Lucian K. Truscott IV is pictured above. Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia write up on Truscott:
Lucian King Truscott IV (born April 11, 1947) is an American writer and journalist. A former staff writer for The Village Voice, he is the author of several military-themed novels including Dress Gray, which was adapted into a 1986 television film of the same name.
Truscott was born in Japan to US Army Colonel Lucian K. Truscott III and Anne (née Harloe). His grandfather, Lucian Jr., was a US Army general during World War II where he commanded the 3rd Infantry Division and later the Fifth Army in Italy. His father Lucian III served in the US Army in Korea and Vietnam, retiring as a colonel.
Truscott attended the United States Military Academy, graduating in 1969. In 1968, Truscott and other cadets challenged the required attendance at chapel services. Later, a court case filed by another cadet along with midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy resulted in a 1972 US Court of Appeals decision (upheld by the Supreme Court) that ended mandatory chapel attendance at all the service academies. He was then assigned to Fort Carson, Colorado. There, he wrote an article about heroin addiction among enlisted soldiers and another about what he felt was an illegal court martial. He was threatened with being sent to Vietnam, so he resigned his commission about thirteen months after graduating, receiving a "general discharge under other than honorable conditions."
Truscott authors a daily Substack blog, which he calls the Lucian Truscott Newsletter. On September 23, 2024, Truscott's blog commented on the unprecedented "exploding pagers" attack by Israel. While the attack was aimed at the leaders of Hezbollah, a military group, it ended up killing many innocent people, including a 9-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy, with more than 3,000 wounded. Some have called the attack a war crime.
Truscott titled his blog posting, "Warfare: Conventional, asymmetric, dare we whisper nuclear -- let's call the whole thing off."
In summary - though I encourage you to read Truscott's blog posting for yourself - Truscott says that what Israel did is likely a good example of what will be the future of war, and that it is inevitable that completely unexpected attacks, often aimed at killing specific individuals, will take the lives of many civilians, who are just innocently living their lives, completely unaware that they might become collateral damage in some innovative military attack.
Did Truscott have his tongue in his cheek when he intimated that we (everyone - all involved, on every side) should just "call the whole thing off"?
I don't know, of course. I don't know what Truscott meant by his title. Maybe he was being ironic.
Maybe. But I would like to suggest that we take what he said seriously. "Calling the whole thing off." I do think that would be a good idea!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for your comment!