Military Excellence Quotes

I did not care for the things that most people care about– making money, having a comfortable home, high military or civil rank, and all the other activities, political appointments, secret societies, party organizations, which go on in our city . . . I set myself to do you– each one of you, individually and in private– what I hold to be the greatest possible service. I tried to persuade each one of you to concern himself less with what he has than with what he is, so as to render himself as excellent and as rational as possible.

My centre is giving way, my right is in retreat, situation excellent. I attack.

...it has always been my temperament to prefer a tiny amount of the excellent to a plenitude of the mediocre...

A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reform. It does not haggle over expenditures for armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain.

In peace-armies discipline meant the hunt, not of an average but of an absolute; the hundred per cent standard in which the ninety-nine were played down to the level of the weakest man on parade…. The deeper the discipline, the lower was the individual excellence; also the more sure the performance. – T. E. Lawrence Seven Pillars of Wisdom

When you’re working with Army and Marine Corps units, you immediately notice a difference. The Army is pretty tough, but their performance can depend on the individual unit. Some are excellent, filled with hoorah and first-class warriors. A few are absolutely horrible; most are somewhere in between. In my experience, Marines are gung ho no matter what. They will all fight to the death. Every one of them just wants to get out there and kill. They are bad-ass, hard-charging mothers.

This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent, and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. This vast power, gathered into one, endeavoured to subdue at a blow our country and yours and the whole of the region within the straits; and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind. She was pre-eminent in courage and military skill, and was the leader of the Hellenes. And when the rest fell off from her, being compelled to stand alone, after having undergone the very extremity of danger, she defeated and triumphed over the invaders, and preserved from slavery those who were not yet subjugated, and generously liberated all the rest of us who dwell within the pillars. But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.

Suppose we were planning to impose a dictatorial regime upon the American people—the following preparations would be essential: 1. Concentrate the populace in megalopolitan masses so that they can be kept under close surveillance and where, in case of trouble, they can be bombed, burned, gassed or machine-gunned with a minimum of expense and waste. 2. Mechanize agriculture to the highest degree of refinement, thus forcing most of the scattered farm and ranching population into the cities. Such a policy is desirable because farmers, woodsmen, cowboys, Indians, fishermen and other relatively self-sufficient types are difficult to manage unless displaced from their natural environment. 3. Restrict the possession of firearms to the police and the regular military organizations. 4. Encourage or at least fail to discourage population growth. Large masses of people are more easily manipulated and dominated than scattered individuals. 5. Continue military conscription. Nothing excels military training for creating in young men an attitude of prompt, cheerful obedience to officially constituted authority. 6. Divert attention from deep conflicts within the society by engaging in foreign wars; make support of these wars a test of loyalty, thereby exposing and isolating potential opposition to the new order. 7. Overlay the nation with a finely reticulated network of communications, airlines and interstate autobahns. 8. Raze the wilderness. Dam the rivers, flood the canyons, drain the swamps, log the forests, strip-mine the hills, bulldoze the mountains, irrigate the deserts and improve the national parks into national parking lots. Idle speculations, feeble and hopeless protest. It was all foreseen nearly half a century ago by the most cold-eyed and clear-eyed of our national poets, on California’s shore, at the end of the open road. Shine, perishing republic.

There’s a common misunderstanding that SEALs are all huge guys in top physical condition. That last part is generally true—every SEAL in the Teams is in excellent shape. But SEALs come in all sizes. I was in the area of six foot two and 175 pounds; others who would serve with me ranged from five foot seven on up to six foot six. The thing we all had in common wasn’t muscle; it was the will to do whatever it takes.

For war was not just a military campaign but also a parable. There were lessons of camaraderie and duty and inscrutable fate. There were lessons of honor and courage, of compassion and sacrifice. And then there was the saddest lesson, to be learned again and again in the coming weeks as they fought across Sicily, and in the coming months as they fought their way back toward a world at peace: that war is corrupting, that it corrodes the soul and tarnishes the spirit, that even the excellent and the superior can be defiled, and that no heart would remain unstained.

Whole fields have disappeared from view: the clergy, the military, electoral politics, teaching, even academia itself, for the most part, including basic science.

The Roman greatness is a proof of the excellence of their legions,

But I still state unhesitatingly, that for pure, vacillating stupidity, for superb incompetence to command, for ignorance combined with bad judgment --in short, for the true talent for catastrophe -- Elphy Bey stood alone. Others abide our question, but Elphy outshines them all as the greatest military idiot of our own or any other day. Only he could have permitted the First Afghan War and let it develop to such ruinous defeat. It was not easy: he started with a good army, a secure position, some excellent officers, a disorganized enemy, and repeated opportunities to save the situation. But Elphy, with the touch of true genius, swept aside these obstacles with unerring precision, and out of order wrought complete chaos. We shall not, with luck, look upon his like again.

Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your state in our histories. But one of them exceeds all the rest in greatness and valour. For these histories tell of a mighty power which unprovoked made an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent, and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. This vast power, gathered into one, endeavoured to subdue at a blow our country and yours and the whole of the region within the straits; and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind. She was pre-eminent in courage and military skill, and was the leader of the Hellenes. And when the rest fell off from her, being compelled to stand alone, after having undergone the very extremity of danger, she defeated and triumphed over the invaders, and preserved from slavery those who were not yet subjugated, and generously liberated all the rest of us who dwell within the pillars. But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.

human creativity in the arts, and human innovation in technology—are intimately related. Every advancement in technology, including military technology, remains, foremost, a feat of imagination. This is where humans excel.

Humanity had implemented space travel three hundred years ago, taking their place in the galactic government a mere hundred years later. They’d soon become leaders in defense and military action. If nothing else, humanity excelled at war.

There are only four types of officers. First, there are the lazy, stupid ones. Leave them alone, they do no harm. Second, there are the hard-working intelligent ones. They make excellent staff officers, ensuring that every detail is properly considered. Third, there are the hard-working, stupid ones. These people are a menace, and must be fired at once. They create irrelevant work for everybody. Finally, there are the intelligent lazy ones. They are suited for the highest office.

The military demands a commitment of discipline and obedience; it disrupts the career and takes one from home for poor pay and bad conditions of work. Actual battle threatens death and wounds. To commit oneself to war is to demonstrate certain excellences that cannot be faked.

He offered a less diabolic likeness of a complex and many-sided personality, and one that is both more plausible and more attractive. He said: Catilina had many excellent qualities, not indeed maturely developed, but at least sketched out roughly in outline.… There was a good deal about him that exercised a corrupting effect on other people; and yet he also undeniably possessed a gift for stimulating his associates into vigorous activity. Catilina was at one and the same time a furnace of inordinate sensual passions and a serious student of military affairs. I do not believe that the world has ever seen such a portent of divergent, contrary, contradictory tastes and appetites.

