As opposed to saying that they didn’t study the ancient wars of the Jews because there’s not much hard data available on them to study?
God told me that it wasn’t true.
The answer is not made available to plebes or random rabbis, but the army really does know the answer.
They had top men working on it.
Top…men.
This is why you double tap.
You have to destroy the brain, or it will just keep coming.
I’m too lazy to read the whole zombie thread, but Asher Wade has a website. He never was an army chaplain but after he graduated college in Scotland in 1974, he went to Germany and worked as an “intern in adolescent & marriage counseling at the US-Army chaplaincy center” for five months before going back to school. He didn’t convert to Judaism until 1980.
Although we wasn’t a chaplain, it is interesting that the story says it happened in 1974, the exact same time that he worked in the chaplaincy center. To me, that lends a little credence to the story. Maybe the story actually did come from him and lost some details through retelling. Not that I believe it happened as it was written. If anything, the general probably joked during class that they didn’t study those battles because God won them. It might be true in the sense that something resembling the story actually happened as opposed to it being completely made up by some anonymous urban myth writer, which was my first impression.
Anyway, he has a website. Someone could email him at asherwade.com. I would but the couple of times I’ve done it for other questions here, I’ve never gotten a response.
The Arab-Israeli Wars certainly seem to be part of the curriculum at West Point today.
If this story is true, can you explain how the Department of Defense came to the conclusion between 1974 and today that God was not actually winning Israel’s wars, and thus was a suitable subject for analysis?
As has been pointed out, the Jews lost a number of their ancient wars, being conquered by several empires including the Romans. More recently, the fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto don’t seem to have received a lot of supernatural help either.
My BS Meter went off at Three Star Lieutenant General teaching the class–with a Ph.D. in Military Strategy, no less. Seems like embellishing the authority of the source. I imagine this could be checked to see if any Lt Gen was teaching that course at the time “Stuart” was a plebe.
Not that this would be impossible. I’m pretty sure that one fairly recent Superintendent of the Merchant Marine Academy (two or three star admiral at the time) taught a calculus section sometime during his tenure there. Maybe someone who went to West Point or the other academies can tell us how common it is for a general officer to teach classes.
But a three-star and a Ph.D. can’t be too common.
If you read Kings and Chronicles you’ll see that the Israels only won wars when God wasn’t pissed off at them. Soon as they start worshiping in the high places again God makes them start losing.
“When you do it just right, it looks like you didn’t do anything at all.”
-G*D
Egypt’s casualties numbered more than 11,000, with 6,000 for Jordan and 1,000 for Syria, compared with only 700 for Israel.
Israel was asked to cease fire by the UN security council.
Israel won in 6 days because they had to rest on day 7.
Double check the facts. I shared a link to the Encyclopedia Brittanica for your reference.
God Bless.
They won the war “against all odds” because their military was better. I don’t understand why this has to be a miracle from God. Israel’s military was better. Their troops were better trained and their Air Force was far superior. I know you can’t make sweeping generalizations, but I don’t think it’s an inaccurate statement to say that the Jews of the 19th and 20th centuries had among them a large number of very educated scientists and engineers. Whether this relates to cultural values, religion, or what, I really don’t know. All I know is there were a hell of a lot of Jewish scientists and highly educated people in the 20th century, and warfare is basically a very scary form of applied science. They also had a lot of very motivated volunteers, many of them fleeing persecution elsewhere. Long story short: a lot of very smart and very motivated people emigrated to Israel and got really good at flying planes, operating other war machines, and studying battle tactics. They developed a military that was a well-oiled machine, and the countries that attacked them weren’t as well organized or trained. So Israel beat them.
If anything, that victory was a triumph of science, technology, and organization. It actually detracts from the skill of those people to act like God was responsible for it.
Maybe it’s not that Israel’s military was better, but that their enemy’s military was worse?
Are we on some kind of 3 year zombie cycle here?
Just like God ordained. :dubious:
ETA: Regardless of the BS glurge story originally foisted off on us by OP, West Point does apparently teach Arab-Israeli wars in Military History.
Didn’t Israel have a big element of surprise in the Six Days War, too? I seem to recall something about destroying most of the enemy air forces on the ground very quickly, before they had a chance to get airborne. And once you’ve pulled that off, it sort of snowballs from there.
All the Armies have Chaplains* to call on God to aid their side.
But still one of those armies loses.
So maybe it’s things like better trained & motivated troops, or better strategic leadership. or better equipment & logistics, or all those other things that they teach at places like West Point.
- Or rabbis or mullahs or political commissars or whatever.
Scary how much of that could be a description of my current manager :eek:
That is a fascinating article.