Europe, where military service is looked upon with distrust and rarely seen as either consistent with national values or a means of personal advancement, is shocked to see young kids with Ray-Ban sunglasses driving multimillion-dollar tanks, and artillery emblazoned with slogans like "Bad Moon Rising" and "Anger Management." It is this weird alignment of rap music, counterculture adolescent fashion and diction, and popular movies and videos with selfless and heroic action that so astounds the world. Generals of all races give crisp briefings; Arab-American Marines boast of liberating a Muslim city; women brag of flying three combat missions per day; and bearded, hippie-looking Green Berets on horses prefer the company of medieval tribesmen as they radio in bombs from billion-dollar Stealth bombers. This all suggests that the U.S. military is not so much insidious as postmodern. For someone who dresses so formally and insists on protocol, Donald Rumsfeld, it turns out, is actually quite a radical and has helped to turn our military into something that values efficacy and performance far more than habit, tradition, and procedure.
Wow. What an article. It articulates so many things I've been thinking. Thanks a million for the ping to this. Definitely bookmarked and emailed all over the USA.