Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Earthquake Damage]

I was watching "Well-oiled Daddy Spanks Naughty Leather Boys, Vol. 5".

Ironically, of course.

[ChairmanPoo]

row row...

[GlyphGryph]

Wow, stupid rowing analogy.

Sure, that's what its like in an intense combat situation - you do what the squad leader says, immediately. You do not think about it, you do no question him. It is NOT THE TIME. He may be telling you the truth. He may be saying whatever he needs to to get you into a position or situation that would save your life or the lives of your squad. The truth isn't what you care about, though - you trust him to the best he can at what he does, so you do what he says without question, because you know his goals and your goals coincide. Thats the proper analogy for your rowing situation - actual combat time. When doubt actually impedes success because it takes time, and the outcome balances on a thread, and there's no room for it.

Outside of combat, that doesn't hold. If you find that your goals and your commanders goals don't coincide, you try to figure out why.

Say your boat was going, your rowers believe you ever second and try their hearts out, do whatever you say, but then the race ends... and they find that not only have they lost the race, they're a laughingstock because of the things you made them do. Maybe you told them to stop paddling - at which point, YOU are the ones who created problems, because you've quickly planted a seed of doubt that your goals and the goals of your subordinates are not aligned. Maybe you told them to give up. Maybe you told them the other team was definitely going to win, while YOU were winning. The reason doesn't even matter.

You've lost their trust.

Being a good athlete, like being a good soldier, means knowing when to follow orders without question - when the chips are down, when believing whatever bullshit comes out of the boss's mouth can save your life.

But when that moment ends, if you reflect and find that the person in charge was acting against the best interests of the team, and your disgust with everything he's done to you over the course of the season makes you so sickened with the sport that you can never play again - not just that he lied to you, but that he was acting completely contrary to your best interests and the best interests of the team. Perhaps it IS a deception problem at its core - maybe he was drugging team members without their knowledge. The details don't matter, just your response - What would you do? Would you continue rowing for him? Would you leave silently, knowing he has a great PR guy and can easily find many more rowers, knowing he would kill their hopes and dreams as well? Or would you try to warn people about what is really going on? OR would you completely ignore it, continuing on and following orders as if you've never seen any evidence to the contrary?

Manning didn't believe the military lied to him, from what I've read and heard. He believed they betrayed him. And some times a person's dedication to the sport needs to trump their dedication to their team leadership, even if it means they hurt their team in the process.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

The "opinion" of a bottom-rung grunt doesn't mean shit. He is there to follow orders, not to be so arrogant as to think he knows better than the people giving him the orders. Do janitors second guess their CEO's business decisions? Do telemarketers? No? So why the fuck should a private think he knows better than his commanding officers? The very fact that he is not one of them speaks worlds of his abilities, at least where understanding policy is concerned.

[SalmonGod]

The "opinion" of a bottom-rung grunt doesn't mean shit. He is there to follow orders, not to be so arrogant as to think he knows better than the people giving him the orders. Do janitors second guess their CEO's business decisions? Do telemarketers? No? So why the fuck should a private think he knows better than his commanding officers? The very fact that he is not one of them speaks worlds of his abilities, at least where understanding policy is concerned.

If we were talking strictly about strategical technicalities, yes.

Principles?  Integrity?  Respect for human life?  No title has anything to do with those.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

The "opinion" of a bottom-rung grunt doesn't mean shit. He is there to follow orders, not to be so arrogant as to think he knows better than the people giving him the orders. Do janitors second guess their CEO's business decisions? Do telemarketers? No? So why the fuck should a private think he knows better than his commanding officers? The very fact that he is not one of them speaks worlds of his abilities, at least where understanding policy is concerned.

If we were talking strictly about strategical technicalities, yes.

Principles?  Integrity?  Respect for human life?  No title has anything to do with those.

