Pakistan and Israel: Through the prism of realities

Romair is trying to do some face saving it seems... it is clear that his post 134 was not a correction. It was an addition, to prove that Jinnah and Gandhi were lawyers as well....

Now he is trying to present his initial claim that Jinnah and Gandhi went to Cambridge as a typo... he never meant to write cambridge... yet he made that mistake not once but twice.

Romair #141

Thats the whole point about being a professional: you do not have to have the direct presence of the enemy on home soil. What you are talking about are people conscripted or volunteering to fight ``for the duration of the emergency`` type thing. I`m not saying that US troops do not fight well. Even in Vietnam, which by 1969-73 was as unpopular and pointless a war as the US has ever fought, the vast majority of US troops fought quite well. There was nothing like the Italian mass surrenders or the French defeatist attitudes. My point was that the US has some serious structural problems in its military culture, not that its forces cannot fight.

fuzair #138: I would agree. Though I think American soldiers would put up a hell of a fight, if the USA itself were attacked. It is hard for a soldier to get motivated to fight in far off lands, when their own country is not threatened directly.

Ferozek #137: No confusion. Please see #134.....

Ferozek,

That was an informative post. Thankyou.


Romair,

Another `strategic withdrawal`? eh?

RE # 130 TAhmed ```going to delhi and declaring ``Ich Bin Ein Dehlavi```
Partially right there sirjee. I think he will be saying ``Pajees and phenjis assi bhi Dilli da munda haigajee``.

Re: Romair`s earlier post on US Officers

I agree in general terms with what you said about how well-educated/qualified are US officers but there is still a serious problem with overall US military culture. Very few junior officers see the US Armed Forces as a career. Most join ROTC or the Service Academies to get a free education in exchange for a few (five, I think) years reasonably well-paid service. They then leave in droves. More US enlisted men may join thinking that they are ``lifers`` but there are different problems here. Many of them tend to marry young (19-20 year old PFCs with a child are pretty common) and that creates huge problems for any extended non-family station deployment. A friend of mine is a Lt. Cdr. (a doctor) in the US Navy attached to the Marine Corp and he was telling me about the number of problems they have with 19-21 year old wives of Marines deployed overseas. These are completely naive young girls from Arkansas or Mississippi or Iowa or somewhere else in the MidWest or the South, never been away from home before, married at 18, now have 1-2 kids, cannot cope with separation from their husbands, cannot cope with their children, cannot cope with their lives or being away from home, have no education worth talking about (a US HS diploma from Podunk HS in Arkansas or Mississippi; you`re lucky if you can read at the 6th grade level), drink, do drugs, have ``hookups,`` etc, etc. Real armies do NOT let PFCs marry!

BTW, same holds true (but at not as severe a level) for US junior officers. Its very common to get married a year or two out of the Academy or ROTC--absolutely unheard of in any British-patterned Army. I recall one senior lieutenant (a few months short of his captaincy) who asked my father for married officer`s quarters and two weeks P-leave since his fiancee`s family didn`t want to wait another six months for him to become a captain and be eligible for married officer`s quarters. My father read him the riot act and told him that his first duty was to his men and his unit, not to his fiancee`s family and if they didn`t understand the army and its customs, then he was better off without them! Not sure how well he took it.

This was a direct manifestation of the old British Army saying, ``Captains may marry, Majors should marry, Colonels must marry;`` presumably there was an unspoken bit about ``Lieutenants cannot marry.`` The view here is that married junior officers will put their men`s welfare at a lower priority level than their new wive`s and lack the maturity and experience to handle both the stresses of married life AND being in charge of a platoon!

If you look at the incredible amount of grumbling going on in the US Army now about the extended deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, a large part of it is the usual separated-from-the-family nonsense. This isn`t as bad (yet) as the First Gulf War when the US Army had to dishonorably discharge several offices who complained about having to be sent overseas and interrupting their graduate studies or being away from their families or actually said that they didn`t join the Army to fight! Not making up this last one!

The US Army has won all its wars in the past century by having more ``stuff`` than the oppostion, not by being better soldiers. As General Nathan Bedford Forrest said, ``Wars are won by those who get there first with the most.`` And the US Army has never lacked the stuff to win wars, not even such things as toilet paper. As Paul Fussel, a WWII vet, writes in ``The Boy`s Crusade,`` the WWII US Army allocated 22.5 sheets of toilet paper to each soldier per day; the British only allocated 3! The truly amazing thing is that the Army could provide such luxuries! The Russians in WWII didn`t even bother to count their dead! This last is absolutely true. Many Russian soldiers joined the Communist Party because the Party would eventually inform the next of kin if a member died (in combat, not if he was shot in a purge!).

Regards.

re: mantolives

Technically speaking, Gandhi was in charge of creating an ambulance corps during the Boer War (1898-1902) for which he was decorated by the British. He never served in the First World War, because he had returned to India on the advice of Sardar Patel, to start an Indian resistence movement to British rule in India and organize the Indians, in order for them to seek their rights, as he had organized the Indians in South Africa.

re: Romair

Jinnah worked in the Treadneddle street, as a ledger accountant in the firm of an Englishman, who was a business partner of his father`s, but got bored and decided to become a Shakepearean stage actor which his parents refused to allow, before entering Lincoln`s Inn to learn law. I think you are confusing Jinnah with Nehru, because Nehru attended Cambridge.

As to the British (European) royal family, their military background has nothing to do with politics as much it has to do with tradition. British and European monarchs at one time combined both political and military functions within the role of the state in geo-politics and this tradition is a homage to that memory and nothing more.

Ciao

Gandhi never went to cambridge either...

The Air Marshal and his little knowledge :

``Jinnah was Cambridge, and law, but no military``

Ha ha ha ...

