A Soldier's Story - Worthless

[ThomWV]

I have told this story before but I am certain it is worth repeating.

Background: I served 3 tours in Viet Nam, on the ground, working for an intelligence unit not affiliated with the CIA or DIA.

My step father's stepfather (Walter) was a General in the Air Force of a NATO ally when he met my stepfather's mother and married her. He was by that point in his career a diplomat serving in Washington. He and General Westmorland were close friends as it turned out and communicated frequently. After his retirement Walter and his wife moved to europe but would visit the US each winter and stay at my stepfather and mother's home. I had great respect for Walter; he was not only a very intelligent and well spoken man but he was also personable and more importantly he was a gentleman - always. That was the case when this story takes place.

One day not long after I got out of the Army we were sitting in the living room talking when Walter's wife asked me some question about the course of the war I had so recently left. Before I could answer Walter piped in and said 'there's no reason to ask him, he doesn't know what was going on in that country'. It shocked me. There I was, a 3-tour vet who had worked in intelligence and had prepared and given daily briefings to Division Commanders and above for years, but he insisted that I didn't know what was going on in the country. It pissed me to to tell you the truth.

Now I sit here some 35 or 40 years later and I know exactly what he meant. No troop on the ground ever knows what is going on. The same can probably be said for most unit commanders. I was never able to have a full grasp of, indeed never had a broad enough scope of information to get a grasp of, what the real nature and progress of the war was. You have to be miles above the fray to see the real picture No soldier ever knows anything about the war he fights. Don't forget that as the Administration rolls out a Sargent here and a Lieutenant there, the occasional Major and Capitan, a Colonel or a one-star. None of them can see the forest for the bullet-ridden trees. They fight valiantly, they die for a cause, they join for reasons of their own and between them they have every viewpoint there is, but as Walter knew well, they don't have any idea what is going on in the country in which they fight.

[lpbk2713]

1. True, that.

Sort of like someone who works an assembly line type job day after day year after year. They might know something about the particular component they always deal with every day but they may not likely know much about the final assembled product as it rolls out the door.

[hootinholler]

2. They may not have the macro but

They do have the micro view.

Sage advice for the times you have presented.

-Hoot

[ljm2002]

3. But you could make that argument...

...for very nearly anything!

"A union worker's story - worthless"

I mean, c'mon: any worker on the assembly line only has a small part of the picture, they can't tell us the big picture, who needs to hear them anyway? So if I want to know what's going on in Detroit, I should only ask -- who? The CEO of Ford Motors? Is that the only person who has "the full picture"??? And if I want to know what's going on in Iraq, who has "the full picture" -- Bush? Cheney? Who???

I'm sorry, I think your first reaction was the right one: pissed. There you were with first hand knowledge, and having given intelligence briefings even. Yet your views were summarily dismissed.

Look, if someone asks me how things are going in some arena -- say on the job -- they don't expect me to "have the full picture". Only God (or, insert Omniscient Being of your choice) has "the full picture". The rest of us only have a piece of the puzzle. Furthermore, those who did have (or claimed to have) "the full picture" are the very same ones who continue to lead us into unjustified, immoral, and unwinnable wars, almost certainly because *their* "full picture" gives undue weight to the concerns of the huge companies that profit off of these horrors.

None of us has "the full picture". That is why we need to listen to a cross section of voices, from top to bottom. Only then can we have some semblance of that elusive thing we are all looking for, the truth.

Edited to add: Also, making this argument undermines the OpEd article recently printed in the New York Times from a group of NCOs no longer on active duty (or in the reserves). By the logic you present, we should just ignore them, because they don't know it all.

[Igel]

4. This is precisely what I thought when I read the NYT op-ed.

O'Hanlon et buddy's piece was specific to where they saw, and contains the further caveat that it was only good for when they were there. It countered the claim that all of Iraq is chaotic and that the Anbar Awakening is doing no good whatsoever.

The sargeants' piece is good only for what they've seen (i.e., where they were) and their time & place, even though the way the article was written was, given the usual ways of interpreting English, *only* interpretable as a claim to have given us the whole picture. It was presented as a counter to the claim that the "surge" has done good. But it couldn't address the surge as a whole. It was, IMHO, misleading for the naive reader, and the editors at the NYT knew this and left it stand.


This does *not* mean that what they say is dismissible for all intents and for all arguments, however much complete dismissal may be desired for political or ideological purposes. If you have a claim that everything's hunkey-dory, the sargeants' article is evidence that any such claim is wrong. If you want to say that all of Iraq is in chaos and there's no improvement anywhere, O'Hanlon's article is counterevidence.

Notice the same restrictions on a factory worker's anecdotal evidence--if accurate, it can be useful evidence in countering management claims that all the grunt workers in a factory are sleek and happy. But the union worker's story can't bear on the overall efficiency of a factory or how corrupt top management necessarily is or even what its fiscal health is. Anecdotal evidence, even if true, can have severe limitations on its usefulness, which is *not* to say that has no usefulness at all--you just have to know where it's useful and why it's useful.

This isn't great wisdom. Critical thinking is merely establishing the factual background necessary to evaluate an argument or claim, then appraising the argument's pluses and minuses, making explicit the circumstances and conditions under which the argument can and cannot apply.

[ljm2002]

5. "It was [...] misleading to the naive reader"...

...Huh??? Here's a question for starters: how many of those who read the NYT editorial pages are "naive"??? And is it "naive" to assume that, say, Condoleezza Rice has the big picture? Because when she writes op-eds, I never see any disclaimer "this is only my opinion" or "this is only based on what I know -- I am not omniscient". The fact is we do not require such disclaimers from anyone, nor should we. Good grief, one assumes that people have some ability to discriminate, otherwise there is no point trying to communicate at all.

You imply that the sergeants' piece is more misleading (in the sense of not really being the big picture) than any of the other myriad of pieces written about Iraq. So for the Times to let this piece stand, was somehow worse than say, letting Judith Miller's pieces stand?

It's all about balance -- and what the MSM has to offer these days is so far from balanced that we are all teetering on the edge of the abyss as a result. Yet somehow you find it necessary to criticize the Times for presenting a rare insider's voice from the boots on the ground, that offers a different perspective.

I find that amazing.

[Squatch]

6. "...working for an intelligence unit not affiliated with the CIA or DIA."

That's unpossible!