There's a hole in your slip
Just look at this load of bullshit. These are supposedly the reasons, in their own words, that a bunch of people enlisted in the military. "Help my country..." "Defend my family..." "...for my future children." BLAHBLAHFUCKINGBLAH. What a load of manure.
Either that, or they didn't ask any Marine infantryman. I guess maybe those are valid reasons for pogues, but do you know why people join combat arms, (a.k.a., the real military)? Kill people. Seriously. It's a legal way to kill people. AND they'll teach you how to do it, then PAY you to do it. That's what the consultants like to call a win-win. No 19 year-old male joins the infantry or signs up to drive tanks because he wants to leg-hump the Statue of Liberty. In fact, a deathwish is nearly a job requirement.
It took me years to realize that I have a deathwish. Only looking back as I near fifty, at all the crazy, near-suicidal stuff I've done since I was a teenager, does it become clear. Jump out of planes? Sign me up! Free-hand a cliff? I'm there! Ride motorcycles at ridiculous speeds while on a whiskey and pot highball? Absolutely! Swim out into a riptide in the Pacific just to prove you can survive it? Yup. (That one did nearly kill me. Twice.) There's a war on? Why the hell am I in this REMF slot?! Get me back to a combat unit ASAP! (There was some quim involved there as well, but let's leave that aside. 19, remember?)
No, I'm not bragging here. That's not the point I'm trying to make. There is a popular perception among the American public, abetted by the touchy-feely leftists who control Hollywood, that volunteer combat soldiers are some weird combination of Andy Griffith, Steven Seagal, priest-confessor and Walmart greeter. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you want people who will enthusiastically take a job with a high risk of death or maiming where they are paid to kill other humans for a living, they will of necessity have some of that "unhinged" odor wafting about them. If not, they'll be ineffectual -- and probably a liability to everyone around them when the bullets start to fly. The key is to get them early so you can control and direct them to best use. The unforgiving discipline structure of organizations like the Marine Corps, Rangers, Foreign Legion, etc., is designed around that sole purpose. Yes, you can build an army with draftees, given enough of them. But a single platoon of volunteers with years of training is worth an entire battalion of conscripts. That's been true for all of recorded history and nothing will ever change it.
To be fair, the U.S. Department of Defense had a hand in this nonsense. They've been trying to "soften the image" ever since the PR disaster commonly referred to as the Vietnam War. Huge sums of money were spent selling the U.S. military as neighborhood policemen and baby-kissers. But soldiers are not cops, and trying to use them as such will turn out no better than using cops as soldiers. They are two distinct and separate jobs, both extremely important to the health of the Republic, but with very different requirements. If we do not, as a nation, stop deluding ourselves into spending our precious blood on bankrupt concepts like nation-building and refugee-herding, we will rapidly sink into the morass of history with the inevitability of a mammoth caught in a tar pit.
Reality. Try it on for size.
Either that, or they didn't ask any Marine infantryman. I guess maybe those are valid reasons for pogues, but do you know why people join combat arms, (a.k.a., the real military)? Kill people. Seriously. It's a legal way to kill people. AND they'll teach you how to do it, then PAY you to do it. That's what the consultants like to call a win-win. No 19 year-old male joins the infantry or signs up to drive tanks because he wants to leg-hump the Statue of Liberty. In fact, a deathwish is nearly a job requirement.
It took me years to realize that I have a deathwish. Only looking back as I near fifty, at all the crazy, near-suicidal stuff I've done since I was a teenager, does it become clear. Jump out of planes? Sign me up! Free-hand a cliff? I'm there! Ride motorcycles at ridiculous speeds while on a whiskey and pot highball? Absolutely! Swim out into a riptide in the Pacific just to prove you can survive it? Yup. (That one did nearly kill me. Twice.) There's a war on? Why the hell am I in this REMF slot?! Get me back to a combat unit ASAP! (There was some quim involved there as well, but let's leave that aside. 19, remember?)
No, I'm not bragging here. That's not the point I'm trying to make. There is a popular perception among the American public, abetted by the touchy-feely leftists who control Hollywood, that volunteer combat soldiers are some weird combination of Andy Griffith, Steven Seagal, priest-confessor and Walmart greeter. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you want people who will enthusiastically take a job with a high risk of death or maiming where they are paid to kill other humans for a living, they will of necessity have some of that "unhinged" odor wafting about them. If not, they'll be ineffectual -- and probably a liability to everyone around them when the bullets start to fly. The key is to get them early so you can control and direct them to best use. The unforgiving discipline structure of organizations like the Marine Corps, Rangers, Foreign Legion, etc., is designed around that sole purpose. Yes, you can build an army with draftees, given enough of them. But a single platoon of volunteers with years of training is worth an entire battalion of conscripts. That's been true for all of recorded history and nothing will ever change it.
To be fair, the U.S. Department of Defense had a hand in this nonsense. They've been trying to "soften the image" ever since the PR disaster commonly referred to as the Vietnam War. Huge sums of money were spent selling the U.S. military as neighborhood policemen and baby-kissers. But soldiers are not cops, and trying to use them as such will turn out no better than using cops as soldiers. They are two distinct and separate jobs, both extremely important to the health of the Republic, but with very different requirements. If we do not, as a nation, stop deluding ourselves into spending our precious blood on bankrupt concepts like nation-building and refugee-herding, we will rapidly sink into the morass of history with the inevitability of a mammoth caught in a tar pit.
Reality. Try it on for size.
posted by Jar(egg)head at 12:52
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