Comments on People in the Sun: The Good, the Bad, and the Uneducated

I was in the Army of a generation ago, and we were...

2006-10-14T00:42:00.000-04:00

I was in the Army of a generation ago, and we were professionals. I think even the lowliest grunts had just a hair of pride in what we were doing.

The true professionals have figure out that they are fodder for a meat grionder and that the "patriots" back home don't have anything for them but a yellow car magnet. As attrition takes them out, it isn't hard to figure out who's going to stay behind.

In a way, after being in the army for three years ...

2006-10-10T13:20:00.000-04:00

In a way, after being in the army for three years I tend to believe there may be a Calley hidden in all of us. I think the situation itself and the deliberate lack of control by superior officers and the government leads to this situation where moral lessons mean little.

At the same time I do think education could make a large difference in the way people respond to extreme conditions. In these situations, being uneducated may lead soldiers to follow White Supremacists rather than following moral lessons they may have learned earlier in life.

Ironically, with the No Child Left Behind, education has come to mean not much more than having good memory skills.

I said quite awhile ago in Reconstitution that the...

2006-10-10T09:09:00.000-04:00

I said quite awhile ago in Reconstitution that the end-result of this would be a plethora of Lieutenant Calleys, given the reduction in standards. But really, they simply have no choice. Since the ra-ra crowd refuses to sign up and go fight this "most important war since WWII," the Army and Marines are left to take what they can get-and that increasingly includes folks like gangbangers and skinheads. For them, service in Iraq is an invaluable little teacher of the skills they'll surely put to use later at home.