The King, who excelled all the princes of his time in wisdom and greatness of soul, did not suffer difficulty to deter him or danger to daunt him from anything that had to be taken up or carried through, for he-had trained himself to bear and endure whatever came, without yielding in adversity, or trusting to the deceitful favors of fortune in prosperity.

Brzeziński: According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujahideen began during 1980, that is, after the Soviet army had invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the truth, kept secret up to now, is quite different: it was in fact on July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive on clandestine aid to opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And on that very day I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my view aid was going to bring about a Soviet military intervention. Nouvel Observateur: When the Soviets justified their intervention by claiming that they meant to counter a secret intervention by the United States in Afghanistan, no one believed them. However there was some truth in that.... You don't regret anything today? Brzeziński: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. Its effect was to draw the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day the Soviets officially crossed the border I wrote to President Carter roughly the following: "We now have the opportunity to give the USSR its own Vietnam War". [warmonger's unrepentant admission that the U.S. overthrew the government of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan and sold it as a Soviet invasion]

With him were Marshal Patrice MacMahon, a hero of the Crimean War, and 100,000 troops.* MacMahon was promptly wounded in the leg by Prussian gunfire. He turned over his command to Général Ducrot, who, realizing that the hills surrounding Sedan would make excellent emplacements for the deadly Prussian cannons, uttered the memorable words: "We're in a chamberpot and about to be shat upon."29 It was a statement displaying a foresight thitherto alien to the French military command.

Of those who have commanded battalions and squadrons, only the names remain. The human race has nothing to show for a hundred battles that have been waged. But the great men I speak to you about have prepared pure and lasting pleasures for men yet to be born. A canal lock uniting two seas, a painting by Poussin, a beautiful tragedy, a newly discovered truth-these are things a thousand times more precious than all the annals of the court or all the accounts of military campaigns. You know that, with me, great men come first and heroes last. I call great men all those who have excelled in creating what is useful or agreeable. The plunderers of the provinces are merely heroes.

I know how prone we are to censure,” Lee continued, “and how ready [we are] to blame others for the non-fulfillment of our expectations. This is unbecoming in a generous people, and I grieve to see its expression. The general remedy for want of success in a military commander is his removal. This is natural, and in many instances proper. For no matter what may be the ability of the officer, if he loses the confidence of his troops disaster must sooner or later ensue.” For all his basic agreement with the principle here expressed, Davis was by no means prepared for the application Lee made in the sentence that followed: “I have been prompted by these reflections more than once since my return from Pennsylvania to propose to Your Excellency the propriety of selecting another commander for this army.

(Pericles Funeral Oration) But before I praise the dead, I should like to point out by what principles of action we rose to power, and under what institutions and through what manner of life our empire became great. Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. Our government does not copy our neighbors', but is an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while there exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty an obstacle, but a man may benefit his country whatever the obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our private business we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbor if he does what he likes; we do not put on sour looks at him which, though harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus unconstrained in our private business, a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for the authorities and for the laws, having a particular regard to those which are ordained for the protection of the injured as well as those unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general sentiment. Because of the greatness of our city the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us; so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as our own. Then, again, our military training is in many respects superior to that of our adversaries; Our enemies have never yet felt our united strength, the care of a navy divides our attention, and on land we are obliged to send our own citizens everywhere. But they, if they meet and defeat a part of our army, are as proud as if they had routed us all, and when defeated they pretend to have been vanquished by us all. None of these men were enervated by wealth or hesitated to resign the pleasures of life; none of them put off the evil day in the hope, natural to poverty, that a man, though poor, may one day become rich. But, deeming that the punishment of their enemies was sweeter than any of these things, and that they could fall in no nobler cause, they determined at the hazard of their lives to be honorably avenged, and to leave the rest. They resigned to hope their unknown chance of happiness; but in the face of death they resolved to rely upon themselves alone. And when the moment came they were minded to resist and suffer, rather than to fly and save their lives; they ran away from the word of dishonor, but on the battlefield their feet stood fast, and in an instant, at the height of their fortune, they passed away from the scene, not of their fear, but of their glory. I speak not of that in which their remains are laid, but of that in which their glory survives, and is proclaimed always and on every fitting occasion both in word and deed. For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men.

The second arena is vocation, that powerful, often ignored intersection of faith and calling. Millions of Christ-following teens and young adults are interested in serving in mainstream professions, such as science, law, media, technology, education, law enforcement, military, the arts, business, marketing and advertising, health care, accounting, psychology, and dozens of others. Yet most receive little guidance from their church communities for how to connect these vocational dreams deeply with their faith in Christ. This is especially true for the majority of students who are drawn to careers in the fields of science, including health care, engineering, education, research, computer programming, and so on. These young Christians learn very little in their faith communities about how to live honestly and faithfully in a world dominated by science—much less how to excel in their chosen scientific vocation. Can the Christian community summon the courage to prepare a new generation of professionals to be excellent in their calling and craft, yet humble and faithful where God has asked them to serve?

We aren’t simply looking at a demographically induced economic breakdown; we are looking at the end of a half millennium of economic history. At present, I see only two preexisting economic models that might work for the world we’re (d)evolving into. Both are very old-school: The first is plain ol’ imperialism. For this to work, the country in question must have a military, especially one with a powerful navy capable of large-scale amphibious assault. That military ventures forth to conquer territories and peoples, and then exploits said territories and peoples in whatever way it wishes: forcing conquered labor to craft products, stripping conquered territories of resources, treating conquered people as a captive market for its own products, etc. The British Empire at its height excelled at this, but to be honest, so did any other post-Columbus political entity that used the word “empire” in its name. If this sounds like mass slavery with some geographic and legal displacement between master and slave, you’re thinking in the right general direction. The second is something called mercantilism, an economic system in which you heavily restrict the ability of anyone to export anything to your consumer base, but in which you also ram whatever of your production you can down the throats of anyone else. Such ramming is often done with a secondary goal of wrecking local production capacity so the target market is dependent upon you in the long term. The imperial-era French engaged in mercantilism as a matter of course, but so too did any up-and-coming industrial power. The British famously product-dumped on the Germans in the early 1800s, while the Germans did the same to anyone they could reach in the late 1800s. One could argue (fairly easily) that mercantilism was more or less the standard national economic operating policy for China in the 2000s and 2010s (under American strategic cover, no less). In essence, both possible models would be implemented with an eye toward sucking other peoples dry, and transferring the pain of general economic dislocation from the invaders to the invaded. Getting a larger slice of a smaller pie, as it were. Both models might theoretically work in a poorer, more violent, more fractured world—particularly if they are married. But even together, some version of imperialist mercantilism faces a singular, overarching, likely condemning problem: Too many guns, not enough boots.

