Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
One thing I learned here in Africa that I never knew before was the attitude of many well educated Americans toward the military. It is not only one of ignorance but active hostility. This I guess comes from the universities.
Carl, it happens in Canada too <wry grin>. I tell my colleagues I'm interested in Iraq and they go on rants about evil American imperialists . When I was mentioning to a few of my colleagues that I was writing an article for SWJ, the ones I respected were concerned about the impact it would have on my career. The ones I tended not to respect, were shocked that I would have anything to do with the "evil imperialists".

There is a fundamental misunderstanding in many Western societies - certainly Canada and the US, of just what the military does and is supposed to do. Some of that stems from ignorance, some from malice and some from totally incompatible mind sets. As an academic, my own mind set is different from that of the military <shrug>. Ignorance can be cured - even for academics (we just have to study history... right, Steve?). Incompatible mind sets can be changed so that there are at least points of congruence and mutual respect. Malice is another matter....

Marc