[lit-ideas] Re: The US Army in mutiny?
- From: John Wager <john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 18:52:15 -0500
Andy Amago wrote
Eric, we (including you) are so irrelevant to these people that it can't be
described. If they cared about keeping you safe, they wouldn't have
invaded Iraq and wouldn't even be considering invading Iran. This country
is an afterthought. You saw it yourself in the Forbes quotes. The ADM
thing I posted sounds like a conspiracy, but ultimately it's like Donald
Trump's tag line for The Apprentice: It's nothing personal. It's just
business. They're just doing business at the top of the world. The U.S.
as a nation exists for the corporations and that's all.
The U.S. Army is one of the most responsible and humane organizations
that I have had the opportunity to serve in. I did not always agree with
their decisions, and I got into a bit of hot water over this, but my
considered opinion is that these people know the cost in blood of
military action, and try to do their job knowing that.
Of course there are officers who just want to advance rank and have all
the right tickets punched to do so, and don't care about anything except
their pet project. But I'd be willing to bet that for every officer at
the Pentagon who does this, there are one or two other officers who are
kept up at night worrying about how to deal with that guy.
Of course there are military weapons that get out of budget. The two
most clear examples are the Army mobile anti-aircraft platform
nick-named "Sgt. York" and the new howitzer. But to be fair, even
though the newer cruise missiles or smart bombs might be cheaper and
more accurate, you've probably never had to call in air strikes or
artillery counter-battery fire. What counts is how fast the support
gets to you. I am not sure about whether the new howitzer was the best
solution to this problem, but depending on munitions from another branch
of the service like the Navy or Air Force will NEVER get to the troops
fast enough. The Army is trying to make close-up, modern, fast support
available to the front-line troops, and I can't find fault with that.
Rumsfeld strikes me as a person who looks at spreadsheets and decides on
the basis of cost-effectiveness what to do, without even talking to the
actual people most affected by the decisions, pre-judging them as
"biased" because they know what they're doing.
--
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"Never attribute to malice that which can be
explained by incompetence and ignorance."
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John Wager john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx
Lisle, IL, USA
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