Getting The Nation’s Politics Pointed To True North
The analogy of the Army’s old M2A2 aiming circle
We now live in a country where only one percent of the U.S. population serve in the nation’s military, and only six percent ever did — the group we call veterans. Accordingly, I’m always a bit reluctant to attempt making a political point with a military analogy as few can relate to it. But let me try on this one.
For a young Army artillery officer in the 1970’s, like me, the fundamental skill to be mastered was called “laying the battery.” To some, the phrase had something of a risqué ring, but it was actually a very specific task that had to be correctly performed for a battery — and artillery unit of about 100 soldiers and six to eight howitzers — to perform its basic mission of lobbing 100-pound explosive shells about twenty miles and accurately hitting an unseen target.
Doing so required two very basic skills: first knowing rather precisely where you were located, and second aiming the cannon in the right direction. The first task, in my day, required proficiency at map reading — today something largely accomplished with GPS, but the second required measuring angles from true north with a surveying instrument known as the M2A2 “aiming circle.”