William S. Lind :collection (merged thread)

[JMA]

Racist? Subtly racist? I don't know for that kind of thing. I'll leave it for others to judge.

But whatever, Mr. Johnson didn't comment upon racism. He commented upon what he saw as the ill effects of affirmative action and specifically upon how people can game the system to slant things their way. I asked if that was true. You said absolutely not. So as I said, your word cancels out his and his cancels out yours which leads to a need for others who would know to comment.

Good comment Carl.

I believe AmericanPride jumped in too quickly to shout racism.

If there are good officers out there who leave the military due to what Mr Johnson states then it is a morale problem and needs to be addressed as a 'structural' issue.

I agree that the system has the potential to be gamed exactly as he states given the fear of a similar response as with the Donald Stirling incident in the US and the Jeremy Clarkson one in the UK (still developing) which would/could terminate a career with lifelong associated stigma.

My personal belief is that the false accusation of rape should carry the same penalty as rape itself. This can be applied to allegations of sexism, homophobia or racism in the military. This whole situation seems to be too difficult for the current crop of senior military officers to deal with.

Their solution seems to be borrowed from H L Mencken's maxim that ‘for every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, neat – and wrong.’

These are the same guys with stars on their shoulders who can't even produce a set of hair regulations for females in the military... yet have/will have the life and death command over a few million US troops in a war.

It is true that the US 'fish' is rotting from the head (Congress) down but this process is certainly being aided and abetted by the 'ass-kissing conformists' (according to Lind) who make up the general staff.