Call for Professional Reading Lists

**Tom Odom** · 11-04-2005

I understand your point and certainly share your concerns. In fact I was discussing it with my Major here yesterday. The Army in the 1980s underwent an intellectual renaissaince that was part of rebuidling the post-Viet Nam military. At Ft Leavenworth, the college opened the Combat Studies Institute as a true military history teaching and research effort. Very good friends on mine were plank owners in that effort. It was my good fortune to be assigned to CSI as a teacher and a researcher; I taught Mid East military hsitory and wrote on operations in the Congo. The senior level leaders at Leavenworth and TRADOC saw military hsitory as a way to broaden the perspective of the officer corps. GEN Richardson was TRADOC commander. Then LTG Vuono was Leavenworth commander and we had a series of college :commanders" that included Fred Franks (VII Corps Cdr in Dest Shield and TRADOC commander), Gordon R. Sullivan (future Chief of Staff), and Bennie Peay (101st Commander in Desert Storm, Vice CSA, and CENTCOM commander). All of those gentlemen ALWAYS looked to history as a measure of reality. Later I had the privelege of working with Bobby Scales who retired as the Commandant of the War College in writing Certain Victory, the Army history of the 1st Gulf War.

Bobby Scales is a notable historian in his own right. He also routinely speaks on the intellectual emasculation of the Army in the downsizing over the past decade. The norm in the 1980s was for Majors and LTCs to seek out and earn a Masters; that is gone. Army funding for advanced education has dropped dramatically. Masters degrees are increasingly the exception. CSI at Leavenworth is a shell of its former self. And the Army's use of history has dropped accordingly.

I have been over the past 4 years waging an email history war to resurface history as a PD tool through my biweekly history lessons. You can see them on the CALL web site under JRTC History. The feedback has been consitently positive from readers whether officer or NCO. Next time someone makes a comment on your reading history, ask them what they have read on the Soviets experience in Afghanistan or maybe the British experience. Should they challenge the relevance of such a study, suggest they look at a column today by Milt Bearden at http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20051104399831.html entitled When the CIA Played by the Rules. Milt was in the embassy in Khartoum when I was a pup FAO trainee there attending the Sudanese Staff College.

Keep reading!

Tom

**zenpundit** · 11-05-2005

Hi Tom,

You have a lot of great posts on this board BTW

I'm not using a .mil address - is there any other way to access the Bearden article ? Bearden was, if I recall, the point man in Pakistan -Afghanistan during the Soviet war and I'm sure he has some insightful commentary.

thanks !

**Tom Odom** · 11-07-2005

hey mate

The Bearden column is New York Times 4 November edition.

Tom

DDilegge · 11-07-2005

Originally Posted by zenpundit

I'm not using a .mil address - is there any other way to access the Bearden article ?

When the CIA Played by the Rules by Milt Bearden, New York Times.

**KenDawe** · 11-09-2005

you made me laugh with that one GoreTex....Les Grau is a friend and colleague....you are reading the "right" book on Afghanistan

He was TRYING to read it...
HA! "When I was in the Army..."

...it was the job of the unit conducting the range to run concurrent training. And it usually sucked.
Hmmm, if this range was preparing for deployment, then they should certainly have scheduled background briefings, and The Bear Went Over The Mountain and The Other Side Of The Mountain should have been included.
But GorTex6 is right, reading is not seen as fundamental for NCOs, just as shooting anything but what the Army issues you, at anytime that the Army didnt' schedule, is viewed with suspicion. (OK, I've been retired 5 years, things may have changed, but would I bet on it...?)