[endtime]

The IDF, which has strengths and weaknesses, is not the US military. The main relevant difference here is that the IDF is composed of every 18 year old in the country (pretty much), whereas the US military is only composed of those who want to be in the military. The kind of kids who will get high on guard duty in Israel won't ever join the military in the US.

[JabavuAdams]

Interesting point, but not really relevant to my argument.

What's most interesting about these IDF anecdotes is that you have one ex-soldier completely dismissing behaviour that another ex-soldier admits to. That pattern can generalize to any org, regardless of volunteer / non-volunteer selection. I.e. they can't both be right. One of them is over-generalizing.

EDIT>

I.e. saying "No one in org X is doing Y" is much less likely (given an individual's limited personal experience) than saying "someone in org X is probably doing Y".

[endtime]

The OP said "Org X has property P." You responded with "Org Y does not have property P, and Org Y is like Org X." I claim the second half of that - that things that are true about the IDF are likely to be true about the US military - cannot be assumed. Even ignoring the significant cultural differences between the two countries, there are differences in the demographics the militaries themselves are composed of.

[JabavuAdams]

So at the risk of pedantry ...

I was making a claim about large organizations that depend on loyalty, not even specifically military organizations.

So, the specific difference between military organizations and cultures are neatly excluded.

The pattern (of which I gave a specific example) is:

Person X in large org Y claims something is true for ALL members of org Y, based on X's personal experience.

I submit that humans being what they are and organizations being what they are, it's more likely that there are bad behaviours that are tolerated in sub-organizations of Y even if they violate the officially stated rules.

TL;DR Without perfect knowledge it's better to assume that something somewhere is going wrong than to assume that nothing anywhere is going wrong.

A lot of science, engineering and process control basically boils down to this. Why do we forget it when dealing with human systems?

[endtime]

Behavior/discipline will necessarily be noisier in a conscripted organization than in a self-selected volunteer organization. I don't think you can generalize that away.

[bdunbar]

The kind of kids who will get high on guard duty in Israel won't ever join the military in the US.

I'd love to say otherwise, but it just isn't so.