Asymmetric Military

I teach at a high school and many students ask me whether they should join the military. I have come up with an easy, if oversimplified, formulation. There are two reasons to join the military: The first reason to join the Army is if you are an individual who loves military stuff: You like guns, marching, physical exercise, and the smell of Kiwi; you've watched Blackhawk Down 23 times and didn't realize there was another station besides the History Channel; you read Victor David Hanson and Sun Tzu; and you like the PX as much as Bob Vila likes Home Depot. You need to join the Army or else you will suffer from soldier envy for the rest of your life.

Black Hawk Down

The other reason to join the military is if you're patriotic or believe in a particular cause. Your commitment to the mission and goal of the military will allow you to tolerate the many unpleasant tasks and non-compromising treatment that, unless you are also joining for reason number one, you will not enjoy.

I'll discuss my reasons tomorrow.

If you've never been in a military classroom, you've never experienced that delicate combination of boredom and fear perfected by the United States military over 232 years.

Those classes would torture any normal human (Where's the ACLU when you need them?), but for somebody suffering from a severe, non-diagnosed (not that they'd care) case of attention deficit syndrome, like myself, Army engineering classes required a mental gymnasticism worthy of Shawn Johnson to keep me from passing out.

Like I couldn't do that.

Anyways, one day the Army made the mistake of handing out something semi-interesting, this "Smart Card," written first for the Marines and then used by the Army (the Navy one included the phrase, "Hey..." OK, no Navy jokes.) and called the "Guide for Cultural Awareness." I took it out at around the 100th power point slide of one particular lecture and read it for the rest of the day.

It was fun. During breaks, I'd put together phrases and say them to the Arabic-speaking students from Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Aala kay-fek, in-baT-ah, "Calm down and lie on your stomach" (Army humor isn't very sophisticated.). I think it's unclassified. If it's not, I'll find out soon, I suppose. You can download it here. or just scroll down.