Three Down, . . .

Two Bad Mice, Beatrix Potter

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An'lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!
--To a Mouse, Robert Burns
________

That mice have shown up twice in as many days at Ranger says we smell a rat closeby.

Several bloggers have taken note of the fact that three of the seven soldiers who wrote the NYT Op-Ed piece last month are dead or wounded now.

Gun Toting Liberal excerpts from Editor & Publisher, and says,

If anything, this should serve to highlight the fact that there is a “Left” and a “Right”, not only in our country but in the United States military as well, and all opinions are valid and valuable. . .

Left-leaning, liberal-thinking soldiers and officers are generally sidelined and given short-shrift in their careers. I do not want to consider how far the organization might go to silence such voices. That absurd endpoint is too harrowing to consider in a democracy.

Instead, I will consider the corporate culture in the Army.

The service academies by their very nature inculcate conservative values and reward both instructors and students reflecting those values. The value of ROTC officers used to be their non-regular attitude that often offset this institutional bias. However, now even ROTC has become a cookie-cutter operation churning out robot-like leaders.

That makes the published opinions of these seven soldiers all the more remarkable. Perhaps it was because they were not plotting a career in the armed forces they felt free enough to think and speak their conscience. Freedom used to be the watchword in America.

When was the last time an O-6 (Colonel) or above advocated liberal viewpoints while still in uniform? It doesn't happen because they don't exist. The system eliminates them before the O-6 window. Of course, this is a gross statement of fact, but it is a gross situation that our leaders inhabit such a narrow mental milieu.

Some members of the retired forces have spoken out, perhaps because their sleep is now troubled. But while working on promotions, that was not an avenue they chose.

Even the vaunted Special Forces have become a repository for Ranger-thinking direct action-types. When SF crosses over to direct action, then the UW/GW role is effectively neutralized.

The U.S. has been gunning for awhile now to emulate the hammer-like rigidity of the Spartan army, but the Spartans fell in part because of their inability and resistance to innovate. The UW/GW attitude could equate with liberal thinking, which allows for adaptation and survival in the face of scenarios which defy the best-laid plans of the most decorated thinkers.

As co-author Amos of the much-raved about "Petraus" Counterinsurgency manual said, sometimes the best action is no action, and heavy-handed use of force can often backfire.

--Jim and Lisa