Yeah, no. They cannot afford to think for themselves. They are parts of a machine, they don't do their job, the machine falls apart, and people die. It is not the place of a private to draw conclusions about what the army should or should not be doing. As I said, war is a filthy fucking business, and you can't have the lowest rungs drawing their own conclusions about what policy is best, or at least not acting on such. They are the people with the smallest grasp of the overall situation, and the least skill in interpreting it. It's a somewhat different story with those who are actually in a position to see the overall situation, and acted in a saner fashion than just dumping everything they could get their hands on. Like the officer who "leaked" to congress that the M16 didn't function on or off the battlefield, and that it was actively killing soldiers by leaving them weaponless in combat.

[SalmonGod]

The "opinion" of a bottom-rung grunt doesn't mean shit. He is there to follow orders, not to be so arrogant as to think he knows better than the people giving him the orders. Do janitors second guess their CEO's business decisions? Do telemarketers? No? So why the fuck should a private think he knows better than his commanding officers? The very fact that he is not one of them speaks worlds of his abilities, at least where understanding policy is concerned.

If we were talking strictly about strategical technicalities, yes.

Principles?  Integrity?  Respect for human life?  No title has anything to do with those.

Yeah, no. They cannot afford to think for themselves. They are parts of a machine, they don't do their job, the machine falls apart, and people die. It is not the place of a private to draw conclusions about what the army should or should not be doing. As I said, war is a filthy fucking business, and you can't have the lowest rungs drawing their own conclusions about what policy is best, or at least not acting on such. They are the people with the smallest grasp of the overall situation, and the least skill in interpreting it. It's a somewhat different story with those who are actually in a position to see the overall situation, and acted in a saner fashion than just dumping everything they could get their hands on. Like the officer who "leaked" to congress that the M16 didn't function on or off the battlefield, and that it was actively killing soldiers by leaving them weaponless in combat.

The army should be protecting lives.  If it's not doing that, then it can't be doing anything good.  If it's plain that this isn't what's happening, then that's sufficient for dissent.  If you have access to documents which freely admit that roughly 60% of casualties are civilians, then I think that's far more than enough.

All of your reasoning is free pass for abuse.  Absolutely anything can be (and has been) done in the name of war and shrugged off afterwards as "Yup.  Dirty business."  The only people who have enough knowledge to be allowed dissent are the decision-makers themselves.  I'm sure you believe it's all necessary evil to fight evil, but that amounts to absolutely nothing but rendering everybody who isn't a leader helpless and trampled on.  Those evils do not cancel each other out, they add up.

[Zangi]

The "opinion" of a bottom-rung grunt doesn't mean shit. He is there to follow orders, not to be so arrogant as to think he knows better than the people giving him the orders. Do janitors second guess their CEO's business decisions? Do telemarketers? No? So why the fuck should a private think he knows better than his commanding officers? The very fact that he is not one of them speaks worlds of his abilities, at least where understanding policy is concerned.

If we were talking strictly about strategical technicalities, yes.

Principles?  Integrity?  Respect for human life?  No title has anything to do with those.

Yeah, no. They cannot afford to think for themselves. They are parts of a machine, they don't do their job, the machine falls apart, and people die. It is not the place of a private to draw conclusions about what the army should or should not be doing. As I said, war is a filthy fucking business, and you can't have the lowest rungs drawing their own conclusions about what policy is best, or at least not acting on such. They are the people with the smallest grasp of the overall situation, and the least skill in interpreting it. It's a somewhat different story with those who are actually in a position to see the overall situation, and acted in a saner fashion than just dumping everything they could get their hands on. Like the officer who "leaked" to congress that the M16 didn't function on or off the battlefield, and that it was actively killing soldiers by leaving them weaponless in combat.

The army should be protecting lives.  If it's not doing that, then it can't be doing anything good.  If it's plain that this isn't what's happening, then that's sufficient for dissent.  If you have access to documents which freely admit that roughly 60% of casualties are civilians, then I think that's far more than enough.

All of your reasoning is free pass for abuse.  Absolutely anything can be (and has been) done in the name of war and shrugged off afterwards as "Yup.  Dirty business."  The only people who have enough knowledge to be allowed dissent are the decision-makers themselves.  I'm sure you believe it's all necessary evil to fight evil, but that amounts to absolutely nothing but rendering everybody who isn't a leader helpless and trampled on.  Those evils do not cancel each other out, they add up.

