Reddit reviews McNamara's Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War

I agree, Vietnam had project 100k one of the most retarded programs we ever had. There this book about it called Mcnamara's folly. They took the low IQ, the drop-outs, the criminal and the intellectually disabled and decided they would be perfect candidates for fighting a brutal jungle war.

These soldiers couldn't tie their shoe, read, write, some of them had down syndrome and some didn't know the difference between left or right. There's cases where the officers either killed outright or "unintentionally" (through things like heatstroke during training), they couldn't deal with it. Some of the low IQ soldiers would fight back and kill their officers, throw a grenade on them. These soldiers make up nearly 10% on the Vietnam memorial wall. This is why things like the my lai massacre happened when you had inept soldiers with little reasoning skills fighting it.

The author btw is pro-millitary and defends the US government.

Except that few did anything heroic. Instead, they suffered far higher death rates than average I.Q. soldiers, and got normal soldiers killed around them as well.

"Many military men, including William Westmoreland, the commanding general in Vietnam, viewed McNamara’s program as a disaster. Because many of the substandard men were incompetent in combat, they endangered not only themselves but their comrades as well. Their death toll was appallingly high."
https://www.amazon.com/McNamaras-Folly-Low-IQ-Troops-Vietnam-ebook/dp/B0108H60MG

"The low IQ soldiers were incompetent in combat, putting themselves and their comrades in danger. Inevitably, their death toll was appallingly high."
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/11/01/mcnamaras-morons-vietnam-was-war-for-profit-american-lives-be-damned/

Given the ever-escalating use of technology and the limited effectiveness of 'blow everything up', the cost has probably gone up considerably. Fortunately, stuff like drones and withdrawing partially from Afghanistan/Iraq has eased the pressure dramatically on military recruiting so I think things have gotten a lot better re 'moral waivers' and scores.

See also McNamara's Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War, Gregory 2015.

A good book to read is [McNamara's Folly] (https://www.amazon.com/McNamaras-Folly-Low-IQ-Troops-Vietnam-ebook/dp/B0108H60MG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1551118791&sr=8-1&keywords=mcnamara%27s+folly+the+use+of+low-iq+troops+in+the+vietnam+war). If you've never really dealt with the mentally disabled it's helpful to think of them in terms of physical capabilities. Asking a mentally disabled person to live independently in a house and take care of it is about like giving a 5'0", 100 pound college girl a job with a jackhammer on a demo crew. If you can't do the job no amount of motivation or punishment will make you able to do the job.

Another analogy is like ordering your dog to do your taxes. Whose fault is it when your taxes don't get done right and on time?

The republican party likes to hold up the image of the welfare queen who could work but she's milking the system out of laziness. Hope that you get someone like this. Most of them aren't. Most of them can't work because there is literally nothing they are capable of doing that holds any value to an employer.

Yes. The part about setting up a tent and cleaning a weapon was something specifically mentioned in a study conducted by the RAND corporation, they're a think tank that serves the Pentagon.

The part about comprehension and communication probably relates to the high casualty rate suffered by MacNamarra's Morons in Vietnam. They lowered the IQ standard, and the low IQ soldiers had 3x the likelihood of getting killed. I'm not sure how that is corrected for MOS, the low IQ troops would be unlikely to be chosen for relatively safe duties on base, but the stats are pretty striking. Naturally, these poorly qualified soldiers were mixed with regular soldiers, and they endangered those guys. Additionally, they would have contributed to the utter breakdown of discipline at the end of the war.

Doing is not the only thing that happens. Sometimes intelligence just is the limiting factor. This was established in the Vietnam War.