As the following pages deal with the practising life, they lead - in accordance with their topic - to an expedition into the little-explored universe of human vertical tensions. The Platonic Socrates had opened up the phenomenon for occidental culture when he stated expressis verbis that man is a being potentially 'superior to himself'. I translate this remark into the observation that all 'cultures', 'subcultures' or 'scenes' are based on central distinctions by which the field of human behavioural possibilities is subdivided into polarized classes. Thus the ascetic 'cultures' know the central distinction of complete versus incomplete, the religious 'cultures' that of sacred versus profane, the aristocratic 'cultures' that of noble versus common, the military 'cultures' that of brave versus cowardly, the political 'cultures' that of powerful versus powerless, the administrative 'cultures' that of superior versus subordinate, the athletic 'cultures' that of excellence versus mediocrity, the economic 'cultures' that of wealth versus lack, the cognitive 'cultures' that of knowledge versus ignorance, and the sapiental 'cultures' that of illumination versus blindness. What all these differentiations have in common is the espousal of the first value, which is considered the attractor in the respective field, while the second pole consistently functions as a factor of repulsion or object of avoidance.

First let me thank all of you for your honesty,” Chang Weisi said, and then turned to Zhang Beihai. “Excellent, Comrade Zhang. Tell us, on what do you base your confidence?” Zhang Beihai stood up, but Chang Weisi motioned for him to sit down. “This is not a formal meeting,” he said. “It’s just a heart-to-heart chat.” Still standing at attention, Zhang Beihai said, “Commander, I can’t answer your question sufficiently in just a few words, because building faith is a long and complicated process. First of all, I’d like to make note of the mistaken thinking among the troops at the present time. We all know that prior to the Trisolar Crisis, we had been advocating for the examination of the future of war from scientific and rational perspectives, and a powerful inertia has sustained this mentality to the present day. This is particularly the case in the present space force, where it has been exacerbated by the influx of a large number of academics and scientists. If we use this mentality to contemplate an interstellar war four centuries in the future, we’ll never be able to establish faith in a victory.” “What Comrade Zhang Beihai says is peculiar,” a colonel said. “Is steadfast faith not built upon science and reason? No faith is solid that is not founded on objective fact.” “Then let’s take another look at science and reason. Our own science and reason, remember. The Trisolarans’ advanced development tells us that our science is no more than a child collecting shells on the beach who hasn’t even seen the ocean of truth. The facts we see under the guidance of our science and reason may not be the true, objective facts. And since that’s the case, we need to learn how to selectively ignore them. We should see how things change as they develop, and we shouldn’t write off the future through technological determinism and mechanical materialism.” “Excellent,” Chang Weisi said, and nodded at him to continue. “We must establish faith in victory, a faith that is the foundation of military duty and dignity! When the Chinese military once faced a powerful enemy under extremely poor conditions, it established a firm faith in victory through a sense of responsibility to the people and the motherland. I believe that today, a sense of responsibility to the human race and to Earth civilization can encourage the same faith.

Professional accountability is a good thing. Without it, excellence is merely a pipe dream and even average performance isn’t a realistic expectation.

Grey didn’t know whether the girl had been Warren’s personal property, and he didn’t ask her. He’d taken advantage of his own doubt to tell Mr. Dawes, the governor’s erstwhile secretary, that as there was no record of her provenance, they should assume that she was technically the property of His Majesty and should thus be omitted from the list of Governor Warren’s belongings. Mr. Dawes, an excellent secretary, had made a noise like a mildly consumptive sheep and lowered his eyes in acquiescence. Grey had then dictated a brief letter of manumission, signed this as acting military governor of Jamaica (and thus His Majesty’s agent), and had Mr. Dawes affix the most imposing seal in his collection—Grey thought it was the seal of the department of weights and measures, but it was done in red wax and looked very impressive.

Despite his inauspicious roots and lack of a recognizeable last name, this guy not only excelled at the art of war, but rose to the point where he became the de facto ruler of one of the most powerful industrialized military empires on the planet, the supreme commander of the Japanese army, and one of the most face-melting samurai warriors of all time. That's so completely over-the-top insane that I can't even think of an analogy absurd enough to compare it to.”   -- Badass of the Week: Hideyoshi Toyotomi

The bibles (in English translation) are Mao Tse-Tung on Guerrilla Warfare by Brigadier General Samuel B. Griffith, USMC (Ret), which contains General Griffith’s excellent translation of Mao’s Yu Chi Chan of 1937; People’s War People’s Army by Vo Nguyen Giap; and Che Guevara on Guerrilla Warfare by Major Harries-Clichy Peterson, USMCR, which contains Major Peterson’s translation of Guevara’s Guerrilla Warfare, written in 1960 as a primer for Latin-American revolution. These

Between 1931 and 1946, Pan American Airways had 28 flying boats known as “Clippers,” These four radial engine aircraft were S-40’s and 42’s built in 1934, later replaced by Boeing 314 Clippers, that became the familiar symbol of the company. Following the war, Pan American Airways flew land based airliners such as the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, developed from the C-97, Stratofreighter, and a military derivative of the B-29 Superfortress, used as a troop transport, and the DC-4 series, converted from the blueprints of the C-54 Skymaster. Both of these airliners were originally developed for the United States Army Air Corps, during World War II. On January 1950 Pan American Airways Corporation adopted the name it had been unofficially called since 1943, and formally became “Pan American World Airways, Inc.” That September Pan American bought out American Airlines’ overseas division and simultaneously placed an order for 45 DC-6Bs, replacing their DC-4’s. Throughout Pan-American was known simply as Pan-Am. The Douglas DC-6 is a four engine “Double Wasp” radial piston-powered airliner manufactured for long flights. It was built by the Douglas Aircraft Company from 1946 until 1958. More than 700 were built between those years and some are still flying today. The rugged, reliable DC-6B, was regarded as the ultimate piston-engine airliner, from the perspective of having excellent handling qualities and relatively economical operations.

What level of aggressiveness do you use on an intoxicated patron at a bar that is staggering around and wanting to fight you? What level of aggressiveness do you use on a gang of thugs that have jumped you in a parking lot? I add these two extremes because you are more likely to face one of these examples than find yourself in a life-or-death struggle in a trench on the front lines of a battlefield. Do you understand the Force Continuum that is taught to Law Enforcement Officers? I would suggest that you familiarize yourself with it. Besides being an excellent mental tool to use when faced with potentially violent encounters, it could be invaluable if you ever have to justify your actions to law enforcement or before a judge. The techniques demonstrated in this book can be very serious when executed. You should have a solid understanding of the law, levels of force needed to mitigate a violent encounter, and most importantly, the moral and ethical foundation of a true warrior. A warrior that has a high level of self-confidence, but isn’t arrogant. One that trains their body and their mind for that moment that they might find themselves in a sudden violent encounter. Warriors understand when to hold back the level of their aggression, and likewise, they understand when to unleash it in all its ruthless darkness. Few in today’s society walk the true path of a warrior. Most modern warriors are in special operations in the military and within the intelligence community. Others work as overseas contractors. There are some that work in various government agencies, but on the most part average civilians will never be in the role of a true warrior. Can any of us still be thrust into a life-or-death encounter with only our four limbs and, most importantly, our head to survive the situation? Yes, but honestly the odds of being in that kind of situation are extremely low. Given the gravity of such a situation, we should all still train ourselves to be able to increase our chance of surviving. The segment of the population that doesn’t train and believes that this type of thing will never happen to them, or their loved ones, falls under the category of those to be protected. Then again, you, as an individual, have the right to turn a blind eye, though morally and ethically wrong to a warrior, in such a situation and let natural selection take its course. I couldn’t do that and I’m sure the vast majority of you feel the same way. By examining ourselves and determining that we would not stand by idly while others were attacked, adds additional responsibility and purpose.

