Something happens when you ask a young kid to lay down his life for a cause that is someone else’s failure.
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A good soldier follows orders and doesn’t question. It’s all those young guys who make the best soldiers. Full of piss and vinegar and don’t think about their own mortality.
That just makes me think of hate.
Not necessarily. A person of higher rank can be incompetent and have no situational awareness. In the Army they figure that Corporal in the trenches has a better idea of what is going on than some newbie lieutenant. I remember reading in a book about airborne in World War II this lieutenant formed up a couple dozen men and marched them in formation down
I recall reading in “Time” magazine that in 1967 then Secretary of Defense Robert Macnamara said he realized that at that point we had gotten away from our original strategy for winning the Vietnam War, and we had no viable strategy to replace it. He said he decided to stick it out in Vietnam in order to convince the Russians we had the resolve to use nuclear weapons if they invaded Western Europe.
What was prevailing at the time was an ignorant fear of communism on the part of United Statesmen. That only proved to point out our insecurity and lack of faith in our democracy. Also, jealousy of our high standards of freedom and standards of living were causing a chilling fear that poor people would want to even the situation out a little.
I couldn’t care less what system the Russians decide to live under, but they did have missiles with 25 megaton warheads aimed at our major cities. They also had built 45,000 tanks. We had 7,000 tanks, and our tanks were not better than theirs. It’s hard for me to believe that they would build 45,000 tanks just to watch them rust.
A soldier needs to be aware of their mortality. If he starts to thinking he is too smart or too good looking to die his chances of survival go down.
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