hellfire missiles, 2000-lb JDAMs, 155mm howitzers, and the like to go fight 5-10 man teams of insurgents carrying AKs and RPGs... but that's what we have, so that's what we take to the fight. As it happens, I think we need them, for the reasons I'll address below.

To me, the point of "tactics" is to find a way to exploit whatever advantage you have over your enemy. IMO, our only overwhelming advantages in a fight in Iraq or Afghanistan were/are firepower and armor. The Afghan/Iraqi is much lighter and faster than we are, whether dismounted or mounted, because of all the armor we are obliged to wear/drive around in. He almost invariably has the advantage of starting a fight, because he is almost always indistinguishable from any noncombatant in the area. This allows him to engage us at his leisure, on his terms, at a time and in circumstances when it is most advantageous for him. Our position in daytime is almost never unknown to any enemy within a 5 km radius. We have a marked advantage at night, but the enemy chooses not to fight at night, nullifying that advantage. Additionally, it's their turf; even if a unit's been in a given location for a year, it's still likely that the enemy knows it better. Oh, and every next step we take, or next meter you drive, might be onto a pressure plate.

So our main tactical advantages are the ability to bring bombs, artillery, missiles, etc., to bear against people with AKs, RPGs and IEDs who aren't playing by the same rules we are, and enough armor to withstand a fair portion of what they bring to bear. Frankly, it's a pretty stupid way to fight, but how do you change it? The only thing I can think of is changing the rules... but company grades don't make that decision.

2) There is a some free play training done in the Marine Corps. Not enough in my opinion, but it does happen. Frankly, I don't think we train enough, period, but a lack of training isn't really the issue in Iraq and Afghanistan. To use the catchphrase, it's all about how their asymmetrical advantages stack up against ours, and it's basically a stalemate. You only break the stalemate by changing the rules...

3) Absolutely no argument from me on this one. Our personnel system does leave a lot to be desired, and the reasons he brings up are valid, among others.

Don't know if that's what you were looking for, but there it is.

[JMA]

Thank you for that and hopefully others will also comment.

When you say 'change the rules' what exactly would that entail?



To address his three points:

....

[former_0302]

Thank you for that and hopefully others will also comment.

When you say 'change the rules' what exactly would that entail?

I guess the simplest way to say it is that only certain tactics are possible within the set of policies we fight under, and with the tools we're using. I think it's possible that if some policies were changed, or if a few different tools were used, a different outcome might come out of it...

But also maybe not. Pretty sure John Paul Vann thought something similar in Vietnam.

[Granite_State]

Came across this piece by Lind going back to february 2009.

On War #293: The Price of Bad Tactics (http://dnipogo.org/2009/02/24/on-war-293-the-price-of-bad-tactics/)



Then this issue will overlap with the issue of the type of aircraft used for CAS (close air support) which has been the subject of another debate.

Interested to hear from those who served as infantry in close combat as to this multi-faceted issue.

We are currently a long, LONG way from light infantry tactics, for a variety of reasons, most bad. Risk aversion and force protection are near the top of the list.

From my pretty limited perspective (five years as a USMC infantry officer, Afghanistan twice):

1. Don't agree with "sloth and hubris" at all. Anyone I've worked with who was any good despaired about how much better we could be, and didn't engage in a ton of pats on the back. Some of that stuff creeps into the service journals, definitely flows into political speeches, but I don't see a lot of it at the company or battalion level. Maybe higher up the ladder.

2. Dead-on about free play. I have done very little of this, and all of the bigger (division) exercises I have gone to are a non-dynamic rehearsal of live fire combined arms procedures. It is extremely frustrating, and a waste of valuable training time. Our Basic Officer Course has added a free play final exercise, but I have heard mixed reviews from guys teaching over there.

3. Could not agree more about our personnel system. Broken. Unit cohesion is an afterthought, guys are treated as interchangeable parts, and we lose many good officers and enlisted as a result. "Up or out" is a big part of the problem.

[slapout9]

Recent interview on C-SPAN of Bill Lind on Foreign Policy and Fourth Generation Warfare.



http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4501370/william-lind

[JMA]

IMHO Lind has a pretty good graps of the matter.


Recent interview on C-SPAN of Bill Lind on Foreign Policy and Fourth Generation Warfare.



http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4501370/william-lind

[slapout9]

Interesting article from Bill Lind on 4GW and the Child Invasion from Mexico.




http://www.traditionalright.com/