In time of armed conflict, the mission of the infantry is to close with the enemy by means of fire and maneuver in order to destroy, capture, or repel their assault by fire, close combat, and counterattack. Armor seeks to close with and destroy the enemy using fire, maneuver, and shock effect. Army aviation is designed to find, fix, and destroy the enemy through fire and maneuver; and to provide combat, combat service and combat service support in coordinated operations as an integral member of the combined arms team. Artillery seeks to destroy, neutralize or suppress the enemy by cannon, rocket and missile fire, ensuring the integration of all supporting fires in combined arms operations.
All at the behest of our political masters, who – in theory at least – derive their power from the consent of the governed. But after the combined arms work is done, someone has to pick up the pieces and put them back together in a rational way. Breaking stuff is relatively easy. Re-assembling it is hard.
When it comes to executing the national will in the most humanitarian way possible, it’d be keen to have our best minds on task:
I benefit from two very different yet enriching educational backgrounds: West Point, where I studied aerospace engineering, and Yale, where I earned an M.B.A. from the School of Management. The experience was life-changing. I rowed crew, took several courses at the law school and immersed myself in all that makes Yale special.
Not only did I acquire leadership insight and management skills that I use almost daily, but I was exposed to different ideas, I was encouraged to think more broadly and I gained a close cohort of lifelong friends who see the world from different perspectives. Yale gave me balance and has had a profound impact on how I learn, listen and lead.
Today, I not only plan and direct military operations and care for my soldiers and their families; I also work to improve conditions for the people of this war-torn country. I understand the potentially global implications of the actions of even the youngest soldier in my Task Force, and I frequently discuss with my forces the moral imperative to follow the Laws of Armed Conflict and the Geneva Conventions, and to do the right thing even when the enemy chooses the opposite path.
My leaders and I set a command climate that limits force and seeks alternatives to disputes in a region that is quick to solve problems with a gun. Ironically, we all carry guns. I don’t pretend to be the Peace Corps, but my point is that the War Corps is not necessarily as blunt an instrument as perceived by some with limited interaction and understanding of the military that serves our society. The civil-military gap is growing.
Damned shame, that.
“The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.” — Thucydides
This is some more of that ‘Grace’ you posted a couple days ago..
My G-daughter graduated from Yale a couple years ago and is now a Dr. in residency. As I followed her progress online I read the Yale Daily News and some of those lofty thinking folks thereabouts. They rarely made a grammatical mistake but they sure spouted a company line…To prove it I would point out that the “Best and the Brightest” of the perceived Elite who go to schools like Yale ended up on Wall Street and we all know how that friggin situation worked out…
Contrast that with our Army officers who went to the Point like LtCol Morales.
b2
And then police the area, trim the weeds, paint rocks, provide a detail to the Sergeant Major, and any and all other tasks that someone comes up with…
“The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.” — Thucydides
Alas, that;s where we are. The one thing we learn from History is most people don’t learn from history. But, you are required to study it, and not ignore it because the lessons you learn from dead white oppressors aren’t PC.
Paint Rocks? (snort) A nice piece of Granite is already a nice looking object. Why do we want to paint it?
QM;
Coz it’s didn’t move or salute you back…
QM: Because it’s too darned hard to flemish it or to put a turk’s head on it.
I’ll just note that in my experience as a grunt and as a recruiter, I met a lot of terribly smart people in the infantry.
After spending time buried in books and homework, young men decided they wanted to see if they could rise to a challenge beyond school.
How smart? Lot’s of guys scoring well above the 90th percentile on the ASVAB. Lots of folks with SATs well above 1400.
The dumb ones? They ended up in artillery. Or the Navy.
/heh
Nice try X.
Wanna work in my old shop? You had to make the 90th percentile just to qualify for the school. Then you had to finish the school. That was far from a given.
Motivation to succeed was high though — wash out and Sr Chief promised we’d be Grapes humping fuel hoses on the roof somewhere in the IO inside 30 days.
but back to Thucydides; maybe they’re fools ’cause they fight on behalf of cowards
Blackeagle,
Flunk out on the final exam for infantry, your Mom gets a knock on the door….
