The Warrior Scholar

By Sam Liles

I have this fantasy that the warrior scholar elite can happen in my life time. Yes, I believe in the elite who are the best because in the realm of conflict failure to be elite carries the badge of vanquished. I believe that America has not only the most technologically sophisticated military, but the smartest and most creative military in history. Washing aside the driveling nauseous tripe of generational conflict between aging boomers, effete generation x'rs and dullard generation y'rs and you find honorable and efficient soldiers. Soldiers who expand beyond a passive roll into the active roll of scholar.

This is not a case of radical changes in the public education system serving society as some have received waivers and have "other" issues prior to enlisting or accepting a commission. America's soldiers succeed in spite of the mediocrity of a declining society that does not support them. In the midst of conflict the military system has a tendency to wring the vinegar out in a Darwinian evolutionary cycle. The bloated, bleeding, puss of a megalithic military industry complex collapsing before our own eyes is creating a generation of Spartan warriors. In the terror of wounded veterans, amputees, haggard eyes, and tired bodies is a systematic return to the scholarship of war. Failure to learn and implement the lessons of battle has no positive result.

Studying war is nothing less than studying the burdens of society and the relationship of the man to that society. We don't want to burden the discussion with thoughts of civilization, as on the battlefield any pretense of what we mockingly call civilization will be forgotten. There is nothing less humane but more human than the frightening realities of the battlefield. The warrior scholar does not study ways to kill his fellow human being so much as he studies the art of war. War has a beginning and an end. Only in the incestuous perversity of politics and commerce does war continue for no other reason than profit. The study of society is the scholarship of war.

Doctrine is the implemented principles of lessons learned. Where those lessons were learned may have been at Hells Gate, Saigon, or Baghdad. When those lessons were learned is immaterial other than the warrior scholar should be aware of them. This is not the job of higher education or egregious bureaucratic hand holding while paying lip service to some pedantic decree from on high. This is knowledge that only the soldier can infuse into their own soul and use beyond a classroom. Lessons learned and passed on from soldier to soldier and rapidly becoming part of the cultural framework are the best transmission mechanism.

Unfortunately the stripped down no nonsense order of a military at war has not infused the gangrene leprous putrid bureaucratic machinery of the military industrial complex. Solutions for the battlefield are still being fed into the accountant's spreadsheets and weighed on a cost benefit scale. This business like miasma with military contractors, outsourced war, paid for intelligence assets, and profit margin commands is a parasite on the high performance military. This is the current cognitive battlefield for the warrior scholar. It is a terrible drain on the resources and mental acuity to wage war.

There is something to be said about the apprenticeship of the neophyte to the journeyman trade of conflict and war. The heat and violence of battle are experiences that carry a message and lesson no classroom will ever explain. The warrior scholar though can inform the methods of education and this is a message the academic must listen to if they wish to remain relevant to the discussion. The patterns of history inform of future patterns, the engineering and technology disciplines inform of future tools and risk, and the knowledge of mathematics expresses a language that is universal.

To service the warrior scholar and the future warrior society needs to provide an educational framework of humanities and liberal arts that provide the essence of classical philosophy. Less, we create Ludites a good understanding of engineering and technology is of special importance. The officer cadre must have at least a passing understanding and awareness of the classical literature of conflict. The enlisted men should have a vocational understanding of the world prior to today and how it shaped whatever they are looking at.

These are the basic tenets of a warrior scholar and an opening treatise in the scholarship of learning conflict.

Cross-posted on the Selil Blog.