This "sir, yes sir" business, which would probably sound like horseshit to any civilian in his right mind, makes sense to Shaftoe and to the officers in a deep and important way. Like a lot of others, Shaftoe had trouble with military etiquette at first. He soaked up quite a bit of it growing up in a military family, but living the life was a different matter. Having now experienced all the phases of military existence except for the terminal ones (violent death, court-martial, retirement), he has come to understand the culture for what it is: a system of etiquette within which it becomes possible for groups of men to live together for years, travel to the ends of the earth, and do all kinds of incredibly weird shit without killing each other or completely losing their minds in the process. The extreme formality with which he addresses these officers carries an important subtext: your problem, sir, is deciding what you want me to do, and my problem, sir, is doing it. My gung-ho posture says that once you give the order I'm not going to bother you with any of the details--and your half of the bargain is you had better stay on your side of the line, sir, and not bother me with any of the chickenshit politics that you have to deal with for a living. The implied responsibility placed upon the officer's shoulders by the subordinate's unhesitating willingness to follow orders is a withering burden to any officer with half a brain, and Shaftoe has more than once seen seasoned noncoms reduce green lieutenants to quivering blobs simply by standing before them and agreeing, cheerfully, to carry out their orders. . Neal Stephenson
Some Similar Quotes
  1. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom. - Anonymous
  2. My centre is giving way, my right is in retreat, situation excellent. I attack. - Ferdinand Foch
  3. The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars. - William C. Westmoreland
  4. In a man-to-man fight, the winner is he who has one more round in his magazine. - Erwin Rommel
  5. 1. Most wars are asymmetrical or irregular.2. In these wars, the guerrillas/irregulars/insurgents do not aim for military victory.3. You can not defeat these groups by killing lots of their members. <span style="margin:15px; display:block"></span>In fact, they want you to do that.4. High-tech weaponry is mostly useless... - Gary Brecher
More Quotes By Neal Stephenson
  1. Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was...
  2. Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs, " I said. "We have a protractor.
  3. A few dud universes can really clutter up your basement.
  4. If you can't test it, it's not theorics -- it's metatheorics. A branch of philosophy. So, if you want to think of it this way, our test equipment is what defines the boundary separating theorics from philosophy.
  5. Supposing that originally there was nothing but one creator, how could ordinary binary sexual relations come into being?
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