Cutting Edge Computing

The Relationship Between Education and Warfighting June 29, 2021

I confess that it made my blood boil to hear disparaging comments on our military leadership recently (yes, that’s you, Matt Gaetz and Tucker Carlson), especially with regard to educating themselves and their peers on controversial topics.

Our military is among the most highly and broadly educated segments of American society.  The military academies are among the most highly rigorous and competitive universities anywhere.  Almost all officers graduate from college, many from the top schools in the country.  In addition to military tactics and strategy, they study history, literature, current events, international relations, and even art.  The enlisted personnel, the airmen, soldiers, and sailors who likely joined right outside of high school take a combination of general education and technical training courses to enable them to function in a highly complex society.  Many have some college, and about ten percent get bachelors degrees.

All is not necessarily right with the military.  Soldiers and sailors often live in difficult circumstances, away from families for months at a time, and making a pittance to support those families.  The security and economic stresses can be enormous.  Their responses often reflect this.

Further, the military is a microcosm of larger society.  While the military is often in the vanguard of social change, we still have theft, assault, murder, insubordination, and other crimes.  That doesn’t make the military an indiscriminate killing machine, but it does make them human.

First Lieutenant William Calley was 25 years old, leading several hundred troops in a rural area of North Vietnam, and under his command the company murdered and raped villagers under the mistaken belief that they were Viet Cong sympathizers.  He served three and a half years of house arrest, and certainly deserved much more.  Yet, at 25, living a largely sheltered life, would I have done any better?  I would like to think I would have, but I hope to never find out.

Yes, I am a veteran.  I can’t say that I was a very good airman; I can name a hundred things I could have done better, back in my early 20s.  But I groked some life-long, and life-changing lessons from the experience.  And to be fair, I was largely disappointed with General Milley until his last appearance before the House.  Now I see that I was wrong about him.

There are those, military and ex-military, who shirk at the need to know anything beyond warfighting.  But the best soldiers are those who are able to understand the language, culture, motivations, strengths, and weaknesses of their adversaries, and of their society in general.

Simply, we want the best soldiers we can produce.  We do a credible job at that, at least as good as other advanced countries.  And one of the most important ways we do that is to enable and support education of controversial topics.  These are smart people; we can trust them to evaluate the nuance of what they learn for the good of society.  But learning, wherever curiosity takes them, is an essential part of that process.