As we were watching Dr. Strangelove I started to reflect on
my military experience. I found that some of the issues that Kubrick was making
a joke out of are really the way the military works. For example, the
communication is very slow moving up and down the chain of command and gets
extremely distorted as it moves. I was reminded of an exercise one of my
elementary instructors performed on my class. She took student one into the
hall way and told him a secret, when she came back into the class she sent the
next student out, the first student was suppose- to tell the secret, come back
to the class and send the next student out and so on. I was last to go, after I was told the secret
I had to come back in and announce what was told to me. What I said had nothing
to do with the initial message. One would think that if an elementary class can
figure out “the more people involved the more distorted the information,” then
you would surely think the military has a grasp on this. Sadly they don’t.
The military should restructure based
on what I call, “common sense.” There
are too many things that a guy in an office thinks are great ideas, but if he
would leave his office and come to the battle field he might see how ridiculous
some ideas are like wearing a reflective belt across the body in a combat-zone.
Commanders say it is for safety so other
Soldiers can see you. They must not realize the enemy can see the Soldier too--again common sense. This skit sums up the reflective belt compliments of www.youtube.com and Action Figure Therapy.
