Sadly its not even scrapped in combat zones. Several FOBs in Iraq are considered "salute zones" mostly by officers who apparently would rather not go home to see their family (tho some may have read graves or other WWI officers talking about deteriorating units) I'm on one thats a salute zone and I love how all the AF officers who visit start to take cover when I salute them in the middle of the IZ (Green Zone) because they consider it a "sniper check" I dont disagree with them, but its still funny to watch.

That has always been stupid, but it's not inherently saluting's fault. As dabigz is making clear, not all officers can get over themselves, even when it's obvious to everyone else that they should.

I was about to mention that. I've noticed that you can tell when a group of people are military when they are all in step even when walking around town, a bar, a mall, what have you.

Modern? they were discouraging it in the trenchs of 1914.

what's funny is how often a soldier and an officer will come to the mutual, silent agreement that neither one feels like messing around with the whole salute thing, so both angle off in different directions and avoid eye contact.

Much like in a civilian workplace, when people just happen to glance away (after a quick look to make sure the other person is just-happening-to-glance-away) as they pass one another in the hall, to avoid having to stop and greet them.

Do you have a source for any indication of how it worked? As far as I could tell, it got scrapped within a matter of months for being too inconvenient to control by people more interested in dictatorship than communism.

~J

there's more, but that's the important part. electing your officers smacks of choice, and choice--at least, when it comes to the chains of support and command--is not a good thing. when someone of higher rank says to do something, those with lower rank shouldn't factor their own desires into the decision of whether or not to do it. and that goes both ways; those with rank can't allow personal relationships to get in the way of things they need to make people do. officers that have to worry about re-election, and lower enlisted that are constantly considering a recall--stuff like that really fucks with the basic concept of doing things in a military manner.

In 1917 before the October Boshevick coup, socialists were a part of the revolutionary action. They formed a Soviet (group) for workers and encouraged similar activity in the army. This undercut Karensky's government. and as the Bolshevicks refused to act with the government at all, it crippled it. After the october revolution the military and workers soviets were recognized by the Bolshevicks as expressions of the people's will...etc etc drek etc. (hense Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics)

The point is that workers/enlisted men were being encouraged to disregard authroity figures. Who also happened to be the men with the leadership ability. The affect being that when the Russians under Trotsky broke off negotiations with the Gemrans, the German war machines rolled forward and military units run by Soviets wewre loath to give authority back to one man again, even at minor levels, and so ruled by committee. Something which doesn't work in a crisis, and the Germans rolled through disorganized unlead Russians forces even faster than disorganized Russians still in ranks. Remember the rail lines and logistics werem ilitary and they also went to soviets.

I think what you are thinking of was the confusion in the Russian army in WW2. THAT was brought on by a diufferent lack of leadership. a year or so before Hitler invaded, Stalin, captain paranoid, ran a purge through his military, to destroy anyone who might threaten him. Pretty much the whole russian army at the rank of Colonel and higher was gutted. Those who survived were terrified and many officers were promoted up to replace the losses did not have a hcance to grow into their roles before the Gemran attack.

The one army not purged was safely away in far Siberia. They fought a short sharp war with the Japanese and do drubbed them, that in 1941, when the Japanese would otherwise take on the world, stayed well away from the Soviet troops.
That army would come to the aid of Moscow in December of 1941, riding on the wings of the russian winter they dealt the first serious blow on land to the german army. They were lead by a General named Zhukov.

Heehee, she said breast. Heehee.

The things you learn on the internet. That was the one acronym I couldn't figure out. Thanks.

It really doesn't take much chutzpah or intimidation, according to several experiments on human reactions of authority (as well as some anecdotal incidents).
All you need is a tenuous claim to authority to get reasonable people to do what you want without question.

Take, for example, the Strip Search Prank Call Scam. There have been over 70 reported incidents of store managers receiving calls from someone claiming to be a police officer and being ordered by this supposed officer to strip search an employee who was supposedly suspected of theft. On the most tenuous and unverifiable claims, people with no police training performed full body cavity searches on employees who could have left at any time but instead complied fully. In some cases, the "police officer" on the phone even instructed the store manager to have sex with the "suspect" and in at least one case the individuals complied.
And apparently, "a person claiming to be a cop over the phone told me to do it" is not a valid justification for rape, in case anyone is wondering. Some have made that mistake.

In these cases, both the store managers and the "suspects" went along with the supposed police officer despite the lack of any verification of the claims and any consequences for not following through after all, what are they going to do if you just hang up? Call back? Likewise, there is no way the managers could really force the employees to strip against their will, they acceded to the requests our of respect for apparent authority rather than out of fear of violence and could have walked out at any time (a job at McDonalds isn't really worth getting raped over, although I might accede if the manager was a woman and she was hot).

The Milgram Experiment, shows that most people will commit torture and murder at the word of a tenuous authority figure. Just a white lab coat will do. The actual incidence, however, depends on the proximity of the authority figure. People are more likely to go all the way if the supposed authority figure is looking over their shoulders and more likely to assert their own morality if the authority figure is issuing orders from a distance over the phone.

Likewise, the Stanford Prison Experiment shows this phenomenon and more. The "prisoners", undergrads who participated in exchanged for money, endured abuse upon abuse and humiliation upon humiliation. When offered "parole" in exchange for their financial compensation all agreed whole-heartedly. But, when this "parole" was denied none requested to leave the experiment outright. They needed permission from the faux authority figures.



