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Pastimes : WORLD WAR III -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (481)	3/21/1999 11:31:00 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 765

To hear them talk, the government was mounting a full scale invasion murdering civilians in the streets LOL Isn't it simply amazing??!! One of the reasons this country is so special is the fact that large percentage of the population owns a couple of bullet launchers and they know how to use them. (anyone ever watch that cheesy film, Red Dawn?) That makes it very difficult, if not downright dangerous, for our gov't or any other, to attempt to overthrow the constitution and install authoritarian rule for anything more than a temporary period of time. And we can't ignore the fact that US military personnel are products of this upbringing as well. I don't know too many that I've ever met who weren't patriots of the highest caliber, conservative to a fault, and would not brook participating in any excercises aimed at the repression of this nation. Now I may sound a bit corny stating the above, but I believe that represents the state of mind of our military forces. But I will qualify that by stating that I have also known a few individuals who displayed very little political correctness or consideration for civilian concerns when those concerns impeded or endangered their mission or placed the lives of their men at risk. When I did a 5 month stint in the Darien Province of Panama, it seemed I was constantly having to smooth out the friction between our troops and the local populace (I was the only one in our group who spoke even a smattering of Spanish). And a lot of it had to do with the leadership we had on the ground not giving a hoot about how our operations interfered with the daily lives of the people we were supposed to be helping on that humanitarian mission (rebuilding schools in remote villages). One example of this was when we were palletizing and prepping equipment to be airlifted to a remote village. Instead of doing this activity in a open field, our people chose to take up the far end of the only runway in the provincial capital, La Palma. The locals ran one "puddle jumper" flight a day in and out of that airfield to Panama City. For two days we effectively blocked flights in or out of that "airport", and I bore the brunt of trying to deal with everyone from the sole control tower controller, the police chief, and the provincial governor himself, "Nacho" Torres, trying to convey the apologies from my leadership (they seldom took the time to accompany me to these "We're so sorry" sessions... COWARDS!!!... :0) The funny thing is that I'm almost positive several of these Panamanian officials spoke excellent English, yet they forced me to translate everything into Spanish. (I spent uncounted hours pouring over my Spanish dictionaries trying to find words and verbs for things I never imagined I ever have to say... :0) It was a very coy play on their part, in determining that our operations were entirely "humanitarian" in nature... LOL. Sorry to inflict this on everyone, but it just sparked a "fond" memory as to just how strong and informative Public Relations efforts (call it spin or damage control if you will) are absolutely paramount. Regards, Ron