Addendum
Dean
Everything Dave Price mentions below about massive screwups during World War II is quite historically true. One incident I usually find worth adding to that is the case of Operation Tiger: a joint Army/Navy training exercise wherein 749 men died in one day.
749 dead in a training exercise.
Every war--every one of significant size anyway--has its share of SNAFUs (hey, remember who invented that acronym???) and embarrassments and frustrations and nasty surprises.
This is why I often say that concentrating on failures to the point of obsession is terribly counterproductive. Acknowledging mistakes and asking what's being done to correct them (including making suggestions) is totally relevant. Endlessly harping on the negative is defeatist and selfish and irresponsible in my view.
My view does get me in trouble a lot, granted, but...
Related Posts (on one page):
- Addendum
- A Reply To Right Wing Nuthouse
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Here's a truism: If it involves living humans, it is prone to error.
There is always going to be somebody asleep on the job, somebody focused on his own interests over that of the group or the mission, somebody who just wasn't as smart as s/he thought s/he was. Maybe just somebody who couldn't RTFM.
Normal people don't expect perfection from normal people. And until we start breeding perfection into the bloodstream, we're stuck with normal people.
Suffering losses does not always prove error.
It may be destroyers were not present to shield the practice landings. That certainly would have been a blunder; no set of defenseless landing craft should have been training w/o protection.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.