Military training heightens this deference to authority to an absurd degree, to the point that most would do anything on the order of a guy wearing the right uniform with the right insignia.
Heck, there doesn't even have to be a uniform. There is an old joke that you should never stand still around Marines because they might think that you're a formation and fall in. It isn't an exaggeration and it isn't just marines. Spontaneous formations happen even in civilian life. When people see a guy standing and think there should be a line, they form a line behind him.

Just read today that an american film about that experiment is in planning (There is a pretty good german one inspired by it - Das Experiment (The Experiment)).

I know quite a few like him, my First Sergent being one of them.

I think there's a valid reason for encouraging this deference in the military, though. When tactics require you to sacrifice a pawn to win the game, you can't afford to have the pawn mutiny and tell you to go f*ck yourself.

okay, i'll bite. i'll set a two-post (on my part, including this one) limit on this discussion so it doesn't derail the thread too badly.

a) what is the point of having a military in the first place, in your view, if they're not going to be effective? b) as a willingness to sacrifice one's own life in defense of one's country is the basic choice upon which voluntarily joining the military is built, why shouldn't the military train its recruits to follow through with that choice in the heat of battle?

for b), i'm not saying that everyone who joins the military does so because they want a chance to die for their country (i joined for college money, and got out a the first opportunity), i'm saying that the choice of joining the military is the choice of dying for your country--they're one and the same.

oh, also, i'd like to take this opportunity to heap scorn and derision on your ideas, your education, and your parentage.

One thing to note in roleplaying is a veteran troop (read Career E-4) is VERY likely to tell you to do something anatomically improbable if you are telling them to sacrifice themselves. They like us as drivers, but as grunts we are useless.

I don't think we've had that much about junior enlisted. There are two types, new recruits who are still enthusiastic about everything, and career junior enlisted, who dont mind the lifestyle but either dont have the attitude or motivation to do what it takes to get promoted. The former tend to be very enthusiastic, but occasionally inept at tasks (these guys are the security guards you waltz by but the minute they realise whats up they call out the guard) the latter tend to be rather lazier, and more likely to cover their own asses (they spot the fake ID and kick you out, but if they realise they messed up later they tend to drop dimes)

Z

P.S. Dropping Dimes - ratting out someone else who may have had something to do with the incident. It should be noted that being in an FA HQ Battery I have learned a lot about dropping dimes.

One should not underestimate the effectiveness of an untrained and disorganized civilian militia armed with a shitpot load of cheap guns.

Just look at Iraq.

And if they're organized, even better (Viet-Cong, anyone?)


Sure, it isn't ideal but.... WOLVERINES!

What is making the insurgency in Iraq so succesful (against the US military) isn't the guys with rifles. They are all either dead or taking up new careers. The actual people doing the damage are the small teams of bombers setting up some *really* advanced ordanance on the side of the road, and snipers getting fracking lucky. A small arms ambush of a US convoy usually ends in one of those "Iraqi ambushers massacred" columns on page 18 of the local paper.

Z

There are degrees of effectiveness. A military without near-automatic response to commands will be less effective than one with, but still more effective than an impromptu militia that forms only when a threat is immediately present. That said, I wouldn't shed tears over not having a military, though I might be a bit sad if and when the quite-possibly-inevitable conquerer arrived.

Because in an ideal world, people willing to sacrifice their lives in defense of their country (or whatever else) would not need to be "trained" to do so.

Granted, we don't exactly live in an ideal world. Still, I have not yet become old and world-weary enough to discard my ideals simply because they do not match our reality at present. Just wait ten or twenty years

~J

that's not how it works. when things are happening, you don't act with your full faculties. you react according to the threats presented and the methods you are most comfortable with. the whole point of training is to get you so comfortable with the proper response that you fall back on it even when you're blind with terror and have lost pints of blood from your several wounds. combat happens way too fast to process rational thought--which is what you're saying soldiers should be using when they receive a polite suggestion that they could charge that machinegun nest over there, if it won't inconvenience them too much. you're asking people to make rational decisions while they're being shot at. nobody makes rational decisions when they're being shot at. that has nothing to do with the world being ideal or non-ideal; it's just how humans work.

i have to come back to the point that when someone volunteers to join the armed forces, they are in doing so answering "yes" to the question of "would you die for your country?" they're making that choice rationally, while in full possession of their faculties, and with plenty of time to think it through--ahead of time. two years later, when they get ordered to charge that machinegun and they die doing it, don't say it's sad because the Man gave them no choice. they had a choice, right at the start, when they swore the oath. to not charge that machinegun nest when ordered would be to go back on their oath. Kage, in your ideal world, do people fulfill their promises? even when it's really hard to do so?

to answer Konsaki's point, dying for your country is not the point of being a soldier; you're correct. it is, indeed, the basic point of being a soldier to make the other bastard die for his. that doesn't change the fact that when you join the armed forces, you are volunteering to die for your country if it becomes necessary. you can't lawfully (or morally, or ethically) refuse an order because "you didn't sign up to get killed".

this is my second and final post on the subject (in this thread), as promised. to sum up: when you voluntarily join the military, you voluntarily agree to die for your country if necessary; this agreement is still binding even if a situation comes up in which you might actually die for your country. even in an ideal world, humans would not think or act rationally in dangerous situations, because rational thought takes too long and we'd all be killed through our own inaction; trained instinct is the surest method to meet your goals while in a dangerous situation. therefore, soldiers should continue to be trained to follow orders, even orders that will kill them, because when they volunteered to join the military, they made a goal of keeping their nation safe--and placed it at a higher priority than the goal of continued personal survival.

most of it nowadays is very, very low-tech. they're actually using string-pulled detonators, in a lot of them. i'll grant that they're really, really clever; but most of the advancement in IEDs has actually been away from high-tech solutions. you can't jam a string, after all.