How long does it take to train an Army?

[reed11b]

But I do have to wonder if it was completly frank and honest or if a degree of CYA was involved.
Reed

[Tacitus]

Once you address those two issues in a way that says,

A.) "You are no better than anyone else. You are judged and advanced by words and deeds alone."
B.) "There is no other law than logic. G*d has no place in this."

...i think most of other problems go away, bezrat ha shem !

I'm just curious how you go about addressing B), where religious beliefs and traditions are ordered out of the discussion through an appeal to some system of logic. That might be a little easier said or assumed, than done.

Heck, there are still lots of people around here that want no part of the teaching of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in public schools, logic and scientific evidence be damned, because of their own religious beliefs.

Now I don't know that local religious beliefs are necessarily the barrier in training foreign armies. It may just make us seem that much more alien and foreign to them, hindering cooperation. But if THAT is a significant problem, I doubt that any appeal to logic, reason, or expediency by a U.S. serviceman will make it go away. I have nothing to back that up other than a lifetime of hearing people discuss and defend their own religious beliefs and why they believe them.

They may not have a particularly good reason to believe what they do (at least in the eyes of somebody who is not a coreligionist), but that doesn't mean they are likely to change their religious beliefs.

[Ken White]

But I do have to wonder if it was completly frank and honest or if a degree of CYA was involved.
Reed

Don't think they have any need to do that, why do you think so?

We've said all along that the training was aimed only at internal defense and to prep for the Iraq mission. IIRC, we said we would not do any higher formation training to specifically avoid annoying the Russians...

[reed11b]

was that it was probably accurate. I have just learned to always ask "what else is true?" and CYA is a common theme w/i the military.
Reed

[Ken White]

was that it was probably accurate. I have just learned to always ask "what else is true?" and CYA is a common theme w/i the military.
Reed

ranging from PVT and SPC to COL and GEN. The other 80% of all grades are pretty honest. My observation has been that the 20% figure is somewhat lower than the about 33% civilian figure -- and my civilian experience includes working for a major hotel, an airline and Hughes Aircraft among others.

That's not to say that any is more than there should be.

[William F. Owen]

I'm just curious how you go about addressing B), where religious beliefs and traditions are ordered out of the discussion through an appeal to some system of logic. That might be a little easier said or assumed, than done.

For sure! Don't even get me started on trying apply secular science and logic to people with deep seated irrational religious beliefs.

What I was originally referring to was what I call "crippling beliefs." If religious soldier thinks the response to an weapons stoppage is prayer alone, then you have a problem.

Many very good soldiers are deeply religious. Their religion tends to be an enabler, not a crutch or substitute for training.

[50Bravo]

South Vietnam (clearly lost after about a decade of training by the U.S.),

We "trained" the ARVN for more than a decade. Too much of that training was that the Americans would move if you won't because we were not patient. We also taught them to be the US Army when they lacked the economy to pay for such a resource muncher. Having said that, we almost pulled it out after Abe broke the code.

There were ARVN units as good as any NVA or ROK outfit. There were some which were not but fewer as time went on. The NVA that finally crushed the ARVN did so with tanks etc....your talk about the limited logistics of the NVA and the failings of the ARVN is ill informed and incorrect. Towards the end they were boiling field dressings for reuse. Does that sound like a bunch of poorly trained, unmotivated pukes?

The North won because the US lost it's stomach for the fight and not only left but left them holding the bag and an empty one at that.
No air, no bullets, no bandages and no help coming.
Surely a student of the history of the Wehrmacht knows how things go with similar little operational drawbacks. Was that because the Wehrmacht was poorly trained? My step father didn't think so.

I don't know about the other "failures" you mentioned but do have first hand knowledge on this one and you got the result right... not much more.