You want your grunts to be dumb, but still smart enough to do the grunt work right.
You want your paper pushers to be smart, but still dumb enough to not think for themselves.

Tried and true over the ages of mankind.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

The only ones they're charged with protecting are their own civilians. Not enemy sympathizers, not innocent bystanders, American civilians. Granted, the current wars are mismanaged clusterfucks with no proper goals or benefits, but dumping random documents you've stolen does jack shit to solve any of that, and only makes it harder for it operate at all.

Manning did not come across a specific incident that he leaked, which would have been overall harmless, he grabbed everything he could and released it to a third party to sift through it, because obviously "dem gubmints be doin sumthin evil, and one o'des documens'll prove it!" That sort of behavior is unacceptable. What if there had been something important in those documents instead of the mundane bullshit it turned out to be?

[Leafsnail]

The "opinion" of a bottom-rung grunt doesn't mean shit. He is there to follow orders, not to be so arrogant as to think he knows better than the people giving him the orders. Do janitors second guess their CEO's business decisions? Do telemarketers? No? So why the fuck should a private think he knows better than his commanding officers? The very fact that he is not one of them speaks worlds of his abilities, at least where understanding policy is concerned.

Yeah, I can't think of any examples where officers have made mistakes and had their unquestioned orders lead to disaster.

The only ones they're charged with protecting are their own civilians. Not enemy sympathizers, not innocent bystanders, American civilians.

Unless their mission is to liberate a country and avoid turning the civilians against them?  Just a thought.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

The "opinion" of a bottom-rung grunt doesn't mean shit. He is there to follow orders, not to be so arrogant as to think he knows better than the people giving him the orders. Do janitors second guess their CEO's business decisions? Do telemarketers? No? So why the fuck should a private think he knows better than his commanding officers? The very fact that he is not one of them speaks worlds of his abilities, at least where understanding policy is concerned.

Yeah, I can't think of any examples where officers have made mistakes and had their unquestioned orders lead to disaster.

And you assume the soldiers under their command would have known better? Or that soldiers second guessing their orders wouldn't lead to even more tragic results in the 99% of times that the officers are right?

The only ones they're charged with protecting are their own civilians. Not enemy sympathizers, not innocent bystanders, American civilians.

Unless their mission is to liberate a country and avoid turning the civilians against them?  Just a thought.

I did not say they should slaughter them, only that it's not their job to protect them. Thinking "OMG MUST LEAK RANDOM PAPRS BECAUSE OCCASINOAL INJUSTICE!" is fucktarded.

[dragonshardz]

Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do! 

Seriously, guys, simmer down. As the Great Toad said, please amplify your relaxed states.

[Leafsnail]

And you assume the soldiers under their command would have known better? Or that soldiers second guessing their orders wouldn't lead to even more tragic results in the 99% of times that the officers are right?

Quite frankly, yes, I think the Charge of the Light Brigade could've been avoided if they just considered the wisdom of moving at a slow pace into a ring of Russian artillery.

I did not say they should slaughter them, only that it's not their job to protect them. Thinking "OMG MUST LEAK RANDOM PAPRS BECAUSE OCCASINOAL INJUSTICE!" is fucktarded.

Considering the number of people who had access to these documents... if any of them had been seriously important, the higher ups would be idiotic beyond belief.

And apparently rather more than occasional injustice...

[Zangi]

No worry guys!  Military has rights to be immune to accountability by not telling anyone that they did anything wrong!

[ed boy]

And you assume the soldiers under their command would have known better? Or that soldiers second guessing their orders wouldn't lead to even more tragic results in the 99% of times that the officers are right?

Quite frankly, yes, I think the Charge of the Light Brigade could've been avoided if they just considered the wisdom of moving at a slow pace into a ring of Russian artillery.

That's not aswering the question. The question was about whether soldiers second guessing their orders is more likely to have bad consequences than the alternative. Your answer was about one specific instance, the question was about the general case.