A real man, the sorceress knew from experience, is an enthusiastic angler, but only using a fly. He collects military figures, erotic prints and models of sailing ships he builds himself, including the kind in bottles, and there is never a shortage of empty bottles of expensive alcoholic drinks in his home. He is an excellent cook, able to conjure up veritable culinary masterpieces. And well—when all’s said and done—the very sight of him is enough to make one desirous.

In view of this discussion, what can we say about how Jesus most likely understood himself? Did he call himself the messiah? If so, what did he mean by it? And did he call himself God? Here I want to stake out a clear position: messiah, yes; God, no. I think there are excellent reasons for thinking that Jesus imagined himself as the messiah, in a very specific and particular sense. The messiah was thought to be the future ruler of the people of Israel. But as an apocalypticist, Jesus did not think that the future kingdom was going to be won by a political struggle or a military engagement per se. It was going to be brought by the Son of Man, who came in judgment against everyone and everything opposed to God. Then the kingdom would arrive. And I think Jesus believed he himself would be the king in that kingdom.

Suppose we were planning to impose a dictatorial regime upon the American people — the following preparations would be essential: 1. Concentrate the populace in megalopolitan masses so that they can be kept under close surveillance and where, in case of trouble, they can be bombed, burned, gassed or machine-gunned with a minimum of trouble. 2. Mechanize agriculture to the highest degree of refinement, thus forcing most of the scattered farm and ranching population into the cities. Such a policy is desirable because farmers, woodsmen, cowboys, Indians, fishermen and other relatively self-sufficient types are difficult to manage unless displaced from their natural environment. 3. Restrict the possession of firearms to the police and the regular military organizations. 4. Encourage or at least fail to discourage population growth. Large masses of people are more easy manipulated and dominated that scattered individuals. 5. Continue military conscription. Nothing excels military training for creating in young men an attitude of prompt, cheerful obedience to officially constituted authority. 6. Divert attention from deep conflicts within society by engaging in foreign wars; make support of these wars a test for loyalty, thereby exposing and isolating potential opposition to the new order. 7. Overlay the nation with a finely reticulated network of communications, airlines and interstate autobahns. 8. Raze the wilderness. Dam the rivers, flood the canyons, drain the swamps, log the forests, strip-mine the hills, bulldoze the mountains, irrigate the deserts and improve the national parks into national parking lots.

The door to the captain’s office was open, the room vacant but for the memories it held, and I staggered forward to sink into a chair. I closed my eyes, filled with a dreadful, yearning sorrow. Cannan had been such a powerful presence in the palace--in our lives--for so many years that it felt as though the heart of our kingdom had been taken from us. He had been Captain of the Guard for thirty years, and had not failed once in his duties; he had saved more lives than he had ever taken in war; and he had raised Steldor to be the man he was today--a bold, brave, sacrificing man. The son was his father in many, many ways. I was startled out of my thoughts by a knock, and turned to see Steldor standing in the doorway. He glanced around the office, his expression composed, and yet it held a deep and immutable sorrow. “I was told I would find you here,” he said. “How are you?” I asked, nervously twining my hands. “As good as can be expected, I suppose.” “And Galen?” “He has Tiersia.” I nodded, averting my gaze. I knew his answer had been an honest one, and had not been meant to hurt me, but sadness filled me. I wanted him to have someone--he deserved to have someone. Only that someone could not be me. “Let’s go to my drawing room,” I suggested, for Cannan’s office was not a place that would allow us to talk about the future, and that was what we needed to do. Steldor stepped aside, allowing me to exit first. He spent one last moment absorbing the look and feel of his father’s office, then respectfully closed the door. When we reached the Queen’s Drawing Room at the front of the palace, we walked over to the bay window that granted a view of the Eastern Courtyard to talk, much as we had when he had told me of his plan to annul our marriage. But this time, I was the one who needed to speak. I slipped my hand into his, and he glanced at me in mild surprise. “I’m sorry about your father’s passing. I know how close you were to him. His strength and guidance will be missed by all. Despite our kingdom’s glory, Hytanica is less without him.” Steldor did not respond, but gazed stoically out the window. Then he nodded twice and took a deep breath, reining in his emotions. Even now, with me, he was proud, not knowing that I wanted to hold him and let him cry, and that if he did, I would not, even for an instant, find him weak. He ran a hand through his dark hair and turned to face me, silently begging me to change the subject, and I obliged. “”And how is the rest of your family?” “Amid our losses, there is also some good news. Shaselle has a suitor.” “Do you approve of her choice? After all, you are the man of the family now.” “There’s no accounting for taste.” He smirked, seeming thankful for my attempt at normalcy. “Actually, Lord Grayden is a good man--a man who met my father’s approval and, I believe, would have met Baelic’s. When the time is right, I expect a betrothal.” Again a smile played across his features. “Now I just have to worry about the other three girls in the family.” I laughed, lacing my fingers through his when I felt he might pull away. I did not know how he would react to my coming proposal--and whether he would admit it or not, he needed some comfort now. “Steldor,” I said, my tone and demeanor once more serious, “when I see Galen, I will reinstate him as Sergeant at Arms.” “An excellent decision.” I nodded, then continued. “But our military needs to be reformed. It needs a strong and passionate leader, someone who will do Cannan and all of his work justice. I cannot think of anyone more suited to taking over the position of Captain of the Guard than you.” He did not immediately reply, but his eyes went to our hands, and he raised mine to his lips as he had so often done before.

Steldor,” I said, my tone and demeanor once more serious, “when I see Galen, I will reinstate him as Sergeant at Arms.” “An excellent decision.” I nodded, then continued. “But our military needs to be reformed. It needs a strong and passionate leader, someone who will do Cannan and all of his work justice. I cannot think of anyone more suited to taking over the position of Captain of the Guard than you.” He did not immediately reply, but his eyes went to our hands, and he raised mine to his lips as he had so often done before. “I don’t know what to do, Alera,” he said, and the wistful tone of his voice confused me. “This is not what you want to hear, but to me, it doesn’t seem there was a time before I loved you. And though I try to keep my distance from you…even now, you keep giving me reasons to love you more.” I had nothing to say, no notion of how to react. He hesitated, then stepped forward, pressing his mouth against mine in a sweet, gentle kiss. “Now,” he whispered, “you need to forget my words, and go to the man you love. As for me, I will be your Captain of the Guard and try to live up to my father’s legacy. And that is all I will be.” He let go of my hand, then strode out the door, the warmth of his touch lingering longer than it should have.

