Pot( kettle, Black);
Not to condone the attack in any way, Patrick, but it seems to me you've done something very similar.
You and Kos, with your refusal to do any level of fact-checking, have blatantly wasted my tax dollars. I live in Wisconsin, and you posted phone numbers and addresses of people with the intention that they should spend time in their day, time that my tax dollars are paying for, to defend themselves against criticism for decisions they didn't make. Criticism launched, I might add, by people who are *not* involved in paying for those tax dollars. (It's one thing when the taxpayers themselves call; paying for those calls is justified, if frivolous, so I don't resent that.)
I suppose it's perfectly OK for you to foul our nest; you don't live here after all, so why should you care about who pays for your fun?
I'm sorry you were attacked; it shouldn't have happened. If I can help you find the responsible one or repair the damage, you know you have only to ask.
Terry,
Our experiences point in different directions, perhaps not surprising as we seem to be separated by time and as I noted, my observations, like yours, were subjective and not from a statistically rigorous sample. Further details:
"I served with three MP units in Iraq. Two reserve, one RA. I far preferred the reserve. They treated the prisoners better, didn't try to prove they were the boss, and took direction."
OK, your experience in this trumps mine, as it's been some years since I served, and, if I understand you aright, you were a part of this particular operation. But I stand by my observation of the reservists I interacted with. Most had no knowledge of how to deal with a bad order, and their attitude was "I'll just do whatever I'm told, 'cause I'm leaving soon anyway. I'll let the regulars deal with it after I'm gone." The differing attitude may spring from the fact that, in this case, they weren't sure when they were going home. This is welcome news, if true. At least it gives me hope.
"The average reservist has six years active duty, before he joins the Reserve Component. The average RA troop has five years. The lower ranks in the reserves tend to have far more than that (becase we have a lot of Officers, who come in with nothing but ROTC)."
Where's this statistic come from? It was nearly the opposite in my experience. The average reservist had less than 6 months, if you don't count boot/basic (choose your term, you sound Army, but that's just a guess). Agree with your implied assessment of ROTC officers, BTW. The ones we had the most trouble with came from that program. Made me wonder just what they were teaching in it.
As for time in grade, I guess experience varies. I know guys who stepped off active duty into the reserve, and were soon one or two extra grades over the guys they left behind.
" Following orders is a limited defense for enlisted troops, but the fact of the matter is that the orders were given, and by the RA."
I hold the one issuing the orders to be as culpable as the ones following them, but from what I've read on this, most of the specific "orders" (perhaps they should be more properly termed "suggestions") originated outside of the chain, and that's what I was responding to. What I'd like to get ahold of is the standing orders and related message traffic surrounding this. I'm seeing comments that so-and-so didn't like what was going on, but what *I* want to know is what so-and-so's standing orders actually were, and what so-and-so *did* upon receiving those orders/suggestions that were so upsetting. If the SO didn't include the suggestions, and they didn't do anything about it, let 'em twist in the wind. If, as I've heard whispers of, they asked for guidance/clarification from their superiors, and didn't get it, put the superiors up there twisting with 'em. We're the Good Guys; we don't do things like that.
What really burns me up is how long now it's going to take to recover our honor. It took 20 years for My Lai to subside, and even then it didn't go away completely. Now there's going to be whole 'nother generation growing up abusing the military. I'll stop now, before I start quoting Kipling.
Anybody else note how many of the bad eggs in this psychodrama are reservists, as opposed to "real" military?
Now, I'll admit that my observations on the subject are not derived from a systematic study of the subject, just personal experience (my military career was spent in a place where the motto was "Nuke 'em 'til they glow, then shoot 'em in the dark") but reservists were people you could count on to do the job passably well, but had no real loyalty to the service at all. They were in it for themselves, mainly, and not because of any concept of duty or honor. They wanted to acquire all the bennies they could from the system, while accepting the least possible burden on their personal lives. The time they spent was more like a paid vacation that they would look forward to leaving behind, not something they lived with day in and day out. I've been holding my breath since seeing all the reserve units being rotated in to Iraq and Afganistan, knowing something like this was coming.
