I'm extremely pacifist. I think that military action has a price way beyond
the casualties to our own people. We aren't used to paying that price but
people who do are still people and I really feel for them. Some part of me
questions why someone would become a military leader in a time of peace, as
opposed to choosing some other career. Obviously there are people who do
this for good reasons, like to provide protection for the people they care
about, for all of us. But those people are given a bad rap by people with
an overactive Us. vs. Them mentality or an enjoyment of military action
that I simply can't understand.
My ideologies (among other things) keep me from being in a military
leadership position and that makes me believe that people in such a
position must have significantly different ideologies than I do. Which
means that I'm basically going to disagree with them a lot. There has been
a change in our military leadership recently in that we at least try to
avoid killing civilians and I like that. I like that a lot. I wish that
when military action were necessary, we could send everyone into a virtual
reality game and decide the winner there with no losses.
I think that Colin Powell is an excellent example in this case, as a
military leader and as a person. He makes me feel like even though my
priorities are different, they aren't being ignored as they would have been
ignored by previous military leaders. That's probably not even the case.
I'm sure that he realizes that striking prematurely or unnecessarily will
create more problems for us down the road and to me that shows wisdom and a
genuine understanding of the situation. It makes me realize that our
military leaders aren't Them and that to our military leaders, I'm not
Them. We can all be different and still respect each other and still admit
that we agree on things.
Maybe we should draft all war-gamers into military leadership positions. ;)
At 03:55 PM 9/17/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>Just curious, on what principal do you stand that causes you to want to
>dislike military leaders?
>
>Chris Montgomery
>Former military leader (no, I wasn't a general or admiral, just a mid-grade
>naval officer)
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Jennifer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 3:00 PM
>
><snip>
> > As much as I want to dislike military leaders on principal
></snip>
>
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