How's this for a bit of historical perspective?
Everyone by now has heard that the internet site called Wikileaks spilled the beans on 90,000+ pages of unreleased documents from the US military on the efforts of the past 6 years in Afghanistan, right? The fact that these documents were released when and how they were presents the very real possibility that both American and Afghan people are now in far greater danger because the Taliban and their allies know what they did and are doing, and where they were or will be in the future.
I'm sure there are many in the military leadership of the US Armed Forces that would love to take the people responsible for this leak and string them up for what they have done. What I found tonight was a glimpse at what past generals have felt about the "press" and how they act towards the military.
In 1864, as General Sherman was leading his Army of the West out of Chatanooga, TN towards Atlanta, GA, he was faced with the prospect of literally dozens of reporters from major newspapers mingling with his troops as they camped for the night and picking up their "scuttlebutt" talk and printing it in the week's end papers as fact. The very term "scuttlebutt" is an 18th Century naval term that stems from sailors hanging around the opened barrel of drinking water (called a butt) kept near the forward hatch leading below decks (called a scuttle) and gossiping while they drank, and this term serves to demonstrate that gossip in the military is as old and entrenched as army life itself.
Sherman wrote to his family while trying to deal with this problem...
"If I killed all these paper-scribblers in an afternoon, there'd only be fresh news from Hell before breakfast!"
There really isn't anything new under the sun, is there?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment