Officers With PhDs Advising War Effort

[Shek]

While Tom Ricks did play up on the liberal stereotype of the military being uneducated and needing Ivy League policy makers to make the big decisions, I still give Gen Petraeus credit for bringing in a hand-picked group of creative thinkers.

CSC,

I disagree that Ricks is trying to portray the military as being uneducated.

Instead, I see Ricks trying to 1) garner support for effort that Petraeus is trying to undertake and 2) convince the military that there is a tremendous value added in having officers with PhDs.

Looking at my first point, having both read Fiasco and then having had a chance to hear him speak about the book in person, Ricks wants to see the US succeed in Iraq and is very critical of past mistakes that have been made. Clearly, he sees Petraues as a success story, and highlighting some of the differences that he and his assembled team could potentially provide is a reason for someone to give the new strategy a chance (one that Ricks sees as having a chance of succeeding), that it's not just "more of the same."

For the second point, the fact that you have someone overtly reaching out to the "intellectual" community within the military is not the status quo (nor do most senior officers have PhDs - some form of civilian masters degrees, probably, although this number is quickly diminishing and becoming the exception due to our personnel policies implemented in the late 90s; these are the commanders that will make the decisions a decade from now about the worth of advanced civilian education, and it is easier for someone to discount the value of grad school when it didn't play a part in their career advancement). GEN Petraeus did the exact same thing as the 101 ABN DIV CDR. However, he had to pull mostly O-4s and O-5s as a mere division commander .

Given how just two short years ago the Army was pulling officers out of CGSC early to send them to Iraq and the SecDef was explicitly looking at how officer education could be shortened/abbreviated, now is the time to make the case how critical education is to the military mission, and articles like this can potentially move the public and military in the direction where advanced education shouldn't be the exception and pursued at the risk of derailing one's career. I believe Ricks wants to portray that this should be more than just a fad (also, being based out of DC, the military personnel that Ricks tends to deal in the policy world with are those with advanced education, and so he is clearly cognizant of the fact that many military members are well educated).

Lastly, here's a very apropos article from LTC Nagl (who's commanding a battalion right now) on the topic of education requirements across the spectrum of ranks.

Cheers,

Shek