Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
On the issue of advocacy and advice raised by Bill Jakola, I will offer the following:

your job is to find the best solution you can to the problem and then convince the boss that your proposed solution is the best.
WM my definition of advice and avocacy may be somewhat different than yours. I view our responsibility as providing courses of action, or strategies to our political leaders and not advocating for only one solution. Since providing just one answer, as you suggest, limits the commander's choice to either approve or not.

But also our profession requires us to maintain and profess expert knowledge. Part of professing this expertise is advocating and even dissenting when the gravity of the situation warrants.


Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
I agree that Ken's assessment of the problem that is a significant contributor to lack of professionalism and support his proposed solution thereto...

However, I must disagree with Ken's assessment of the military's status as a profession, epecially when compared to his two paradigms--physcians and lawyers.

Here I must clarify the difference between behaving professionally or possessing professionalism and the profession of arms. Professionalism as you and Ken point out is not different in the military than it is in other areas, like plumbing. However, the profession of arms is uniquely different in that it derives power from society. In other words, society creates the profession of arms to maintain expertise in the management of violence in the resolution of social problems.

This contract between the society and the profession is what distinguishes the profession of arms from an occupation or trade. For example, as Dr. Snider points out, in 2003 the society asked the profession to conduct COIN but the profession did not have any COIN expertise. This was a failure of the profession and this is why we need to have this conversation. We need to ensure our profession of arms maintains the required expertise across the full spectrum of operations. This is our mandate from the society we serve.