Partly it *is* a matter of training, though indeed I agree with those who have said you don't need training to know what was done isn't right. But you *do* need training to resist the temptation to follow stupid orders, and to know when (and how) to fight the battles with your superiors over them. Even the regular military has problems with those concepts, and they deal with them 24/7, instead of 14 days a year.
You also need full-time officers in the chain above you, officers who have the good of the corps at heart, and are not new to the concept that their every word could cost lives. Most folks don't live with that; it's easy in theory to deal with it but when the rubber hits the road, the power is more addicting than *any* computer game they've ever played.
I'm not saying this would *never* happen under the regular military. No, I've know some nincompo-op (remove hyphen to read; interesting that this word triggers a filter) non-coms and officers in my time as well. But their population density is far higher among the reservists than among the regulars.
I'm not meaning this to read like a global indictment of reservists. They aren't Innately Evil; in fact they are usually filled with the best of intentions. They just have a couple of serious stumbling blocks that will get in their way.
For one, promotion comes faster in many reserve units than among the regular military. It's one more bone they toss to the weekend warriors, to keep them coming back. So their officers don't have the time for the full realization of the responsibility to sink in, and power unaccompanied by a sense of responsibility is trouble waiting to happen.
For another, they have less experience in the military environment to learn from. Living in it 24/7 for years gives one a far better "feel" for what the job means than a few weeks every year. A good soldier will put his life on the line when his commander gives the word. It takes time and training for a commander to be able to properly handle that authority, and reservists, though they mean well and are, for the most part, honorable men, just don't have either.
I ended my career after witnessing a particularly obnoxious (to me) miscarriage of military justice. (The end was voluntary, and unlike my president, *my* DD214 carried a re-enlistment code that said I was welcome to come back any time I wanted.) It happened because the special investigations office (plainclothes and civilian) took advantage of a rookie First Sergeant (mere weeks in the job) and an Acting Squadron Commander who was in his first command-level post. Both were unaccustomed to their authority, and abused it, and their troops. (The *real* commander, upon his return, torched few derrieres over it, but for me it was too little, too late, and I was gone. Still, it *was* fun watching him in action.)
It really isn't surprising to see trouble brewing; Rumsfeld's disrepect for the professional military is well-known. The fact he'd not be able to perceive the difference between regular military and reservists or civilian contractors is a given. Military folks live in a world of death and destruction; professional military folks (at least most of them) have a grasp of how to handle that kind of responsibility. Unfortunately, George II and his cronies have declared today to be Amateur Hour.
I wasn't going to return to this, but Avram had a factual question that I could answer:
"This is the part that drives me nuts. The US is something like 80-85% Christian. "
Don't know where you're facts are coming from, Avram, but they're seriously out of date:
ARIS 2001 says 75.6% claim to be Christian. (and in a wonderfully ironic bit, the same study says 75% of the total population is either "religious" or "somewhat religious")
USA/Today Gallup 2002 says 50% of the US population claims to be religious
ABC/Beliefnet claims 83% Christian, but since Islam alone claims to have the same number as all non-Christian religions are given in this poll, I have my doubts about it
Interesting that Zogby claims the trend is toward religious belief in the US, while nearly all the polling data I've seen shows a decline, running 1-2% per year. (It's also interesting that they make that claim on the very same page with a table that shows a slight drop in religious numbers, although I'll grant the drop is less on their table than on any other poll I've seen.)
It's really not been all that hard for me to spend time among non-Christians, Avram. (BTW, if, as you seem to imply, you're running into many Christians, the combination of numbers and the intent to spend time among the non-believers could easily explain it.)
(An interesting bit of trivia from polls in the aftermath of 9/11: belief in the existence of God was fairly level during that time, but the numbers who believed in the existence of Satan nearly tripled.)
