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"The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration. . .Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against the stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion. "
- Anna Comnena (1083-1153), The Alexiad
"I have taken all knowledge to be my province."
- Francis Bacon, 1592
Friday, July 30, 2004
Berger Affair
I'm online briefly at the moment. Should have a post or two this weekend. In the meantime, I want to recommend this post by Trent Telenko on the real meaning of the whole Berger documents thing.
On a personal(ish) note, so far it's proving very difficult to even keep up with current events here at AIT. At least on Fort Jackson, they keep us on a pretty tight leash and treat us as children (from what I gather, things are different at some other AITs). Now, this is understandable, since so many act like children. But what that means is it's hard for me to keep informed in a way that would lead to good blog posts. The best I've been able to manage so far is catching a bit of "Headline News" in the chow hall at meal times, and articles & magazines my mother & sister send me via snail mail. Internet access is fairly limited, too, so sending me stuff in an effort to help may not do so. Time online - and even time as such - is limited (lots of downtime in class, but no online access during most of it. We've been given a "cookie" for good behavior now, though, so that's why I'm here posting).
I don't mean this as a gripe - others have things worse. It's more of an explaination. I should be able to post on my experiences in Basic & AIT, as I said, but getting back into "situation normal" blogging may have to wait till after AIT, when I'm better able to keep up on news.
Responding to the letter from Basic, LTC Chris Pastel (USMC, Ret.) writes, via e-mail, as follows:
You are spot on--two different basic trainings is pernicious. We in the Marines know this, although we are aided by our creed that every Marine is a rifleman. So we have everyone go through the same boot camp (except that females are in their own platoons) and then send non-infantry types to a different, vastly shortened, version of advanced infantry training, while infantry types go through advanced infantry training followed by a break-our for MOS specific training, i.e., machine gunners, mortarmen, grunts, etc.
Speaking as a member of an "Army Family", I must conceed that the Marines get a lot of things right and the Army would benefit from taking some pages from their book. I said that with respect to Afghanistan and Iraq on the subject of counterinsurgency, but it also applies to training.
I should add, though, that the Army is working on improving matters in this respect. They are expanding Basic Training from 9 weeks to 13, and from what I gather urban warfare and counterinsurgency operations will be part of the additional training. But it'll take time to fix what was broken, as much of it doesn't have to do with what training consists of but how training is conducted and the atmosphere in which it is conducted. I'll be more detailed about that, and comparing and contrasting my past experiences with my present ones and what I think worked and what I think did not.
A lot of that is due to political pressures in the '90s that the Army did not resist. Indeed, the Marines tend to be better at resisting political pressures than the other services are, including the Navy (of which the Marines are technically a part). This does not mean they are absolutely resistant to political considerations, but they do better than other services in saying "no" when a politically-motivated change would hamper combat effectiveness. All the other services could learn a thing or two from that.
A list at Right Wing News. I could quibble with some of the selections that made the list (remember, we're talking all of history here, not just recent history), and there were a number of people who made my list (like Narmer, who unified Egypt, and Chandra Gupta, who united India, and the first Emperor of China, whose name slips my mind at the moment) who did not make the list. But on the other hand, there are several good choices I did not think of. Check it out.
I haven't had a chance to check them out myself yet, but there's a new City Journal up, repleat with interesting looking articles, including one on the aniversary of the War on Poverty, one on Bush's education reforms, and an article on Multiculturalism, a topic related to much of what I have written about here in the past.
Greetings.
I'm in AIT now and have sporadic, limited internet access. I might be posting again from time to time. In any event, folks who want to e-mail me are welcomed to. Not sure yet how often I'll be able to respond yet, or at what length, but letters and news will be greatly appreciated.
I can say that AIT also seems different the second time around, but more on that later, along with another post comparing & contrastic Basic Training "then vs. now".
