Geoffrey Perret is a British national who came to the US, went to Harvard, and enlisted in the US Army. Subsequently, he wrote a couple books including (I think) "A Country Made by War", and (definitely) "There's a War to be Won".

I recommend the second book, which is more of an organizational history + account of the rapid build-up around WWII. Aside from the usual campaign history in the European theater, there are separate chapters on (inter alia) the all-black combat regiments that were explicit 'social engineering' of a high minded kind by Gen. Marshall; women in the army; and Asian-American combat regiments, which are worth the price of entry alone.

I recommend the book because inside it is, I think, an answer to your question of whether there could be a mission-focused civilian institution that possessed all the character-building virtues. Perrett says a great deal about the Civilian Conservation Corps and how those who had served in the CCC formed the basis for the NCO corps, and brought all the values they had learned there directly into the army, and how the army embraced them more or less unchanged.

Though long disbanded, this year is the 75th anniversary of the CCC. It wasn't a perfect institution, but I'm a fan at least in part because I recognize in its story all the attributes that benefitted me, (mostly) without the potential for use and abuse, entirely without the lethal content, and oriented toward the production of real, tangible goods that then belonged to the country as a whole ... instead of just bombs, amputations, PTSD, and the shame of a shattered country halfway around the world.

Kind of depends on the word itself, doesn't it? I mean, the actual phoneme, the shaped sound, carries some of the 'payload' that's meant to be insulting.

Take the P word, as we were discussing last night. It's kind of a friendly word, right? Gentle ribbing, ends in a vowel sound, hardly aggressive. Sounds like something you would pet.

The C word on the other hand ... I have never liked that word. Ugh. Raises the hackles. Something about that pile-up of consonants, the foreshortened vowel crammed between them. I think it would be a fighting word even if you didn't speak a word of English and someone said it to you.

Don't believe me? Add an extra vowel, you'll see. Can you imagine somebody brawling over being called a canute? Me neither. :>

should we invoke the criminal sanction against the butterfy to prevent Iowans from suffering harm?

I would. Goddamned butterflies.

They really need to learn their place.

By BEN EVANS Associated Press Writer

May 12th, 2008 | WASHINGTON -- Former Republican Rep. Bob Barr is expected to announce that he's running for president as a Libertarian.

His candidacy would be a wild card in the White House race that many believe would hurt Republican Sen. John McCain.

Barr had scheduled a news conference Monday. He first must win the Libertarian nomination at the party's national convention that begins May 22. Party officials consider him a front-runner thanks to the national profile he developed as a Georgia congressman from 1995 to 2003.

Barr, 59, helped lead Bill Clinton's impeachment. He quit the Republican Party two years ago, saying he had grown disillusioned with its failure to shrink government and its willingness to scale back civil liberties in fighting terrorism.

Everytime I have this argument about McCain, someone always says this, either as a prelude to "...but..." or more often, to nod to his allegedly superior wisdom in all things military and foreign policy.

Here is what I say, taking leave of my usual prescription for balance, conciliation, and so forth.

Fuck John McCain's service.

He sat out the war in the Hanoi Hilton. Yeah, it wasn't in a spa in Canada, but even there he would have been better informed than he was about Vietnam from 67-73 (and for however long afterwards). He needs to STFU and stop putting himself out as the expert-by-proximity.

He's the exact opposite of an Example I would want to hold up as noble warrior chieftain, even if such a thing were desirable.

Embracing the 'stab in the back' narrative is no different than embracing the 'agents of intolerance' --- it's just courting a bunch of people on the periphery who will serve as a political blocking force to the others he can't or won't reach. And as usual, choosing the most digusting, retrograde and destructive elements for the kiss.

McCain's entire existence has been about grooming himself for membership (already provisional by birth) in the ruling class. There's nothing wrong with leveraging your service for social mobility, or even out of some kind of noblesse oblige, but the intentionality runs in the opposite direction here.

Keep 'em coming!

You are blinded by your own ideological fantasies if you think it would attract people who would otherwise vote for McCain

Since all I did was cut and paste an AP report, I take it this is the rhetorical "you" and not me personally?

Noooo, nonono ... Galloway was an early, frequent and consistent critic. Scan the titles from this archive:

http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,Galloway_Index,00.html

As an example of "early" (there are many more on this list of "intense"), here from March 25, 2003 is Rumsfeld's Strategy Under Fire as War Risks Become Increasingly Apparent:

http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,Galloway_032503,00.html

I also ran across this exchange (DT calls it a 'slugfest') between Galloway and Di Rita, which is worth a read:

http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002404.html

Of course, Galloway had nothing to do with the MA program, being a foreign correspondent (an embed early on) and not a retired officer, so Di Rita's 'reaching out' to him is just noise, meant to obscure the boundaries between the MAP and 'legitimate' efforts to reach out to the media and get their side of the story out.