You’re right on, Lex, the “PC’ers” just don’t understand. Thank goodness “The Folks” do.
There are so many in our population who truly do not understand what it takes to be in any part of today’s military. As the parent of TWO daughters who were graduated with two degrees, a BA and 2ndLT, going the ROTC route, I often field questions like, “is that really true?”
For example, most don’t have any idea that you can’t become an officer without a college education behind you. Their perceptions are made of “rocks, snails, and puppy dog tails”. Our oldest, currently serving in the Army Medical Corps, was recently asked to return to her alma mater to discuss her own career path and the possibilities for an alternative to ten years of indentured servitude in the civilian medical field.
If this is a result of the debt load/availability of our current economic condition, I’m not sure. I do know that it opened some eyes.
Our second is in her own doctoral program, physical therapy, as a direct result of her savings and careful management during Korean and Iraqi deployments. Ol’ dad hasn’t been asked to provide dime #1 as yet.
The problem seems to be the perceptions of the public, fostered by lack of understanding and simple mis-informaton by parents, advisors and media. Then of course, perception IS reality, for the masses.
BTW, SNO and kid #4 just returned from his 3rd patrol as a sonar-man on the boomer, USS Maine. He’s building up his pile of chips in a little different way. Mom and dad are SUPER-proud, nonetheless.
@10 – PeterGunn. My gratitude to you all. You SHOULD be super-proud. Too many people today believe as John Kerry (and lots of others who should know better) that only the dumbest losers would join the military. To me, that makes them the losers.
My son served on a boomer, 1980-’86.
Light Colonels in the Army include some very impressive people. Lt. Colonel Robert Montgomery attended law school with me (well he was a year behind me) at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall. He was in the class of ‘69. West Point grad; Rhodes Scholar, back to school for a law degree. He was Editor in Chief of the Law Review his senior year–sort of like the Anointed One’s Presidency of the Harvard Law Review. The difference was that Bob produced a very good piece of legal scholarship that was published in the California Law Review–and Obama didn’t produce much.
Nice hard working guy–whip smart and stood at or very near the top of his class in law school. In those days you didn’t get on the Law Review at all unless you were in the top 10% academically–and you didn’t get to be Editor in Chief unless you were somewhere in the top 2 or 3 in the class of 250 students.
He was headed back into the Army when law school was over. Don’t know what happened to him, but I’d bet he helped rebuild the Army after Viet Nam. He was that good.
Blackeagle:
Motivation to succeed was high though — wash out and Sr Chief promised we’d be Grapes humping fuel hoses on the roof somewhere in the IO inside 30 days.
I defy you to find a finer, more hard working group as the ABs no matter whether yellow shirts, CAT and A/G or grapes. When we talk about what makes a carrier work, look no further than the ABs
There’s a reason I never considered joining the Navy, and AB’s are pretty much it. Fine folks, to be sure, but on the whole, I’d much prefer to sleep in mud and be shot at than have their job.
oh ya you betcha! just don’t wanna be one! HARD work that.
My one experience on a carrier underway was a 5 day underway repair on the Sara. We had some down time one morning waiting on this and that and myself and a friend decided to go watch flight ops from Vultures Roost (had to get the permissions, the foamies and head gear, took all the crap out of our pockets) and for four hours were simply amazed. Later that evening, after God knows how many hours of constant flight ops, I saw the same kids at 2000 just crashed out down inside the 0-2 level waiting for the next event. 16 hours straight. ALL the young people that work the Roof are incredible.
PeterGunn,
You recall to mind a fine officer I worked with for the last 3 years who told his kids that he wasn’t planning on spending a dime to send them to college but fortunately for them, there were plenty of people out there that would be happy to pay to send them to college. All those old enough had taken advantage and went the ROTC route. I had the pleasure of meeting several of them as his oldest daughter (Army nurse 2nd Lt) headed off to Iraq. He decided that the family (2 others were over there as well) could have Christmas in Baghdad and volunteered for an IA in Iraq a couple of months later.
Well, to the Army types here, my Father, who was a Co. Cmdr in WWII in the ETO said to me one day: “Son, you haven’t lived til you’ve spent 5 days & 6 nights in a fox-hole in northern Germany in Jan with two feet of snow, 32 degrees, a freezing rain and six inches of ice water over your feet while under sustained arty fire.”–at that point I KNEW I was joining the Air Farce….More power to you guys! “Better yoou than me.”
