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iPods at War
phaedo00 writes "Ars Technica has put together an outstanding piece of journalism about the use of personal technology in America's military and how these devices along with blatant piracy is causing new problems in the face of war: "While soldiers once deployed with little more than a backpack and a rifle, today's crop of infantry troops pack along MP3 players, digital cameras, DVD players, video games, movie collections, and computers of their own. The personal electronics have made modern American warfare the most comfortable it has ever been, but they've also brought a new set of problems onto the battlefield.""
I haven't heard any anecdotal stories about "so and so would still be alive if he hadn't been listening to his iPod." Or people's personal devices interfering with a mission. I think the number one weapon against the United States military is the IED (Improvised Explosive Devices). And these things blow up without warning. If you're super alert or playing a DS Lite in your vehicle, it's not going to make a difference when one of those things go off.
The loss of USB drives with sensitive data happens here at home, is it a surprise it happens at war?
Furthermore, if a soldier wants to play Counter Strike during his or her off-time in his or her tent, why not? If there's a surprise attack, there's not going to be much difference whether they were playing football, reading a book or playing counter strike. Human beings are distracted naturally and this is necessary, you can't ask someone to concentrate on war 100% of the time.
Our troops aren't just fighting for Democracy, they're also fighting for stable economies & developed infrastructures. I don't think it looks bad if they have gadgets and bells and whistles along with them while they're at war. These are some of the things they're fighting for them and their children to keep.
I would speculate that if you took away these devices that reminded them of home and society, their performance and morale would probably drop. I believe the USO show was designed to distract soldiers from the horrors of the war they fought, let them have an iPod if it does just that even better.
"Outstanding"?! It's an interesting piece but I'd hardly call it 'outstanding' or even credible journalism. Just an interesting thing to consider.
My work here is dung.
I would never deny a little bit of humanizing recreation to our troops. Maybe it is being so de-humanized in a very high stress life or death situation lead to things like PTSD and prisoner abuse scandals.
If you are willing to get shot at, I am willing to let you play playstation and listen to music on you off hours without any objection from me.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
As the length of a war increases, the length of tours of duty increase and the likelihood that the war can be won decreases. The most effective fighting force is one of fresh troops who know that they will not be staying long. These troops have relatively high moral. The longer they stay in the theatre, the more demoralized they become and the less they care about the end of the war.
The real trouble here isn't figuring out how to win these wars more quickly, it's about figuring out how to avoid getting into them in the first place, especially ones where we end up occupying foreign territory. Such situations always end poorly, especially when it's not crystal clear to our soldiers who the bad guys are and why they need to die. I have nothing but sympathy for our soldiers and the horrid situation they are in, and nothing but contempt for the leadership who put them in that situation.
Besides, I'd rather have them flying back with nightmares that haunt them for the rest of their lives. It's a reminder to them and to the rest of us who speak with them of the horrors of war, and should serve as an object lesson in why it must be avoided.
Another thing about Catch 22 is that it showed how the first contention of the article, that soldiers used to go to battle with nothing more than a rifle and a backpack isn't true. Remember Orr, Yossarian's tent-mate? He was always adding stuff to the tent. Basically everytime he came into a scene, he was either being shot down or trying to get the gas stove working better. Or consider the show MASH. Hawkeye's tent was full of "luxury" items. Ok these are fictional accounts, but based on non-fiction accounts I've read, I'd be willing to bet they were pretty close the real case in terms of personal possessions...at least for units that stayed in one place for any significant amount of time.
Here's another good paragraph
I'm more inclined to think it goes the other way: movies and video games are unable to depict conflict any other way than by focusing on the action, only filling in the context sufficiently to give the viewer/gamer a plausible plot. Except for fans of the movie Jarhead, nobody is very much fascinated by the mundane elements of war: cleaning your rifle, trying to stay awake through guard duty, cleaning your rifle, doing PT, cleaning your rifle, cleaning the latrines, cleaning your rifle. Audiences expect 5 minutes of that, then a lot of shooting and heroism.
