Temporary Archive: Suzanne Brockmann's Message Board

Have any of you heard of Col. Dave Grossman (Retired U. S. Army) he was the ROTC commander at Arkansas State University for many years and had allot of other very impressive military credentials as well. (Tom, Have you heard of him?) Dave Grossman wrote a book that was in the process of being published at the same time the Westside School shootings in Jonesboro,Arkansas happened. (I posted to you all about this last month. As you know this happened where I live and my neighbors children went to school there) The book Dave Grossman wrote is called: "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society" The publisher had Col. Grossman add a last chapter before it was released tying in what he had written to the shooting at Westside. He is very convinced that violent cartoon and especially violent video games played a large part in that shooting. Johnson and Goldman, the murderers had it planned out like a military operation including sniper positions; they were ages 11 and 13 at the time, if they had been older they would have made good military snipers in Afghanistan!

Well when the national media started reporting the story they were looking all over for experts to commentate on the hows and whys of the killings. So ABC's GMA scheduled Dave Grossman as a guest to talk about the killings and his book "On Killing:.." Well, Dave gets on a starts talking about how he believed violent cartoons and video games, especially video games that kids played over and over held a great responsibility for what happened. Well, Dave got on this subject and ABC/GMA shut him down real fast. ABC owned by Disney and Sony at the time didn't want anyone pointing a finger in their corporate direction that they may have held some responsibility for what children were thinking and learning how to do. Dave Grossman was never invited back on a national network again to discuss his book or the Westside shooting. Dave Grossman has another book out now called: "Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call to Action Against TV--Movie--Video Game Violence" Have any of you ever heard of this book? Of course not, because it challenges corporations and how they make money from children and young adults.

So the point of this example is that Tom needs to have a defined strategy for what he wants to accomplish and the intel to have effective tactics to have his strategy be successful and have the effect he desires.

Sorry, I know this was one heck of a long post.