Of the rise of this singular people few authentic records appear to exist. It is, however, probable that they represent a later wave of that race, whether true Sudras, or a later wave of immigrants from Central Asia, which is found farther south as Mahratta; and perhaps they had, in remote times, a Scythian origin like the earlier and nobler Rajputs. They affect Rajput ways, although the Rajputs would disdain their kinship; and they give to their chiefs the Rajput title of "Thakur," a name common to the Deity and to great earthly lords, and now often used to still lower persons. So much has this practice indeed extended, that some tribes use the term generically, and speak of themselves as of the "Thakur" race. These, however, are chiefly pure Rajputs. It is stated, by an excellent authority, that even now the Jats "can scarcely be called pure Hindus, for they have many observances, both domestic and religious, not consonant with Hindu precepts. There is a disposition also to reject the fables of the Puranic Mythology, and to acknowledge the unity of the Godhead." (Elliot's Glossary, in voce "Jat.") Wherever they are found, they are stout yeomen; able to cultivate their fields, or to protect them, and with strong administrative habits of a somewhat republican cast. Within half a century, they have four times tried conclusions with the might of Britain. The Jats of Bhartpur fought Lord Lake with success, and Lord Combermere with credit; and their "Sikh" brethren in the Panjab shook the whole fabric of British India on the Satlaj, in 1845, and three years later on the field of Chillianwala. The Sikh kingdom has been broken up, but the Jat principality of Bhartpur still exists, though with contracted limits, and in a state of complete dependence on the British Government. There is also a thriving little principality — that of Dholpur — between Agra and Gwalior, under a descendant of the Jat Rana of Gohad, so often met with in the history of the times we are now reviewing (v. inf. p. 128.) It is interesting to note further, that some ethnologists have regarded this fine people as of kin to the ancient Get¾, and to the Goths of Europe, by whom not only Jutland, but parts of the south-east of England and Spain were overrun, and to some extent peopled. It is, therefore, possible that the yeomen of Kent and Hampshire have blood relations in the natives of Bhartpur and the Panjab. The area of the Bhartpur State is at present 2,000 square miles, and consists of a basin some 700 feet above sea level, crossed by a belt of red sandstone rocks. It is hot and dry; but in the skilful hands that till it, not unfertile; and the population has been estimated at near three-quarters of a million. At the time at which our history has arrived, the territory swayed by the chiefs of the Jats was much more extensive, and had undergone the fate of many another military republic, by falling into the hands of the most prudent and daring of a number of competent leaders. It has already been shown (in Part I.) how Suraj Mal, as Raja of the Bhartpur Jats, joined the Mahrattas in their resistance to the great Musalman combination of 1760. Had his prudent counsels been followed, it is possible that this resistance would have been more successful, and the whole history of Hindustan far otherwise than what it has since been. But the haughty leader of the Hindus, Sheodasheo Rao Bhao, regarded Suraj Mal as a petty landed chief not accustomed to affairs on a grand scale, and so went headlong on his fate.

Most of what people do well at is what comes easily to them to do. By training, learning, and practice, they improve, excel, and become experts. If what you are doing comes without ease but with pain, tears, struggle, and labour, you may have to reconsider if it is really your calling or vocation.

The author was told by Fahir Iz that, during his military service in the neighbourhood of Erzurum just before the Second World War, he had got into conversation with a shepherd, whom he shocked by using the words `Biz Torkler' (We Turks). `Estagfurullah!' was the reply, `Ben Torkiim, zat-i aliniz Osmanlismrz' (Lord have mercy! I'm a Turk; Your Excellency is an Ottoman).

It was only after World War II that Stanford began to emerge as a center of technical excellence, owing largely to the campaigns of Frederick Terman, dean of the School of Engineering and architect-of-record of the military-industrial-academic complex that is Silicon Valley. During World War II Terman had been tapped by his own mentor, presidential science advisor Vannevar Bush, to run the secret Radio Research Lab at Harvard and was determined to capture a share of the defense funding the federal government was preparing to redirect toward postwar academic research. Within a decade he had succeeded in turning the governor’s stud farm into the Stanford Industrial Park, instituted a lucrative honors cooperative program that provided a camino real for local companies to put selected employees through a master’s degree program, and overseen major investments in the most promising areas of research. Enrollments rose by 20 percent, and over one-third of entering class of 1957 started in the School of Engineering—more than double the national average.4 As he rose from chairman to dean to provost, Terman was unwavering in his belief that engineering formed the heart of a liberal education and labored to erect his famous “steeples of excellence” with strategic appointments in areas such as semiconductors, microwave electronics, and aeronautics. Design, to the extent that it was a recognized field at all, remained on the margins, the province of an older generation of draftsmen and machine builders who were more at home in the shop than the research laboratory—a situation Terman hoped to remedy with a promising new hire from MIT: “The world has heard very little, if anything, of engineering design at Stanford,” he reported to President Wallace Sterling, “but they will be hearing about it in the future.

Yet here amidst the litter-strewn streets, burnt-out cars and smashed, piss-stinking phone boxes, rather than poverty being an excuse for failure it nurtured resilience, resourcefulness and ingenuity – all characteristics needed in any walk of life to attain success, and certainly components in building a highly-skilled soldier. It’s of little wonder that the council estates of the working classes are the breeding grounds for the UK’s continuing military excellence.

Change in leadership brands must be influenced and proactively effected at a personal level, it can never be forced from outside with sustainable effectiveness. Saddam Hussein, Muammar al Gaddafi and Hosni Mubarak are all political trophies, yet the effects of the military or “civil” initiatives that toppled them, are nothing to be proud of considering what continues to happen in countries like Iraq, Libya, Egypt and Syria, after the use of force to bring political change.

Let's look at one such creative counterpart described many years ago in the book of Proverbs. There are many outstanding, godly women mentioned throughout the Bible, but this woman received special praise: "Many daughters have done well, But you excel them all" (Proverbs 31:29). Who was this woman who did more than Deborah, the military adviser, or Ruth, the woman of constancy, or Esther, the queen who risked her life for her people? She was a wife and mother like you and me!

