I’m not sure I necessarily buy into the 5GW frameworks yet. Trying to nail 4GW Jell-O to the wall is hard enough. 5GW is like nailing said Jell-O while it’s still liquid.
Smitten Eagle, commenting on Zenpundit.
(I heartily concur.)
Military Affairs
Mounting Up with Wings as Smitten Eagle: Ethos
This is the first post in an occasional series on learning to how to fly as a Marine.
I am a Marine pilot, and this is the journey I took after I earned my gold bars as a Second Lieutenant of Marines to become a Marine aviator.
The Greatest General
There has been quite a discussion on the nature of scholarship and generalship here, here, here, and here. Much of the discussion related to the utility of having a corpus of military history knowledge, and on the utility of having our military professionals and foreign policy wonks reading that corpus.
It might be instructive to see who we think is worthy of making our collective list. List in hand, we might be able to deduce a few defining qualities that make for superior generalship, and whether the victor in battle is also the scholar.
“I hope the officers of her Majesty’s army may never degenerate into bookworms.”
In a recent post, I noted that various military branches had lists of suggested reading. I optimistically suggested that this might partially offset the virtual banishment of military history from America’s colleges and universities. I was politely but firmly corrected by an excellent comment from SmittenEagle. SE’s comment (which you should read) is far better and more interesting than the post it responds to.
I will only respond to one point in his comment. SE stated, inter alia that “…I find that most of my peers (junior Marine officers) don’t spend nearly enough time in study. The Marine capstone doctrinal publication, MCDP-1: Warfighting, implores officers to spend at least as much time in study as they do on physical fitness. That is a lot of time, and almost all of my peers fall far short.”
This reminded me of something from a long time ago … .
Oh, By the Way, No Worries: Academia’s Jihad Against Military History is not Succeeding
Zenpundit had a recent post critiquing the academic jihad against military history, and I responded, citing to an article by the excellent military historian Robert M. Citino. (I strongly suggest you read all his books, no kidding, especially this
Looked at from the perspective of what the academics are doing, it sure looks bleak. But that is only part of the picture. I believe it is an increasingly irrelevant part of the picture. In fact, I don’t know how much good it would do to have the current population of academia teaching this history. They may well do more harm than good. I got a kick out of the story of the history professor who knew only two things about the American role in World War II: The internment of the Japanese and the atomic bombings, both of course presented as American crimes. That would be funny if it were not nausea-inducing, and if my tax money weren’t paying for it. With friends like that, who needs enemies? Of course, academics are supposed to be a very superior breed of person, capable of appreciating subtlety and nuance and complexity and the tangled ambiguity of the world that poor stupid conservatives like me cannot grasp, yadda yadda — unless it is an opportunity to make the USA the villain of the drama. Then a boneheaded bit of simplistic propaganda will do the trick. Cutting a few factual corners to make sure the students get the proper indoctrination is all to the good in that universe.
But let us turn our backs on this sorry scene, and look to two specific areas that seem far more hopeful.