Jinnah never went to Cambridge dude... check your history again...

The two great gujjus, Jinnah and Gandhi both went to the bar straight... Jinnah was the youngest Asian Barrister... he had gone for an `apprenticeship` with a trading company in
London and soon had switched over to law. No wonder you claim all the nonsense about Jinnah ... when you know nothing about the man.

FYI Gandhi was not in the military. He had raised troops of the Empire in the first world war... which included a group of medical volunteers he was supposed to lead. However due to some reason he came to India instead.


I have never seen a person so confident when he is so dead wrong ... You are in your own league field marshal air marshal counterfeit...

-YLH

reply #133: On Jinnah and Gandhi: Lincoln`s Inn and Inner Temple, respectively......

Your information about the details of the careers of US Presidents is correct. From WWII onwards, every American President, (except Clinton), served in the military in some capacity. Some actively saw combat, some did not. I believe Truman, eventually went on become a Colonel. Franklin Roosevelt was not in the military, though Ted was. However, Franklin was a Lawyer and an Ivy League grad. Herbert Hoover was a Stanford grad (equivalent to Ivy League, or better), though not a soldier or lawyer. Coolidge was a lawyer as well. One has to go all the way back to Harding to find someone who was neither in the military, nor a lawyer, nor an elite university grad.

WWII and Vietnam combined to give a lot of future US Presidents a military career. Though many opted for the military, as their first career, to begin with. WWII is really when the US military went into a full-blown large sized military. Currently the Vietnam generation has taken over the torch, from the WWII generation, once Clinton/Gore defeated Bush Sr. and Dole. This generation will go for a few decades or so. After that, I think you will see the military aspect dying off. Though, some of the most talented Americans I know, are those who spent their initial careers in the military and have then retired (many as Captains) and gone on to successful business careers. The commandant of the station I attended the course at, was a Brigadier who was a Rhodes Scholar. I believe one of the current potential Presidential hopefuls is a retired General, and Clinton’s colleague as a Rhodes Scholar. And of course, Colin Powell will always be a strong candidate, if he runs. Interestingly, he is the dove in the whole Bush team. Probably, because he is the one who has participated the most in combat, and understands its ups and downs. Though Rumsfeld was a Captain, as well. Don’t think he saw much combat though. Powell, according to his own admission, was not a good student. He flunked out of Engineering.

Interestingly, Gandhi was also briefly in the military, as a medic. He was a Cambridge grad. And a lawyer. So he gets three out of three. Jinnah was Cambridge, and law, but no military. As was Nehru.

Israelis will continue to have military experience as a pre-requisite to political success, for a long time. Since they have mandatory service, and are in a constant state of war.

The other group that seems to follow this path of military service, elite college (though not law) is the British royal family. Charles was in the Navy (and has an Air Force and Army rank). Andrew was a career Naval officer, and recently retired. Edward, I heard, ran away from the Marine academy. Their father was a career Navy officer, and commander. As are many other members of their family.

So one’s odds of becoming a US or Israeli political leader go significantly high, if one has on his/her resume a) military career b) Ivy League level degree c) Law as a profession.

re: Fuzair

Thank you, I stand corrected.

Ciao

re: Romair #123

Romair, Harry S. Truman was a captain of the artillery in the First World War. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was the president from 1933-1945, was not a colonel in the army. FDR was the secretary of the navy during the First World War. He never served in the uniform. Theodore Roosevelt was a colonel and was a president in the first decade of the 20th century. His son, also named Theodore, was a major-general, who commanded the 4th US Infantry Division during the Normandy invasion (Utah Beach).

Woodrow Wilson, also did not serve in the services. He was a professor of history at Princeton. Herbert Hoover, to the best of my knowledge was an engineer and did not also serve. Reagan did not serve in combat as much as he was a part of the army`s film propaganda unit during the Second World War. Gore was a journalist during the Vietnam War; Kerry was in the Navy - commanding a patrol boat on the Mekong Delta and hence, comparsions with him and JFK (PT-109) are more closer to reality than a contection between Clinton and JFK. Dole was with the 10th Mountain Divison in Italy and Bush, Sr. was in the Pacific theater of operations as was Nixon and Johnson, who both served in the navy. Ike, as everyone knows, was in the army and was supreme allied commander Europe during the Second World War. Grant was in the Union Army, but Lincoln never served. Andrew Jackson served, but Jefferson, Adams, Pollack, Garfield, Taft and many others did not serve. It is only in this century, after World War II, that military service became a requirement, as a vote getter, for presidential hopefuls. Bush, Jr. was in the Texas Air National Guard and thus, never saw combat in Vietnam. McCain was the son and grandson of two admirals and a third generation ``navy man``. In fact, his grandfather commanded the American fleet, which fought the Japanese at Guadalcanal in 1942 during the engagement of Iron Bottom Sound.

On a lighter note, just when I thought I could get away, you had drag me back! LOL

Ciao

sarwar #128 if musharaff sought my advice on pakistan`s military strategy for the next decade (and I expect to get a call from him any minute now), this will be my advice:

1. Make a flanking move on india by declaring ``yahudi-muslim bhai bhai`` and also declaring ``pak-israel dosti zindabad``.

2. Then make a frontal assault on India by declaring ``hindu-muslim bhai bhai`` and also ``hindu-muslim behan-bhai`` (for good measure), and going to delhi and declaring ``Ich Bin Ein Dehlavi`` (which will be literally true as well).

This will confuse all those who hate pakistan, and delight all those who dont hate pakistan.

Now please excuse me while I go pick up the phone which I am sure is from Musharaff humbly seeking my military strategy advice ...

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Gen Rommel Counterfeit coin ignoring me and also Dost mittar.. `Strategic withdrawal`