Consider amatuer movies at home. For example, the obligatory end-of-the-season high school football team music video recap. It's all clips of tackles, touchdowns, passes, field goals, pranks during scrimmage, etc. Nobody's interested in the time spent running around the track, doing calistenics, sitting on the bench, and especially not sitting in class trying to maintain acedemic elegibility.
Furthermore, we really are talking about amatuer's here, putting together simple recaps. They're not master storytellers. They don't have the time or luxury of putting together complex narratives, and since they're only sharing this with friends and family, they don't need complex expositions making it clear to the viewer that this is so-and-so's involvement in Operation Enduring Freedom.
Actually, let them go after the parties offering the goods for sale. As I understand, the lawyers interest is not as much in the receivers as the providers. Please, go confront Abdul about his copying CD's to sell to the GI's. A flak jacket might be a good a better idea than a briefcase, though.
I was deployed to LSA Anaconda last year. We used to have a huge "morale drive." Basically, anyone with a portable drive would hook it up to the network and upload and download songs. About the time I was getting ready to leave they took the morale drive down and reminded us that copyright infringement is illegal.
"Just take the above quotes and replace "Vietnam" with "Iraq" and "Charlie" with the insurgency and you have quotes that apply as much to this war as it did 'Nam"
.....
Hardly. And if you only care about dead soldiers and not dead anybody else, or if you only care about US killed civilians and not terrorist killed civillians or
The conflict in Iraq is NOTHING like 'Nam, unless you are a peace and surrender at any cost type. You remember Chamberlain? ("I have a piece of paper")
The people we are fighting against, the Islamofacists don't care about anything the Cindy Sheehans of the world care about. They will kill her just as soon as she is done being useful to them.
They don't care about about political correctness or rights or anything of value to most of us. I think the war has already been lost, and making "nice" with them doesn't get anyone anywhere.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Our troops aren't just fighting for Democracy, they're also fighting for stable economies & developed infrastructures.
Have you picked up a newspaper lately? Half a million Iraqi citizens dead, infrastructure (that we destroyed) still massively broken despite billions upon billions of dollars being forked over to government contractors, and currently the country is essentially in the midst of civil war; you've got your warlords, and now there are Iraqi police departments turning into gangs. The country is in complete, total, utter chaos.
The party line is "fighting for freedom", by the way.
Please help metamoderate.
A lot of those soldiers are under 21. I say let's give them the right to drink.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
My uncle was in the Blackwatch before Viet Nam and participated in wargames with the US soldiers. He said he wasn't suprised the US lost vietnam because it was so easy to take out yanks because you could hear em for miles with their transistor radios. They were easy to track and they never heard you coming.
I think if there is a possibility it's going to be your last days on earth if you fsck up, well you'd better put down the toys and face it head on like a man and maybe survive. The enemy sure ain't playing games... they want to kill you just so they can get your boots instead of the crap they have on their feet.
Many of the above entries have been quick to criticize the article as negatively portraying troops as tech-addicted consumer whores or even implying that we should deprive soldiers of morale boosting comforts. The author painted these perhaps unflattering portraits of American soldiers enjoying Counterstrike and porn to illustrate that these are aspects of the American lifestyle that we aggressively defend. The amount of posters who have apparently ignored this main argument to defend the after hours activities of troops shows just how much we hold our gadgets dear to us. I love playing an online FPS, watching porn, and listening to my iPod as much as my fellow countrymen, but it seems crass to have these icons rise to the forefront of American ideals and Democracy. It creates a bit of dissonance with those commericals featuring Marines single-handedly slaying lava monsters (unless most Marines are really into WoW or something). Anyway, the author made the point that we need to re-examine our global image, especially as manifested through our fighting forces.
"is a traitor to this country and the men and women defending it."
Now you are sounding more like the music industry. That's like calling a kid who downloads pirated stuff a criminal. I agree that our troops shouldn't be cracked down for pirated content, but I hate this crap about calling people traitors. It's being misused just like the word heros.
Can I bum a sig?
Are you out of your honking mind?