Founded in 1889 by a Civil War veteran in what had been a summer resort hotel, the academy modeled its strict code of conduct and turreted academic building after West Point, located five miles south along the Hudson. About 450 students were enrolled, all of them white except for a couple of dozen Latin Americans. The school did not admit blacks until Donald’s senior year. Women would not arrive for another decade. The military academy was a place where, as the school’s slogan put it, the boys were “set apart for excellence”; the idea was to inject discipline and direction into boys who arrived on campus unformed and untamed. That involved breaking them down to build them up.

and offered them little in any event. There was even talk of pressuring North Korea to demilitarize significantly. The Chinese wished for peace, not conflict, in the region and James Marshall was the president’s man to make it happen. Lifelong friends, they had both excelled in their fields, President Jack King in the military and James Marshall in business. When James had announced his retirement on his fifty-fifth birthday, President King had pounced; Marshall was perfect to obtain the treaties that would secure the Far East. Jack loved and trusted him like a brother. With over four hundred million dollars in the bank, all James Marshall had wanted was to enjoy life but he’d never let Jack down and he’d certainly never

The moral effect of taking boys off street corners and out of saloons and drilling them is excellent, and the economic effects are likewise beneficial. [Advocating military conscpription]

Daniel Goleman begins "Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence" with a scene of John Berger, house detective for a Manhattan department store, as he moves among a crowd of shoppers, scanning, scrutinizing, zeroing in on the likely shoplifter. This specific kind of attention - a "sustained scan for a rare event" - was first studied at the height of the Cold War, when the U.S. military went on the alert for a nuclear attack. Then Goleman depicts a different kind of focus: He sees a

someone should teach those who will lead that excellence in the military cannot be based on technology alone, no matter how advanced and how fantastic. Nor can it be based merely on economics or body counts.

Humanitarian, but hardly controversial; the Count was a secret opponent of the regime, with form to prove it. In January 1939, as Major von Schwerin, he had approached the British Military Attaché in Berlin, Lieutenant-Colonel Kenneth Strong, with a deal. If Chamberlain abandoned his policy of appeasement and opposed Hitler, his friends in the army were willing to mount a coup against the Nazis. Lamentably this excellent opportunity was ignored by the Foreign Office. Meanwhile, by 1944 Strong had become Eisenhower’s chief of intelligence.14

Wow. They really look to be in love,” Alex sighed, propping her chin on her hand and watching them cuddle, that damn dog wiggling between them. “They are,” Duncan admitted. “They’ve gone through a lot together and I’m happy for them. I think they’ll be a strong couple and excellent parents.” “Oh, she’s pregnant? That’s so wonderful,” she sighed. Duncan swallowed. Yup. Another mark on the con side. She wanted kids. He’d always wanted kids, but that had been before he’d gone to war and seen so many young men being killed over there. When Melanie had shown up at Walter Reed after he’d been injured and he realized she was pregnant, for just the tiniest fraction of a second he had felt pure joy. Then he’d realized there had been no earthly way he could have put her in that condition and the disappointment had gutted him. Melanie had cheated on him with another man, but he felt strangely detached about the cheating itself. By that time he’d seen and learned a lot about being in a relationship while in the military. Anyway, that had been many years ago. He was older and wiser now, and he wouldn’t be letting himself fall for a woman practically young enough to be his daughter and who wanted kids. God. He’d be an idiot to get involved with her. Melanie had taught him well to guard his heart. He

Welcome to my Goodreads author page! Thank you for stopping by. My new thriller, THE DEVIL DRAGON PILOT is now available. If you are new to where aviation meets espionage, this is an excellent place to begin. I have also created a website, complete with a Group Readers Guide and Photos at ColbyAviationThrillers and hope you will stop in. While visiting, you can sign up for my newsletter and receive a special Devil Dragon gift. Thank you for all of your support!

The legendary pvs 7 night vision goggles are one of the most popular night vision products ever made. They are well known for their excellent performance and reliability. The pvs 14 night vision monocular is the most versatile and popular night vision product ever made, they truly are the Swiss Army Knife of night time equipment. These optics are capable of handling and excelling at almost any task at hand. If you are looking for cutting edge thermal optics technology than check out our Thermal Multipurpose Viewers, Goggles, Thermal Binoculars, and Cameras. Night Vision 4 Less is offering the latest and greatest in thermal night vision for law enforcement, fire and search & rescue teams, military, hunting, and wildlife observation.

Too often we label things “good” or “bad” when the right designation might merely be “different.” The Israeli military needed people who could analyze satellite images for threats. They needed soldiers who had amazing visual skills, wouldn’t get bored looking at the same place all day long, and could notice subtle changes. Not an easy task. But the IDF’s Visual Intelligence Division found the perfect recruits in the most unlikely of places. They began recruiting people with autism. While autistics may struggle with personal interaction, many excel at visual tasks, like puzzles. And they’ve proven themselves a great asset in their nation’s defense.

Logistics is in fact a key aspect of military planning, and Cook is responsible for Apple’s operational excellence. For example, when Apple knew it would move away from disk drives in its iPods and MacBook Air notebooks, it invested in billion-dollar forward purchases of flash memory. Cook’s supply-chain organization executed this masterstroke, which accomplished the trifecta of securing Apple’s supply, locking in the lowest price, and hobbling the competition’s access to components. Such back-of-the-shop excellence at a company known for its creative flair is a rare example of what researchers Charles O’Reilly of Stanford and Michael Tushman, a professor of organizational behavior at the Harvard Business School, refer to as “ambidexterity as a dynamic capability.” In other words, it reflects the ability of a top-performing company to be simultaneously efficient and innovative.

Now that he was off the street, he drew the Beretta from his jeans. A military variant of the popular police officer’s sidearm known as an M9, it was a 9mm, fifteen-round semi-automatic pistol. Though lacking a little in stopping power, they were otherwise excellent weapons, tried and tested all over the world. Disengaging the safety, he held the weapon low and advanced into the room. Hollywood always shows the hero moving with his arms bent, weapon pointing up at the ceiling, and while it might look impressive, in reality it would just make it easier for an assailant to grab the weapon or knock it aside. Keeping it below waist height makes it much more difficult to take out of the game

Some of the most highly trained and successful military forces – Nelson’s fleet, Montgomery’s 8th Army, Wingate’s Chindits – were worked up to excellence in remote environments, undistracted by the comforts of normal life.

Since the highest virtue is intelligence, the pre-eminent duty of the state is not to train the citizens to military excellence, but to educate them for the right use of peace.”230

Nobody really knows what he’s doing, Bill Mauldin had written of his first week in combat with the 180th Infantry. Yet other primal lessons also could be gleaned, from Licata to Augusta. For war was not just a military campaign but also a parable. There were lessons of camaraderie and duty and inscrutable fate. There were lessons of honor and courage, of compassion and sacrifice. And then there was the saddest lesson, to be learned again and again in the coming weeks as they fought across Sicily, and in the coming months as they fought their way back toward a world at peace: that war is corrupting, that it corrodes the soul and tarnishes the spirit, that even the excellent and the superior can be defiled, and that no heart would remain unstained.

Good leadership is surrounding yourself with excellent people and then getting out of their way.

