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Thread: William S. Lind :collection (merged thread)

  1. #561
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
    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.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

  2. #562
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
    :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.

    Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
    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.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

  3. #563
    Council Member AmericanPride's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by carl
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by former
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by former
    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?
    When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles. - Louis Veuillot

  4. #564
    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    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/art...ernobyl-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.

  5. #565
    Council Member wm's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs
    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.


    Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs
    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.
    Vir prudens non contra ventum mingit
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  6. #566
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
    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.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

  7. #567
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
    You're mistaken if you think I couldn't find similar in the realm of civilian work.

    http://www.flightglobal.com/news/art...ernobyl-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.

    Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
    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.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

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    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by AmericanPride View Post
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by AmericanPride View Post
    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.
    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.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

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    Quote Originally Posted by AmericanPride View Post
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by AmericanPride View Post
    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...

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    Quote Originally Posted by AmericanPride View Post
    This is an interesting read 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.
    Last edited by JMA; 05-08-2014 at 02:27 PM.

  11. #571
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    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.)
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

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    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?
    Last edited by JMA; 05-08-2014 at 11:17 PM.

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    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    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.

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    Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
    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.
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    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
    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.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

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    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
    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.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

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


    Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
    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.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
    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'.

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    Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
    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

    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 to allow wm to provide a rapid character assessment of the author.

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    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    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.
    Vir prudens non contra ventum mingit
    The greatest educational dogma is also its greatest fallacy: the belief that what must be learned can necessarily be taught. — Sydney J. Harris

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