The U.S.-led coalition says more than 40 insurgents have been killed in fighting over the past two days in southwestern and eastern Afghanistan.For decades after the Vietnam War, the prevailing military thinking was that focusing on body counts had been a bad thing, that it was a false metric. As it was pointed out by the dissenters then, the U.S. had a huge firepower advantage and the fact that there were more enemy dead also indicated that there were more enemy soldiers to kill.
And so it is here. The Taliban has small arms and IEDs. The NATO Coalition has artillery, attack aircraft, helicopters and armed drones.
Having been around this blog for a week or two, I've absorbed a bit of its character, some of which I'd characterize as a ferocious individualism and patriotism (whatever that might be, all things to all people) and an incandescent no-apologies love of the Armed Services. And of course, you're a fire-breathing lefty and you want any service lives spent spent in something honorable, something that makes sense. Did I get that right?
ReplyDeleteSo I have some Honest Questions: What currently fulfills those criteria? What's the percentage of honorable officers?
And I appreciate your validation strings. Yesterday I kept abrest of them and wondered, but the current one is bareas naked obvious........
Stewart, pretty much right.
ReplyDeleteI don't know the percentage of honorable officers. I suspect it's not much different from the general population.
If it's the general population of managers, the civilian equivalent, that could be pretty bad. When we're taking about careers, advancement and money/power, the conscience of the human animal is pretty, well, fungible, i.e it crumbles as soon as it's challenged.
ReplyDeleteBut then, 'twas ever thus.