A Boring Dystopia

Think yourself: Could Hamas really have the capability of producing reliable statistics about the gaza population after month of being bombarded?

Was in OIF. Got mortared, ied'd,, and/or shot at nearly every day. Finance nerds still went to work. MI still disseminated no intelligence at all. Marines wrote offensive things and about my mother in very visible places I could not access. In 2003, our csh still kept digital records - on computers and laptops. Everyone did their jobs without any hesitation or meaningful difficulty at all. We all used to be civilians. Everyone has a threshold for the limits of adaptation, but most of us are capable of adapting to war, unfortunately though it may be. I realize that the impression our culture cultivates about war is a guy clutching his knees, weeping, and rocking back and forth while the planet fragments around him - and occasionally that does happen - but esprit de corps tends to motivate people into adaptation. It was my experience that the children in Iraq could follow my leadership and guidance better than their parents. They could also tolerate the terror better. They also had better senses of humor. They could also speak better English. I was an army guy but I still have a hunch that this had something to do with it. So be careful of the narrow perspective that organizational behaviors could only function effectively or reliably when sequestered within utopian sanctuary. People can do amazing things.