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Post by Dark Cloud on May 11, 2010 8:12:10 GMT -6
www.dailycamera.com/opinion-columnists/ci_15056693#axzz0nd4U8GIKThere is a column by David Brooks about military mindset and how the modern army structures doctrine recently changed, and how it can come about pretty quickly. I think it's much older and much deeper than Brooks seems to think, given the fueling motivations for organized special units goes way back in western armies. Use of colonial units, Wingate types and special forces and ad hoc groupings all appear way back, integrating themselves and their goals with the locals. Everyone finds solace in cliche ridden quotes by the dead, but don't actually think about them or understand them. War is an extension of policy - arrived at by politics - by other means. Same for the enemy, if that's true. All politics is local? Then, so are all wars. The 7th and the Army changed after LBH as we did again after Vietnam, but in the former it was all about basic competency levels, whereas it was much broader after Vietnam. Had this ability to re-think basic concepts existed earlier, Crook's and others' views might have been elevated above the existing and often stupid mindset and made a far better result-oriented campaign and cultural integration scheme than the fiasco of slaughter and condescending Christianity we inflicted on both Native Americans and ourselves.
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Post by wolfgang911 on May 11, 2010 14:34:14 GMT -6
Had this ability to re-think basic concepts existed earlier, Crook's and others' views might have been elevated above the existing and often stupid mindset and made a far better result-oriented campaign and cultural integration scheme than the fiasco of slaughter and condescending Christianity we inflicted on both Native Americans and ourselves. waow! & how about not integrating and leaving them alone like chinese leave mongols and russians the nenets doing their thing into the 21century. but if your post is more about warfare and manuals as i'm afraid it is, why do you guys bother about all those theories so obsolete. we will have nanotechnological robots in a couple of decades, will cavalry manuals still apply? the reason why you call me an apologist is that i'm a little nostalgic of pre machine gun times, stupid in itself surely, but at least fighting was fighting and your manuals could apply.
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Post by Dark Cloud on May 11, 2010 15:45:20 GMT -6
I don't call you an apologist. We wanted their land and took it. We behaved much like they did when they captured a smaller village, only we had the birth rate and the industrial skill to stick around. Ethically, we have nothing to apologize for if we are judged by their ethics and values. It's only our hypocrisy about our own supposed ethics that got us in trouble, and a great deal of that was due to the missionary mindset which repeated the idiocy in China and elsewhere.
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j52
New Member
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Post by j52 on Jun 13, 2010 14:23:31 GMT -6
Pray tell, please give us a quote of Custer's "missionary mindset", (excluding the intimate parts of his letters to Libby) or that of Terry, Gibbon, Sherman, Sheridan, or Grant. Generalities imposed upon the past by a present mind are meaningless. Cloudless skies are sunny.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jun 16, 2010 12:03:30 GMT -6
Nobody mentions Custer or the military having a missionary mindset.
The discussion about the so called Indian Problem back them was waged between pragmatists and the Christian establishment. Missionaries - whether good-hearted, idiotic, or evil - informed and misinformed the public about the nature of the tribes and goals and conversion. Much the same occurred through the 1950's about China. Henry Luce was convinced China was about to be converted en masse, was a major power, and that Chang Kai Chek was their Washington, etc. He carried a lot of weight and a great deal of his misinformation and idiocy was paid for in Korea and Vietnam. We never 'had' China to lose. The people of IndoChina were not one with China, and in fact often hated it.
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j52
New Member
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Post by j52 on Jul 19, 2010 19:20:29 GMT -6
You refer to the collective missionary mindset. Luce was not rhe architect of Vietnam.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jul 19, 2010 20:54:22 GMT -6
You're projecting. There's no mention of a collective missionary mindset. Just missionary mindset. Missionaries were out to save souls in the next life, and all else came second. Saving souls didn't get the laughs then it does now, unfortunately.
There was no architect of our participation in the Vietnam War, per se, but Luce's fawning over Chaing and his wife, both supposedly Christian, kept that dubious character in front of the public beyond the 'use by' date. Chaing was a monumentally incompetent and nepotistic crook surrounded by worse, attested to by Lefties like Teddy White and conservative Republicans like Joe Stilwell, both of whom spoke Chinese well and knew first hand the important people in China. They agree.
But, in order for France to allow West Germany to rearm by vote, it fell to us to be snookered into Vietnam, bail them out sorta, and allow them some face. At the time, and until after we left Vietnam, we knew even less about Vietnam than we knew about China. That's saying something. When Vietnam went to war against China after we left, it totally blew the socks off our government, still sticking to the monolith of Communism world image, which was created in no small part by Luce in order to gain stature for Chaing, the heroic Christian martyr. China, Vietnam, Laos, once communist they were One and Anti-Christian.
Until recently, we as a nation knew very little about Native American Indians either and made decisions remarkable for their stupidity which should have been accorded far more attention and ridicule if they weren't overshadowed by our canting hypocrisy and, not unoften, startling incompetence applied by violence.
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j52
New Member
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Post by j52 on Aug 18, 2010 20:20:57 GMT -6
You are the one projecting. Read your own post above. You are also generalizing, and posturing. Is this a monogue by a tired professor, or a forum? LLB
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Post by markland on Aug 18, 2010 20:36:50 GMT -6
Pray tell, please give us a quote of Custer's "missionary mindset", (excluding the intimate parts of his letters to Libby) or that of Terry, Gibbon, Sherman, Sheridan, or Grant. Generalities imposed upon the past by a present mind are meaningless. Cloudless skies are sunny. j52, not having memorized GAC's writings, while he respected Indians, he was a sword in the armory of the United States. I suspect what DC was too incoherent to state was that from Grant's election as president, he let the "Christians" administer Indian policy rather than the Army. Needless to say, this created a canker in most senior officer's butts. However, since Sherman was the Commanding General of the Army and he and Grant were close, they Sherman had to abide by the Executive decision. Let me rephrase that: Since the Commander-in-Chief had decided the policy he would take, the Army had no choice in the matter, despite various moanings and groanings coming from the officer corps. Be good, Billy
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Post by Dark Cloud on Aug 19, 2010 0:58:05 GMT -6
In your reply 3, you asked for an example of "Custer's 'missionary mindset'", as if I had claimed one for him. I did not claim that he had one.
In reply #5, you claim I reference a "collective missionary mindset." If so, where? That's two things you claim I've said that I did not. Proof is on the page.
There was a military mindset, held by the military, and a missionary mindset held by missionaries and much of the public. The adjective "collective" warps the term, because it's used as a substitute for communist/socialist often enough. We were saving the heathen and bringing them Christianity. That was Luce's point of view.
Not a professor, have only claimed 3rd grade, that I never served, and am a coward. If that's posturing, the practice has declined some.
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Post by markland on Aug 27, 2010 12:06:56 GMT -6
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Reddirt
Full Member
Life is But a Dream...
Posts: 208
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Post by Reddirt on Aug 27, 2010 12:55:54 GMT -6
Pray tell, please give us a quote of Custer's "missionary mindset", (excluding the intimate parts of his letters to Libby) or that of Terry, Gibbon, Sherman, Sheridan, or Grant. Generalities imposed upon the past by a present mind are meaningless. Cloudless skies are sunny. How very true! There is a tendency to state the obvious.
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Post by AZ Ranger on Aug 28, 2010 10:20:54 GMT -6
Joe = Reddirt = Custerphile
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Post by Diane Merkel on Aug 28, 2010 18:36:16 GMT -6
Well, that's one way to get a one-way ticket home from Afghanistan. Billy, Chuck was at a NATO facility for over four months, and I can assure you he wasn't sitting through PowerPoint presentations. That guy should have been out of the reserves a long time ago.
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Post by crazycanuck on Oct 30, 2010 8:10:28 GMT -6
Custer was a wreck(his adonis golden boy image derailed earlier by Grant and Sheridan) looking for glory and the restoration of his status, steamrolling the Indians on to the reserves. Wreck(Custer) meet train(ALL THE INDIANS IN THE WORLD) = Accident. What psychologists couldn't see this coming ?
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