I loved the military, but I have to admit- Nobody but Nobody does STUPID like the Army. Nothing can compete.
A quick anecdote:
We had a Drill SGT in basic that had a little fun at out expense once.
We were formed up in 4 ranks.
He ordered the 1st, 2nd and 3rd ranks to bend over and place their hands on their knees (4th rank stand fast).
He then instructed us to:
"Look over your left shoulder at the man behind yewww! Now, I want you to spell the word "RUN" three times out loud"...
(Go on and give it a try if you don't get the joke.)
"Get used to it" he said with a lusty and knowing laugh.
That experience more or less set the tone for the rest of my career...
One of the saddest comments I've ever read of the military was in a book called, "Voyager," by Jeana Yeager and Dick Rutan (about those two that flew around the world non-stop).
Rutan came from a military family, and of course enlisted himself and excelled as a pilot. He flew three tours for a group called "Commando Sabre," flying F-100s in North Vietnam, doing "fast" FAC. Back state-side, eventually he came up for command of a fighter squadron, but got passed over in favor of the protege of a general. Rutan wrote:
"This is no place for Dick Rutan, I thought. This is not where I should be. The politics were more than simple turf protection -- some of the top officers struck me as pathological. I had always had a problem with the idea of a 'superior' officer. The guy with a higher rank was a senior officer, but he was not superior to me, nor I to my subordinates. I always corrected juniors who referred to me as a superior, and perhaps that should have been a sign to me that I would never adapt well enough to the military view of things."
At 39, Rutan resigned from the Air Force. It was such a blow to his family that eventually his wife left him.
I've always remembered that phrase, coming from a career military man, "...some of the top officers struck me as pathological." It seems to me that at least parts of the military have problems that run deeper than the problems Klinton caused.
Mark W.