[OT]Military discipline problems

I see people talking about the US Army in the 
post-Vietnam phase. Interestingly, John Ringo 
makes some comments about this in his book a 
Hymn Before Battle and they do seem to be of 
the form that the 1970s US Army wouldn't have 
been the best war-fighting institution and that 
the Army worked very hard at straightening 
itself out and getting the drug problems and 
discipline issues under control. It comes up in 
Ringo's work because of the extraordinary 
problems of trying to cram 4 million soldiers 
through the training system fast.... which is an 
interesting issue if you consider the scenario in 
Ringo's book somewhat equivalent to Humanity 
versus the Kra'Vak - if that invasion forces a 
very heavy call-up and the pushing through of 
many more men through the system, especially 
unwilling draftees, the quality of even the high 
end powers (NAC) may (on average) decline as 
a consequence. Or maybe just individual units 
really suck. Somebody (Allan?) pointed out that 
units formed pre-hostility in wars and the 
soldiers who were soldiers beforehand tend to 
have longer lifespans (and more competence) 
than newbie rapid-train recruits.

Derek Fulton commented:

>You think just the media despises the 
military? Try society in general :) Lock up 
your daughters and your livestock 
[hopefully the	soldiers don't have the 
same use in mind for both ;) ]

To which I must say: Spoken like a true 
Queenslander..... ;) 

Tomb
-----------------------------------------------------------
Thomas Barclay
Instructor, CST 6304 (TCP/IP programming for the Internet)
kaladorn@fox.nstn.ca 
http://fox.nstn.ca/~kaladorn/CST6304
http://stargrunt.ca/tb/CST6304