Getting shanked

23 September 2009

“The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.”

-Sir William Francis Butler

I’m waiting at the flightline for a lift out to FOB Shank as the flight is delayed for a few hours. We lost a bird yesterday, and the flight crews are scrambling to get people out to the various FOB’s. It’s interesting how the meaning of words can change based on context. To be lost here doesn’t imply misplaced.

I’m sitting on my IOTV, surrounded by soldiers, contemplating the quote by Sir William Francis Butler and reflecting on the education of our warriors. Two of my classmates are battalion commanders at the FOB to which I’m heading, and I’m thinking about how our paths have differed and converged. Based on my experiences at West Point, I know that it was important to our educators to make us “Renaissance men,” in the fashion of Sir Walter Raleigh- The Fox. They knew that to be a successful fighting man, you have to be a thinking man. It is the officer’s job to think his way out of, or to victory in, a fight. Advanced thinking and degrees were stressed. General Petraeus, a USMA grad, has a masters or PhD from Princeton. It was expected that warrior-leaders pursue academics as well as military training.

I’m not sure that the converse is true. That is, I think that the elite and more highly educated slices of our society may have lost touch with the military, thus hampering their decision making. A survey at Harvard in 1956 showed that roughly 50% of the class had military experience. Today, that percentage would be less than 1%, I’m sure. It is well publicized that Harvard banned ROTC from its campus. What is the message of that ban- that it’s not important to educate an officer or that somehow the presence of someone committed to military service would taint the environment and education of the others? Is that diversity?

I am certainly not implying that everyone should serve in the military, and I don’t think that a draft is the answer. Frankly, I don’t have the time or energy to really study the matter and come to some thoughtful conclusion. I just think that the creation of a separate, “warrior class” of people that do the bulk of the military service and fighting, generation after generation, is unfortunate and less than ideal. It is the mingling of different perspectives, backgrounds, experiences, and insight that makes for creative achievement.

I hope to find my friends and hear what their journey has entailed for last 19 years. I don’t know where they’ve been or where we’re heading, but I know where we are now. I wonder if our civilian leaders do.

24 Sept 09 posto-script:

Kevin, not much has changed from your description of Shank, and your 15 alarm-clock gig, set to go off every hour after your departure from the O-4 hooch, is the stuff of legend in 3^rd Brigade. I’ll pass on their message to you in another, more appropriate, format.