Letters to the Editor
Jkalos
Published Letters: 485 Editor's Choice: 3
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derbig mooser
[Read the article: Bush and McCain's shared foreign policy approach]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Just got in from work and wanted to second something RMP said that I have been thinking about since I read your post this morning. In my experience there is an extraordinary commitment to professionalism in the military, to a degree it is hard to describe if you have not experienced it. We tend to be a type to try to do things 110%, as the saying goes, and that goes with the idea of professional standards and commitment. And as RMP says, that is why the political ones in the military are so disgusting to the mass of military personell, which you have no access to either unless you are in on it, because part of the professionalism is not to gossip outside the house but try to work at it from within in accord with standards. Indeed, these politicized ones are often the only ones the public gets to see, because they are always engineering ways to pop up in the news or their political masters use them in those ways. But the great majority find this disgusting.
And if Obama or Clinton get in, the one thing I hope they will do is axe all the mercenary stuff. God, if there was one thing we all griped about, it was having to deal with civilians when they were put into some previously military held position. It was like trying to deal with aliens. I can only imagine the nightmare folks are having trying to deal with civilians with guns with a license to kill, totally out of the chain of command. What a nightmare.
And I too second RMPs sadness that homosexuals have not been integrated into the military. That was one of my giant dissapointments with Bill Clinton, that he caved on that. That was one case where we did need civilian leadership and someone with guts to stand up for it (as when blacks were integrated into the military, and the role of women was broadened as well).
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@derbig @RMP
[Read the article: Bush and McCain's shared foreign policy approach]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"One thing Derbig that you can’t know unless you have served is how the vast majority in our armed foreces are truly professional, competent, selfless and dedicated to our nation and its ideals.
RMP
Why, RMP? Do they keep it a secret? Why isn't it obvious to all?"
Well, its obvious to anyone who works with them day by day, otherwise how on earth would you know it? And as I mentioned in my previous post, its part of the culture to despise grandstanders, folks publicizing themselves, and so on. So Patton, for example, was thought to be a prima donna.
On another one of your notes: If a President insisted on some policy and an officer felt he couldn't follow it, they would resign, like Shineski did, they wouldn't rebel. It isn't the mafia, for god's sake; or rather the civilian leadership the last seven years has been the mafia.
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Derbig
[Read the article: Bush and McCain's shared foreign policy approach]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]you said: "Certainly, given the level of integrity you tell me exists, I'm certain that the officers are completely devoted to the present policy."
Let me try to spell it out. The point of the professionalism, the very heart of it, is that civilians ultimately run the show. Military leaders are extraordinarily reluctant to cross that line. It is harped and harped upon until it becomes like a background chorus: the civilians are in ultimate control of the military. What they are devoted to, for good or ill, is following orders unless some extraordinary thing comes along. The whole point about detention protocols is that they came down from the civilian leadership.
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derbig
[Read the article: Bush and McCain's shared foreign policy approach]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"But don't try to tell me they're any better. I don't have to take that."
Didn't say that, said they were devoted professionals. So are fireman. So are some musicians like my son is: almost fanatically devoted to the standards of this craft. Painters. Doctors. Nurses.That is the point, not that they are better in some ethical sense. Its just that given the fact that you might die doing your job, it tends to seem to attract people who are very devoted, as it were: at least in my experience, I met some of the best and the worst people in the military, and it was like there was no middle ground. The lukewarm, so to speak, would just be spit out.
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The volunteer military
[Read the article: Bush and McCain's shared foreign policy approach]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]was a very bad idea. We have created a kind of centurion class, separated out from the normal run of folks, and those on the one side can scarcely comprehend what the other is saying. (to forestall some replies: of course pacifists, etc., should have alternative avenues of service: not saying everyone should be forced to serve what they view as the criminal war machine, etc.).
Its becoming like we need interpreters between military people and non-military. That is not good.
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bucky1
[Read the article: Bush and McCain's shared foreign policy approach]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For me, armies are for stopping what happened to the Tibetans from happening to us. I wish the Tibetans had had a better army; maybe the chinese would not even have gone in in 1956. Hell, I wish the Iroquois and the Choctaw and all the other tribes had had a better army when the god damn european invaders first came in. Wouldn't that have been nice? If the god damn "pilgrims" and all their ilk had simply kept on their little plot of land? If the Iroquois and all the rest could have enforced their treaty rights?
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LWM
[Read the article: Bush and McCain's shared foreign policy approach]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]haha. Now we can say, at some point if we wish: hey yoose! What Digby said!!!
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OT BBC report on tibetan protest
[Read the article: Bush and McCain's shared foreign policy approach]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]during official chinese government tour:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBUygCUtPdU
Just yesterday, a group of monks disrupted a tightly controlled Chinese government media tour of Lhasa - the only foreign media allowed into Tibet since the national uprising started on March 10th. As dozens of journalists and their government handlers toured the Jokhang temple, thirty monks burst out of a room to tell the journalists that "Tibet is not free" and not to believe China's lies.