Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post

That does not equate to ludicrous, a judgment call, however it does seem to imply that your comment was perhaps a bit hasty.Perfectly understandable and I agree with you that he wasn't clear. Still, it helps to phrase questions with a "Did you mean..." as opposed to "That is flipping criminal..."
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Thanks for your comments. Please do not take this the wrong way, but since it already appears that I am off on the wrong foot in the "Small Wars" community, I will push ahead hoping that trying harder with the same strategy will eventually lead to success. Perhaps you could clarify a few things for me to make me a better discussion forum participant?

A bit hasty? How is this implied? I don't follow. Is their an implied rule to wait for people to respond to their own posts to clarify comments they have already made? If so, what is the point of a "discussion forum?"

I am not certain why it supposed to be nicer, more charitable, etc. to assume that someone has not stated what they mean when they assert something. Is it proper etiquette on discussion forums to assume people don't mean what they say? Is the assumption that they don't understand their own words or how others may interpret them? This clearly happens and is the point of discussions, but I think assuming that people mean what they say is actually more charitable and less condescending than starting with "Did you mean...."

Also, endorsing clarity while putting words ["flippin"] and implicature into my reply that were not there, all the while accusing me of somehow running afoul of being nice, is a nice touch. The implicature could be the result of me not understanding how my words would be taken given the way people on the forum seem to think--fair enough. It appears to be the case that I have run afoul of the norms of this discourse community. In the future I will avoid being hasty and responding to posts, I will assume people to not mean what they say in their posts and if I have a question that I hope will further the discussion in a thread, I will do a search through previous discussions so that I can find the answer (or something close) in a different thread so that I can keep the my proposed discussion to myself.

Feel free to vote me off your island. I don't seem to fit in very well. But, thanks for the brief opportunity to pop in to discuss the "profession of arms."
To answer Chris Barnes' question from earlier in the thread, I think the moral-ethical and political-cultural domains will require the most amount of study and will be the most difficult given the Army's culture.