According to Colin Gray, director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at the University of Reading in the UK, ‘Making strategy is by far the most difficult and risky than making policy and war plans. By its very nature strategy is more demanding of the intellect and perhaps the imagination. Excellence in strategy requires the strategist to transcend simple categories of thought. Success

It will always be a pity that the title of this great formation [the 4th Infantry Division] was given to the scattered troops, deployed on policing duty. The matchless, professional excellence of this formation was greatly admired by the Germans - no mean professionals themselves. It is said that General Von Arnim, Commander of the German Forces in Tunis in 1943, insisted on surrendering to the 4th. His caravan is today used by the GOC of 4 Division. No wonder the Chinese were aghast at the poor “performance” of this famous formation. It is ironic that the fame of this formation is more widely known and respected by foreigners than by the Indian people. Perhaps this is the price of segregating the Army from the public, except for the annual pat on the back during the debate on defence appropriations.

In the same year, Musashi adopted another son, but this time it was a blood relative. Iori was the second son of Tahara Hisamitsu, Musashi’s older brother by four years, and he was retained to serve the Akashi daimyō, Ogasawara Tadazane. With his newly adopted son gainfully employed, Musashi became a “guest” of Tadazane and moved to Akashi. Iori was clearly a gifted young man, and five years later, at the age of twenty, was promoted to the distinguished position of “elder” of the domain. As a guest in the Honda house in Himeji and then the Ogasawara house, Musashi cultivated his artistic expression. He started studying Zen, painting, sculpture and even landscape design, and fraternized with distinguished artists and scholars such as Hayashi Razan. He had a free hand to do as he liked, and he liked to be creative. Having just emerged from an era of incessant warfare, proficiency in the more refined arts had become once again a desirable attribute in high society. It was during this period that Musashi realized how the various arts had much in common in terms of the search for perfection. He understood that the arts and occupations were “Ways” in their own right, by no means inferior to the Way of the warrior. This attitude differs from writings by other warriors, which are typically underpinned by hints of exclusivity, even arrogance, toward those not in “Club Samurai.” That said, the ideal of bunbu ryōdō (the two ways of brush and sword in accord) had long been a mainstay of samurai culture. Samurai literature from the fourteenth century onwards exhibits a concern for balancing martial aptitude with the refinement in the genteel arts and civility; namely an equilibrium between bu (martial) and bun (letters or the arts). For example, Shiba Yoshimasa’s Chikubasho (1383) admonishes the ruling class to pay attention to matters of propriety, self-cultivation, and attention to detail. “If a man has attained ability in the arts, it is possible to ascertain the depth of his mind, and the demeanor of his clan can be ascertained. In this world, honour and reputation are valued above all else. Thus, a man is able to accrue standing in society by virtue of competence in the arts and so should try to excel in them too, regardless of whether he has ability or not… It goes without saying that a man should be dexterous in military pursuits using the bow and arrow…” This was easier said than done in times of constant social turmoil and the chaos of war, but is exactly what Musashi turned his attention to as he entered the twilight years of his life. His pursuit for perfection in both military arts and other artistic Ways is perhaps why he is so revered to this day.

Mentalizing allows you to grasp other people’s viewpoints and overall inner experience because you realize they have a mind of their own, different from yours. Good parents are excellent at empathizing and mentalizing; their interest in their child’s mind makes the child feel seen and understood. It’s also an indispensable characteristic for leadership in business, the military, or any situation where understanding and predicting the motives of others is central. Empathy is a bedrock component of emotional intelligence (Goleman 1995), which is essential to social and occupational success.

The acute eye of Queen Victoria had spotted, during her visit of 1855, that he had had the streets of Paris covered with macadam, ‘to prevent the people from taking up the pavement as hitherto’. Later on, it would have been apparent to any military observer what excellent fields of fire Haussmann’s long, straight streets afforded, what opportunities to turn the flank of a barricade there were for troops debouching from their oblique intersections, and how easy the wide boulevards made it to transport riot-breakers from one end of Paris to another. They had, thought Haussmann, at last succeeded ‘in cutting through the habitual storm-centres’. But in fact, with what force will be seen later, he had to a large extent achieved the defeat of his own purpose.

I know I saw nothing wrong with insurance fraud, just as I saw nothing wrong with drug smuggling, or with anything else I considered a victimless crime. Draft dodging, still well in the future for me but already upending the lives of the older brothers of friends, I vehemently endorsed. The Vietnam War was wrong, rotten to the core. But the military, the government, the police, big business were all congealing in my view into a single oppressive mass—the System, the Man. These were standard-issue youth politics at the time, of course, and I was soon folding school authorities into the enemy force. And my casual, even contemptuous attitude toward the law was mostly a holdover from childhood, when a large part of glory was defiance and what you could get away with. But a more conscious, analytic, loosely Marxist disaffection was also taking root in my politics in my midteens. (And disaggregating, intellectually and emotionally, the mass of institutional power—sorting out how things actually worked, beyond how they felt as a whole—would turn out to be the work of many years.) In the meantime, surfing became an excellent refuge from the conflict—a consuming, physically exhausting, joy-drenched reason to live. It also, in its vaguely outlaw uselessness, its disengagement from productive labor, neatly expressed one’s disaffection. Where was my sense of social responsibility? Not much in evidence. I marched in peace marches. I was still a good student, which really proved nothing except that I liked to read and was hedging my bets.

That Hamilton adhered to a code of gentlemanly honor was confirmed in yet another sideshow of the Benedict Arnold affair: the arrest of Major John André, adjutant general of the British Army and Arnold’s contact, traveling under the nom de guerre John Anderson. As he awaited a hearing to decide his fate, he was confined at a tavern in Tappan, New York. Though seven years younger than André, Hamilton developed a sympathy for the prisoner born of admiration and visited him several times. A letter that Hamilton later wrote to Laurens reveals his nearly worshipful attitude toward the elegant, cultured André, who was conversant with poetry, music, and painting. Hamilton identified with André’s misfortune in a personal manner, as if he saw his own worst nightmare embodied in his fate: To an excellent understanding, well improved by education and travel, [André] united a peculiar elegance of mind and manners and the advantage of a pleasing person. . . . By his merit, he had acquired the unlimited confidence of his general and was making a rapid progress in military rank and reputation. But in the height of his career, flushed with new hopes from the execution of a project the most beneficial to his party that could be devised, he was at once precipitated from the summit of prosperity and saw all the expectations of his ambition blasted and himself ruined.55

Bethmann expressed concern for unity and exhorted the deputies to "be unanimous" in their decisions. "We shall be unanimous, Excellency," a spokesman for the Liberals replied obediently. The all-knowing Erzberger who, as rapporteur of the Military Affairs Committee and a close associate of the Chancellor, was considered to have his ear to Olympus, bustled among his fellow deputies assuring them that the Serbs would be beaten "by this time next Monday" and that everything was going well.

It was somewhat shocking when Paula Bonhoeffer chose to take the teacher’s examination as a single woman,* but as a married woman, she used what she learned to great effect. She was openly distrustful of the German public schools and their Prussian educational methods. She subscribed to the maxim that Germans had their backs broken twice, once at school and once in the military; she wasn’t about to entrust her children to the care of others less sensitive than she during their earliest years. When they were a bit older, she sent them to the local public schools, where they invariably excelled. But until each was seven or eight, she was the sole educator.

