The Army: A Profession of Arms

[Bob Underwood]

Read Clausewitz! If the application of force is not effectively setting forth the policy then it should not applied. - and you should either change the policy or apply the force in a way that serves it.

I have read Clausewitz ... one of the reasons I hold my views. So, now what? Also, here you are making a normative or moral claim about policy - "should not". No government has taken up action intending to lead to their own ruin. However, simply because they thought it was smart doesn't make it so. (cf. below).

Name me a politician or leader who has ever set forth a policy he states to be "un-ethical?" Policy comes from politics. Politics is power over people. Power is always ethical in the eyes of those holding it.

I'm not especially worried about the eyes of those holding power. Simply because somebody has the power to do something does not make it right for them to do it. (Read Plato, or Clausewitz, or Fuller, or Fahrenbach et al.)

Well then the problem is a lack of education in basic professional military thinking. The very basics of linking Policy to tactics via strategy are missing. This is not because the world got more complicated. It is because the Army gave up reading books and educating people.

On this we are agreed, however, I think we have widely divergent views on what the products of that education should be. But how can we understand policy and our place in it unless we understand the categories of its making? There is certainly more than simple power protecting power here.

Regards,
Bob