A feeling of dread

I normally eschew television. I read the news out of newspapers or online, the weather is usually not specific enough for me, and I fucking loathe reality shows and sitcoms.

In spite of this, I've been watching two shows lately with some regularity. The first is MI-5, which is better known originally on BBC as Spooks. (Nice to see the A&E folks just cliffed the BBC's website.) I suspect the original moniker probably doesn't carry the racial epithet baggage in Britain.

The other show I religiously watch, more so than MI-5, is Battlestar Galactica. This is the remake, mind you. I binged out on the original BSG when I was a kid.

One of the things that I really have to recommend the new BSG is its treatment of human problems on the show. All too often, Americans look to TV for escapist fantasy (e.g., Dallas, Friends). But this is a show that's not intended for the average viewer, I think.

One of most illustrative things I've seen on the new BSG was an explanation of the importance of posse comitatus, which is a thorny topic in my line of work these days. As I recall, the rationalization of why we don't make our military into the police is that "when that happens, the enemies of the state tend to become the people."

More pointedly, BSG doesn't present the clean, optimistic future (yes, I'm quoting a nonauthoritative source) that Star Trek does, for example. It reminds me in some ways of Space: Above and Beyond, which I adored (and also didn't shamelessly cater to the American viewership).

Anyway, I digress. What particularly stuck out in this week's BSG was its depiction of what it's like to be a commander and a planner when you send people out to do your plan. Having been a planner on more than a few occasions (and being one by military occupational specialty now), there is one scene in this week's episode that gave me a tightening of the gut that I don't normally associate with TV. (Listen here.)

It's hard to disassociate that scene from the feeling I used to get when I heard men over the radio in training getting hacked up in (simulated) combat. While it was usually the other way (my guys on the winning side), there were times when things would proverbially go south.

When I was a troop commander, there was a sign I used to hang in my office. It said, simply this:

LIEUTENANT

REMEMBER: EVERYTHING YOU PLAN AND WRITE MUST BE EXECUTED BY THESE MEN (with a photo of paratroopers in a live-fire exercise)

THEY AND THEIR BUDDIES WILL BE THE FIRST TO PAY FOR YOUR MISTAKES

DO YOUR JOB WELL - FUTURES DEPEND ON IT

I periodically think of the simple gravity of that statement. Sometimes I see things that remind me of that reality. This week's episode of BSG is one of them.

If you're in the military, and have planning responsibilities for subordinates, and this excerpt doesn't bother you at any level, you need to get the hell out and go somewhere where the price of substandard work isn't so fucking extreme.