As for some of the other posted comments, all I can say is while I'm willing to defend Christianity (but not on this thread, it's way off-topic, which is why I hadn't intended to post again) I don't intend to defend the actions of all those claiming to be Christian. We (and I include myself in this) screw up far too often.
"Arlen, secularists make up at best about 10% of the American population. How the heck can our beliefs constitute “public perception of Christianity”?"
My apologies, Avram, for the vagueness of the "you" in my comment. The referent for "you" was the "public" in "public perception." I wasn't singling out non-believers with that. I was just pointing out that the public at large will believe the worst. It's human nature, and I understand it (though my understanding is rooted in my religion, so I'm sure others out there won't agree with the reasoning, I think the preponderance of the evidence will support the effect). It seems that something analogous to Gresham's Law operates in humanity's views of Those Different From Me; bad impressions drive out good.
My main point was that since we can't control the impression other people have of us, many (perhaps even most) have decided that trying to do so simply drains energy away from What Really Matters, so we don't bother.
"Similarly, as Avram has pointed out a couple of times, far more people are religious than not. So how can we really say with any certainty that the prevailing assumptions concerning people of Faith are particularly negative? Indeed this is similar to Avram's point in the very first post on this topic. "
I understand Avram's point, and there's some benefit to asking the question. I guess it depends upon the circles you move in. My answer may be laden with religion (how can it not be?) so if that bothers any of you, stop reading now.
Jesus said that the well don't need a doctor, that a doctor should spend his time among the sick. In the context, that means that Christians should spend at the least the majority of their time among non-Christians.
The effect of that upon those who follow the principle, is that they spend all or most of their time interacting with people who don't feel that Christianity is worth believing in. A side effect of that is that many Christians develop a bit of a persecution complex. Maintaining one's beliefs while surrounded by those who do not share them can produce a sort of "me against the world" attitude in us that can appear as arrogance to others (and I won't candy-coat this, in some of us it flat-out does turn into arrogance).
This is why nearly every Christian will tell you they feel the world is biased against them. That is our perception, based upon our own experiences. We go among the non-believers, and we spread our Good News, as is our duty. Those who do not share this belief naturally enough are often irritated, but to stop doing it would be tantamount to giving up our religion, a point which seems to escape the Freedom From Religion folks.
Avram's question is valid, though, because our perception may not be accurate, given the skewed sample we're basing it upon. We get the backlash from the community of non-Christians that we travel within; others of other beliefs will get the same, though, so perhaps that may be why we all feel biased against?
As long as freedom endures, non-Christians will have to put up with me using opportune moments to share what God has done for me with them, and I will have to put up with the proselytizing efforts of other religions, including atheism.
Do I wish sometimes that folks both in my own group and in other groups would sometimes be a bit more reticent? Of course. But I also realize that the world would be a boring place indeed if everyone behaved the same way. Just looking around supplies proof enough for me that God values diversity; who am I to disagree with Him?
"What I want to know is why have Christians allowed the Fundamentalist nutjobs to own public perception of Christianity?"
We haven't. You have. We're out here, doing what we think is right (as in correct, not wing). You have a choice who to believe. If you choose to leap around howling about extremists (sorry, I'll not misuse "fundamentalists" in the way every one else on this thread has been doing) that's your choice.
You could also take a cue from what happened to me recently over on Teresa's blog, where a simple comment about belief which I made has been mischaracterized and misapplied into a mockery of what it originally said. It never fails to amaze me what people can read into words, and then denounce you for saying what you never said in the first place.
I once had to endure a campaign to toss me off a discussion list, simply because I wouldn't change my .sig line (which simply read "In God We Trust, All Others Must Supply Data"). That was my only offense.
There's a strong bias against Christianity in particular among the media, but it also goes against anyone who is sincerely trying to do what is right. It's understandable; it's wrong that sells newspapers, after all, not right.
So folks like me just move on, because we know there's no point in trying to outshout the human howler monkeys. People will believe what they want to about us, regardless of what we do or say. So why waste the effort?
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 7 |
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