Quite early he began to write letters and then articles about the conduct of the war, and his conclusions were intelligent and convincing. Indeed, Cyrus developed an excellent military mind. His criticisms both of the war as it had been conducted and of the army organization as it persisted were irresistibly penetrating. His articles in various magazines attracted attention. His letters to the War Department, printed simultaneously in the newspapers, began to have a sharp effect in decisions on the army.

Many of these students seem to have a blinkered view of their options. There’s crass but affluent investment banking. There’s the poor but noble nonprofit world. And then there is the world of high-tech start-ups, which magically provides money and coolness simultaneously. But there was little interest in or awareness of the ministry, the military, the academy, government service or the zillion other sectors. Furthermore, few students showed any interest in working for a company that actually makes products. . . . [C]ommunity service has become a patch for morality. Many people today have not been given vocabularies to talk about what virtue is, what character consists of, and in which way excellence lies, so they just talk about community service. . . . In whatever field you go into, you will face greed, frustration and failure. You may find your life challenged by depression, alcoholism, infidelity, your own stupidity and self-indulgence. . . . Furthermore . . . [a]round what ultimate purpose should your life revolve? Are you capable of heroic self-sacrifice or is life just a series of achievement hoops? . . . You can devote your life to community service and be a total schmuck. You can spend your life on Wall Street and be a hero. Understanding heroism and schmuckdom requires fewer Excel spreadsheets, more Dostoyevsky and the Book of Job. 110

near real time. . . . If the intelligence establishment can in effect use a credit card to buy excellent commercial imagery, so can tyrants and terrorists.71

mother. Just thinking about it still hurt a little too much. So much so that Lindsey was beginning to believe that Mark Jenkins might be right. Dave plopped into the seat next to her. Lopez claimed the chair on her other side, and she was mostly safe. All she needed now was someone who wasn’t Jenk to sit directly across from her, and she might make it through the meal without massive heartburn. Izzy didn’t save the day, the bastard. He sat next to Lopez. It was then that Lindsey spotted Jenk, still helping himself to the food—spaghetti with meat sauce—kept hot in warmers over on the other side of the kitchen. Tom Paoletti was with him, and the two men were deep in conversation. Clearly the best thing for her to do was to eat fast and get out of here. She put her head down, dug in and, whoa. She’d expected military rations or school cafeteria food at best, but this sauce was delicious. The salad dressing was excellent, too. She hadn’t realized just how hungry she was. “Stella told me her husband Rob cooked dinner,” Izzy announced. “I begin to understand why she hasn’t left him for me. This shit rocks.” Decker sat down across from Lopez. Two of the SEALs Lindsey didn’t know that well—their names were Stan and Mac—sat next to Izzy and immediately began arguing the pros and cons of setting up that bad-weather

As Prime Minister, I instruct you to proceed with all speed with the development of this excellent weapon. As First Lord of the Treasury, I authorise expenditure of £5,000 on this work to tide you over until proper financial arrangements are made.

Hiba S. is one of the pioneer Iraqi women academics and authors in the field of media and journalism, currently exiled in Amman. During a visit to her office in summer 2014, Hiba shared that the early days of the occupation in 2003 were the most difficult she had ever experienced. She recollected: ‘I was sitting in my garden smoking when I suddenly saw a huge American tank driving through the street. I saw a Black soldier on the top of the tank. He looked at me and did the victory sign with his fingers. Had I had a pistol in my hand, I would have immediately shot myself in the head right then and there. The pain I felt upon seeing that image is indescribable. I felt as though all the years we had spent building our country, educating our students to make them better humans were gone with the wind.’ Hiba’s description carries strong feelings of loss, defeat, and humiliation. Also significant in her narrative is that the first American soldier she encountered in post-invasion Iraq was a Black soldier making the victory sign. This is perhaps one of the most ironic and paradoxical images of the occupation. A Black soldier from a historically and consistently oppressed group in American society, who, one might imagine had no choice but to join the military, coming to Iraq and making the victory sign to a humiliated Iraqi academic whose country was ravaged by war. In a way, this image is worthy of a long pause. It is an encounter of two oppressed and defeated groups of people—Iraqis and African Americans meeting as enemies in a warzone. But, if one digs deeper, are these people really 'enemies' or allies struggling against the same oppressors? Do the real enemies ever come to the battlefield? Or do they hide behind closed doors planning wars and invasions while sending other 'oppressed' and 'diverse' faces to the battlefield to fight wars on their behalf? Hiba then recalled the early months of the occupation at the University of Baghdad where she taught. She noted that the first thing the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) tried to do was to change the curriculum Iraqi academics had designed, taught, and improved over the decades. While the Americans succeeded in doing this at the primary and high school levels, Hiba believed that they did not succeed as much at the university level. Iraqi professors knew better than to allow the 'Americanization of the curriculum' to take place. 'We knew the materials we were teaching were excellent even compared to international standards,' she said. 'They [the occupiers] tried to immediately inject subjects like "democracy" and "human rights" as if we Iraqis didn’t know what these concepts meant.' It is clear from Hiba’s testimony, also articulated by several other interviewees, that the Iraqi education system was one of the occupying forces’ earliest targets in their desire to reshape and restructure Iraqi society and peoples’ collective consciousness.

Bunker Hill proved a Pyrrhic victory, for the British registered more than a thousand casualties. Americans had shown not only pluck and grit but excellent marksmanship as they picked off British officers; firing at officers was then considered a shocking breach of military etiquette. The Americans suffered 450 casualties, including the death of Major General Joseph Warren. Even while it dented British confidence, the Battle of Bunker Hill stirred patriotic spirits, exposing the first chinks in the British fighting machine and suggesting, wrongly, that green American militia troops could outfight British professionals.

The army Cyrus had been given consisted of a thousand “peers”—that is, those who had completed the Persian education and were accordingly admitted to full citizenship rights—and thirty thousand commoners. (This was out of a total of one hundred and twenty thousand Persians.) The strictly military significance of this proportion lay in the fact that only the peers were equipped and prepared for fighting at close quarters. This was the sort of fighting which generally Greeks rather than non-Greeks excelled in and which enabled numerically inferior armies to defeat considerably larger ones prepared only for skirmishing or fighting at a distance. But there was also a political significance to the division within Cyrus’ army. At home in Persia, the whole class of the so-called peers was small in number, and yet it ruled over the much more numerous commoners, who had no share in civic rights.

Particularly significant for the future development of Guderian’s military thought were the linguistic abilities he began to acquire at school. He developed excellent French and good English.

Yes, I know it is a daunting amount of mail. But there was a lot of sweat and sacrifice and petitioning to bring you here to fulfill this important mission. And if we do well here, your reputation will follow you and Negro women for generations in the military. If you fail to excel here, you will sever the ties of approximately three million enlisted men from their loved ones. You will snuff out the little bit of home within them that remains.