First off, most personnel are on their 3rd to 4th tour of duty, a circumstance unprecedented in recent history. Soldiers in WWII, Vietnam, and Korea had shorter tours of duty and a defined endpoint to their enlistment. With stop loss and arbitrary callup of the IRR, soldiers are forced to stay on or get called back up long past their existing commitments. Second, wheras soldiers in Vietnam could pull R&R in Siagon without excessive fear of harm, most units are presently bottled up on base for the length of their tours, with few creature comforts. The lack of stateside R&R has led to a very high rate of divorce. No sane individual can maintain combat operations for longer than 150 days in a row without complete breakdown.
Next off, we are currently practicing officially sanctioned torture, engaging in indisriminate retalitory air-strikes and opening fire on vehicles approaching checkpoints at the slightest percieved provocation. How do we up the ante? Public beheading? Genocide? Tactical nukes? And if so, would it work? The experience with resistance movements under the SS tends to show that even the most brutal repression in occupied territories still meets up with resistance.
What will our standing in the world be if we renounce our humanity and engage in barbarism to achieve our goals? If we do produce soldiers capable of causal murder and brutality, who can only function in the chaos of war, what do we do with them after the war, how do we reassimilate them into the population?
Finally, why haven't you visited your local reciuiter? I'm certian they would be overjoyed to garantee an 11 Bravo MOS so you could test these theories in the real world.
Remember Kurtz was the villian.
GI's had portable phonographs in World War 1 (although they weren't carried in the field).
In World War 2, the troops had "foxhole" (crystal) radios, the detector was a razor blade and safety pin. There were many AC and DC powered radios. AFRTS started broadcasting during World War 2. There were also portable phonographs.
I am not sure what the GI's used during the Korean Conflict because transistor radios hadn't been introduced yet; they would have had phonographs, they may have carried battery operated tube type radios.
In Vietnam, transistor radios and tape players were carried in the field. MANY GI's came home from Vietman with high end stereos.
During the Gulf War and Bosnia, there would have been portable radios, portable CD players and possibly still some portable cassette players.
iPods and MP3 players were probably first used in Afghanistan.
Now, during Iraqui Freedom and Afghanistan, the state of the technology includes iPods. Same idea, smaller devices.
What? You're not a U.S. citizen, you say? Support our troops anyway, because their work is still saving your life, no matter what country you're from.
Yes.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Yes, because it was a formalized military that flew 4 commercial airliners into the twin towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. Seriously, get a grip, dude. Horrible things happen all over the world every day in which no organized military plays a role. If we didn't have an organized military then you'd be one of the first people to be killed in the ensuing melee as Reconquistas and Islamofacists slugged it out to see who would rule America. Face it, as much as you and other self-labeled "progressives" hate the military and always have, it's only the threat of annihilation that keeps our long list of enemies at bay.
The problem is that public tax dollars are funding the whole mess. Just because the kids they send over there have been sold on a total lie, (being that the war has any positive moral qualities to it at all and is not largely a money scam/creepy apocalypse cult thing for Bush and friends), doesn't mean that I shouldn't speak my mind about it. In fact, I'd say that the exact opposite is true.
Burglars, rapists and murderers also put their lives on the line in their chosen profession, but I'm certainly not going to withhold my criticism about them.
Sorry. You may be a nice guy, and no doubt you are, but you are still carrying an automatic weapon in a land where you are not and never were wanted. There were no WMD's in Iraq, Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11, and Iraq is a lot worse off today than it was before the American invasion, and the only people benefiting are those selling weapons and oil, and they will keep the war running until the public finally threatens to hang the management. So why on earth are you playing pawn out there? If I were you, I'd get out right smart quick before I got hurt or before my brain short-circuited on too much negative stimulus.
Best wishes and good luck to you!
-FL
You mean like, "There were no WMD's"? And, "Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11"? Or how about the Downing Street Memo fave, "Blair and Bush planned to invade regardless of whether they found WMD's or not."?
And let's not forget about, "Close friends and family of Bush and his cabal benefit directly from arms and oil sales."
This all comes from the Western Press. So what are you talking about?
-FL
Oh really? And how many Iraqis have you polled recently? Heck, how many Iraqis actually have the 'choice' you speak of. In any case, the kids making road-side bombs seem to think you don't know what you're talking about.
-FL