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In a call to increase the size of the active US Army, Undersecretary of the Army Nelson Ford was quoted as analogizing the soldiers as the oil in the machine. From the Washington Post: ' "You can run a machine without oil for so long, and then the machine ceases," he said. "The people are the oil." ' (click here)
This analogy suggests several lines of thinking. First, that soldiers are will inevitably get used upand then be disposed of. In other words, expendable fluids rather than maintainable parts. Secondly, that the heart of the Army as a machine is not the people, it is the hardware. The heart of the machine is the weapons that kill and destroy, so it logically follows that that was always the real mission in Afghanistan and Iraq. After, people can build, but Army hardware predominantly just destroys.
Ford's statements, spoken in an interview, certainly were careless. They insulted evryone wearing the Army uniform. Most likely, that analogy reflects his underlying thought processes. How many in the Bush administration think the way I suggested Ford may think?
