Professional Military Education

Although I’m certain it is difficult for the ivory-towered pedants of the Ivy League to accept, there is a long established infrastructure in the US military for professional education of the leadership. It is a multi-tiered system which offers both service-specific and joint schools to prepare the next generation of leaders with potential for moving up the organizational ladder. As with all such establishments, it has had a varied record of success.

There is a school for company grade officers (Lts and Capts) where principles of basic leadership are taught. Things like teamwork, goal-setting, low-level budgeting and elementals. Some time is spent on broadening of perspective so that all members of the service have a rudimentary insight into the “big picture.” Pilots get to learn about non-flying specialties in the Air Force and usually for the first time gain a feeling for how much the ground pounders despise them.

At the intermediate level there is a school for majors who have been identified as potential candidates for higher rank. Here they get an education in strategy and doctrine, roles and missions as well as some military views of international relations. The pyramid at this level gets quite narrow. While almost all officers get a chance to go to the lowest level school, the intermediate school opportunity reduces to only about 15% in year-long residence. Others are encouraged to take the course by correspondence.

When you get to the potential general officers that is the “war college” level. Each service has their own war college and there is a National War College which focuses on preparation for assignments to the Joint Chiefs Staff. This is high level thinking and research. The focus is on immediate global conditions and future planning. It deals with threat analysis and creative strategic responses. There are issues of force structure and equipage along with doctrinal concepts of operations. It is heavy duty thinking—a PhD in military leadership. The goal is learn from the current experience and prepare to fight the next war.

Or at least it should be.

Intellectually Adrift

When I was in the business there was an emphasis at the schools from day one on the concept of “intellectual freedom.” What that meant was that there should be no restrictions on ideas or the ability to express them freely in discussion. You could say outrageous things without fear of career repercussions. Lecturers could expound from any perspective on the presentation stages of the schools. Often they would use the devil’s advocate approach to trigger analytical thought and vigorous debate. Offer a contrarian argument, then see if you can defend it.

But, that was then and this is apparently an entirely different situation. The need for inclusiveness and the demands for political correctness have merged with the increasing careerist attitudes of the leadership to foster an environment of pseudo-intellectual egalitarianism that seems ill-suited to preparing a cadre of leaders to win wars. While it might be appropriate to give some consideration to the “Clash of Civilizations” and the role of Islam in the current situation, I don’t think we are well served by indoctrinating our warriors with sympathy for the poor downtrodden thugs of Hamas.

Here’s an example of this enemy. They don’t do quite as well against an organized military, but in the streets of their own slums against skinny guys in T-shirts, they are about as vicious as MS-13, although without the discipline or organization:



Maybe Pogo was right. Maybe the enemy is us.