Quote Originally Posted by Global Scout View Post
The professions of medicine and engineering would have froze in time if their practitioners had a St. Clausewitz. Instead each true professional continued to evolve his science by challenging assumptions, developing new ideas, and most importantly submitting old and new concepts to rigorous tests to confirm or deny their validity. Now we have medical miracles and engineering marvels. Blindly accepting our doctrine, which many traditionists do (not all, some actually make, or try to make, logical arguments to defend it) prohibits one from reasoning. I personally don't see the link between being able to reason and having doctrine? Numerous successful insurgent leaders around the world didn't have our doctrine, but developed their own ideas based on observation and developed a reasoned strategy. I would argue that our doctrine limits our ability to reason, and I know I'll get stoned for that one.

Fields like engineering and medicine and so forth do not have legions of historians who study their pasts. While this untethers them from a slavish devotion to their pasts, it also creates the illusion that everything new is better and progress.

Consider an analogy: if you look, say, at home building in the US, the quality of the product has actually deteriorated in the last 50 years. I live in a cottage, built for turn-of-the-century laborers, and I would submit that despite its old age it will likely outlast any McMansion currently under construction. (That's why the words "pre-war" mean so much to a New Yorker hunting for a quality piece of real estate.) While there are many factors that have influenced this development, part of it is due to a culture of neophilia.

I agree that the military institutions ought not to be slaves to their pasts, that it is folly to never question anything that a particular "saint" of the history has ever said or done. However, I think that the opposite course is equally problematic, and just as likely to get a person in trouble or create a bad outcome.

Ultimately, what I am suggesting is that we don't trade vice for another.

Cheers,
Jill