Peace is Our Product
(L to R) Harrison Jack, Lisa and Ranger
You like attention
it's proof to you you're alive
stop parading your angles
confused?
you'll know when you're ripe
--Elite, Deftones
West Point is maintained for the army,
not the army for West Point
--Brigadier General Jay L. Benedict
The Army is maintained for West Point
--Ranger
________________
You like attention
it's proof to you you're alive
stop parading your angles
confused?
you'll know when you're ripe
--Elite, Deftones
West Point is maintained for the army,
not the army for West Point
--Brigadier General Jay L. Benedict
The Army is maintained for West Point
--Ranger
________________
Ranger recently had the pleasure of visiting a long-time and respected friend, Harrison Jack, West Point Class of '68. Harrison is a real person (despite being a native Californian and a WP grad.) While musing over my negative approach to other WP grads, I thought about the irony of the institutions' very existence.
America was founded as a nation fearful and apprehensive of a large standing army. So what is the first thing this young nation does? Open service academies for the Army and Navy which afforded free education in a country where schooling was otherwise pay as you go.
Then as now, the government saw fit to educate military personnel at the taxpayer's expense. Strange, since there are no equivalent free colleges for, say, State Department employees or any of the peaceful vocations. Only the military gets a free ride (acknowledging the service requirement post graduation.)
Does this make sense in a country that calls itself "peace-loving"?
Labels: free education, harrison u. jack, military education, service academies
posted by rangeragainstwar at 12:24 PM
7 Comments:
I would argue with you about the notion that the U.S. ever considered itself "peace-loving".
My issue with the service academies isn't so much with their influence on the nation as a whole - which I would consider relatively low - but their influence on the culture of the officer corps within each service and, in particular, the philosophical foundation for the institutions.
I agree with you that the academies produce an undesireably elitist tone to the officer corps, establishing a "ring-knocking" Inner Circle that tends to wield inordinate influence over the non-academy officers.
But it is the very basis of the institutions thenselves I question. The theory is that you can take an 18-year-old, any 18-year-old that has the academic and political credentials to apply, and in four years produce a man capable of leading soldiers in combat.
I would STRONGLY disagree. Instead, I would argue, what you produce is a barely competent man-manager, untested in battle, and either dangerously incompetent or completely to nearly-completely reliant on his platoon sergeant and his company- and battalion commanders for battlefield direction.
What this produces in turn is a top-down, externally-directed, cautious and inflexible Army. I truly believe that much of the "back-off-and-call-in-an-airstrike" so-called tactics that characterize much of our infantry is directly related to the reality that most 2LTs can't really fight a platoon under fire. By the time they're captains, these officers have absorbed the orders-is-orders, creep-and-flop style of "maneuver".
I'm not sure if requiring a prospective officer to succeed as an enlisted soldier would make a diffrence in this. I'm not sure WHAT would make a difference. But I'm fairly sure that if we're going to succeed militarily in a post-2GW warfare world the service academies need to fundamentally change. And that change may include disappearing...
And just as an observation, Lisa looks like a flower getting pressed between the covers of "The Army Officer's Guide"!
"Lisa looks like a flower getting pressed between the covers of "The Army Officer's Guide"!"
We shall add the title "prophet" to your arsenal :)
FDChief,
Manager v leader is a constant pull in the military. They will never be the same-my observations are a matter of record, we teach leadership but practice management. It's all rather humorous if it weren't so catastrophic.
Lisa is between two dangerous old Rangers. This is a fine picture of her and Harrison, this is because the camera doesn't lie.
jim
I think that a bigger issue is that every young officer is taught that they need to have a "career".
All sorts of crap gets done (both institutionally and individually) over the need to protect and promote "careers".
Allow me to say, you both cut rakish figures, Ranger Jim, and would both still be dangerous in the presence of young ladies drinking mojitos. (Provided you maintained proximity to your friend Harrison, who could provide direction and covering fire.)
To see you two guys today in your colorful shirts, one might mistake you for peace rally organizers, or something.
On the 'leadership' v 'management' front, I recommend one or all of the books by Major Gene Duncan USMC Ret.. He calls them the 'lions' and the 'lambs'. The ones I recommend are "Brown Side Out", "Green Side Out", Run In Circles", and "Scream And Shout". Lotta good sea stories mixed in with his military philosophy.
My uncle was a Pointer. He had the bad timing to graduate just as WWII was ending, & his first posting was to occupied Japan, so his entire career bubbled under those with a war resume. But it was still choice. When I was kid, he was posted back to West Point for a teaching stint after a year at cushy little Fort Monmouth NJ (30 miles from his hometown), & the obligatory War College. My heavens, what a lifestyle! Golf courses & WP classmates wherever he went. I had dinner in the officer's club overlooking the Hudson, Nice houses, enlisted men doing his yardwork, tailored uniforms. He finished his career with a personal helicopter in 'Nam, packing a sidearm, & was sent into retirement with a promotion.
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