As to ROTC, when I entered in 62 as a Freshman it was mandatory, and we all–as I remember–signed a contract that if we dropped out we’d revert to airman basic and owe Uncle Sam 2 yrs when we graduated–or sooner if not!
But the one gripe the article mentioned that was off base is that, at least in the case of the school I attended, although our ROTC grades figured into our GPA, they didn’t substitute for academic subjects nor reduce overall hours of normal academics needed to graduate.
Of course, LSU’s first President was no less than W. T. Sherman himself (pre-civil war–which is why we have the nickname “The Old War Skule.”) and when I was there our President was one of Patton’s WWII General’s, Troy H. Middleton, so Nooooo problemo insofar as ROTC being on campus at LSU in those days.!!
Thanks for the good association, Curtis. Just to be clear, the understanding we’ve had with our quartet was that we’d help with under-grad time, but any graduate work was on them… so as to provide dollars for the next in line.
Three girls in private university, 2 at the same time for 6 years, did dent the savings and put a hitch in my git’along. ROTC helps a great deal, but the balance, including transport, lipstick and pantyhose, wasn’t paid by our Rich Uncle.
That… and D#3 went the private route to BS, RN and is now a nurse in Seattle Children’s NICU. No slouch there! One wouldn’t want to be thought of as not having a single dime… or just cheap.
Peter? She’s in the Seattle NICU? I’ve heard good things about that place, given my family’s history in the Sioux Falls Sanford Hospital NICU I sort of took an interest in those things for a while.
To tie into another thread, tell her she’s an angel for me, would you?
It’s funny how we all make our choices. Some want nothing in subs, six months of solitude and confinement and confident it’s just going to sink the next time and not come back up. Others like the Army, sure that while sea duty may have better chow 3/4th of this planet is made of water and last they heard humans don’t have gills, best to stay on terra firma.
Regardless of their choice, you’ll find very few joining the military because it’s the only job available. In point of fact, historically the military has excluded more folks than it has allowed to join, mainly for medical reasons.
If they’re in the service, they could have made it into nearly any school in the nation. Be thankful we have our best and brightest at work.
Can you imagine our military staffed by the folks you meet at TSA or the local DMV?
– Max
PG,
Ole CAPT K owned 3 construction companies and it was no matter of cheapness. He was merely setting a baseline and suggesting that the next generation really needed to buckle down and study enough to earn that scholarship. But you’re right, those all girl spending teams are hard on a paycheck.
Max,
Yes, the Seattle Children’s Hospital NICU… one and the same. She worked on the “medical floor” prior to moving upstairs a year ago. Up for an even greater challenge, she’s opted for working nights. We now have an RN, a med-tech and a future Doc of Physical Therapy. I’ll be well taken care of!
Thanks for the kudos… she loves it and reports they’re breaking new medical ground in the care of newborns, premies and others all the time.
Curtis, thanks again. Ours CHOSE the ROTC program just because it was awarded on merit; most today are given based on other, um, factors. I’ll always remember their tour at camp their Junior summer, seeing so many of the country’s fine young men and women at Ft. Lewis. It was a genuine thrill; sent a charge up the spine, it did, to see them graduate… and none of them would be asking customers if they’d “like that with fries?”
continuing the thread hijack…
The Son&Heir is waiting results of October (Marine) NROTC board. Hope I don’t jinx it by saying…
I’m trying to be hopeful, but, his GPA is a bit low. (sophmore coming of age year meltdown). Here’s hoping later trend in grades, extra math during summer, decent SAT, and a high PFT score puts him through.
That and hoping Marine recruiting CO & XO were impressed by him blowing chunks at the finish of 3 mile run.
If he doesn’t get the scholarship, he’ll try again at Jan board. If no joy there it’ll be ROTC anyway for him (he’s sick/motivated USMC wannabe) and off to Community College first two years.
Sorry, I beg your pardon.
Ossifers don’t paint rocks.
They order us to do it.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the – Web Reconnaissance for 11/24/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.