Re:Just what every American high-school student ne (Score 1)

Thanks Major. I'm a retired Army Staff Sergeant (1967-1989) I get so tired of the knee jerk "soldiers are stupid automatons" meme. In my years in the Army I was privileged to live in placed like Germany, Thailand, Korean, The Philippines and Vietnam. I met great people in each of those places. In fact my wife is from Thailand and we have two grown children and two grandchildren. Some of the soldiers I was privileged to work with were not highly educated, but some were, and even the ones that were not were not dummies. I found over the years that in the average platoon there were men (and women, I had those too) that could do almost anything. Whatever the problem we faced, someone, sometimes more than one, had some experience in that area and could help us achieve whatever it was that we needed to do. I have also met highly educated people that needed to be escorted by someone that knew the difference between a door and a wall, else they confuse the two. The American soldier was not dumb during my term of service, which included the draftee Army of the 60's and early 70's. The quality of the troops that I meet now are far and away superior to those days. Those that speak of dumb order following robots are obviously people who can speak with the authority of someone who has no idea what he is talking about.