John Sheehan and the Dutch military; gays in the military

FREMDFIRMA

Tuesday, March 23, 2010 7:20 PM

Oh indeed, when I was in we still trained to dress right to reorder the ranks after a volley, friggin musket line tactics which had no place in the modern world even THEN - and we're still training for the gotterdammerung pitched battles of second gen warfare which don't exist no more, the days of huge clashes of armies on the field of glory are GONE, but try telling any of em that.

Hell, commanders in general have NEVER gotten past the hey-diddle-diddle-straight-up-the-middle approach that covered the no mans land in bodies in WWI and is as utterly ridiculous against modern small arms as it was against machinegun fire back then.

The only decent work I ever found on the matter by someone with half a brain is a little known book by HJ Poole.

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Hundred-Yards-Contribution-Warfare/dp/B000U
OK4IO
http://www.posteritypress.org/last100a.htm

S'funny just how similar William Lind, who I think wrote the foreward of the book, sounds when he makes the same point.
http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,Lind_111803,00.html

But then, the idiocy of our tactical doctrine never surprises me, as it's essential root is based in 1860 "bury them in bodies" tactics, since the Union of the time was using poor conscripts and social undesirables they felt their world was better off without anyways (They called Grant "the butcher" for a reason) and that practice was most certainly extended to vietnam, as it's been shown that Johnson dragged that out even when he knew it was lost, in part because it was killing off "social undesireables" he wanted rid of.

And of course, the ability to play on the publics sympathy over the casualties, which has faded into rage and disgust over the last ten years to where the command staff actually tries to HIDE the casualty figures now - something I find disrespectful and insulting, but not nearly so much as the way they treat veterans with all the respect of a used kleenex once they're no longer useful as cannon fodder.

I think that as society evolves, standing armies are gonna go the way of the buggy whip, and in part because of that, and the convenience of using one to secure and maintain power, the powers that be are dead-set against that kind of social evolution and completely willing to use our forces even to destruction to maintain the status quo - that they will fail is assured, but I have concerns about limiting the damage so much as is realistically possible.

I *DO* feel that some day in the future, sooner or later, we're gonna be staring down the gunbarrels of our own military, and the answer to that isn't guns - they got more of em and better training, you don't play their game on their table with their deck, oh no, the answer to the undeniable fact that they would crush us on the field of battle is not to meet them there.

That's a war better waged with mind, will, and words, and it absolutely can be, will be, won that way - alas that it's likely gonna be sometime after the militia idiots first shoot the hell out of each other over internal schisms, and then get absolutely obliterated by the goons in green, not that I would miss em so much, just that every ounce of violence you add to the fabric of society strains it closer to the breaking point, yanno ?

-Frem

PS. Alice just read my little passionate defense of wormtongue there, and so she says to me...
"You know, if I ever get arrested again, I want you to be my lawyer!"

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NIKI2

Tuesday, March 23, 2010 7:28 PM

Quote:

---

That's a war better waged with mind, will, and words, and it absolutely can be, will be, won that way - alas that it's likely gonna be sometime after the militia idiots first shoot the hell out of each other over internal schisms, and then get absolutely obliterated by the goons in green, not that I would miss em so much, just that every ounce of violence you add to the fabric of society strains it closer to the breaking point, yanno ?

---

Sadly,you're probably right, one reason I don't believe in the "rebellion" others want to see coming. Your statement on the stain of violence is all too apt.


"I'm just right. Kinda like the sun rising in the east and the world being round...its not a need its just the way it is." The Delusional "Hero", 3/1/10

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