Restoring the Meritocracy, or addressing concerns about the US Officer Corps

Recently Mr. William Lind published his latest article, and as usual it was provocative. Titled "An Officer Corps that can't score," it argues that the United States military has lost the competitive edge in combat for the following reasons:

• An ego problem, the apparent perception of US Officers that they oversee the best military that's ever existed;
• A personnel problem, that officers are punished for creative thinking and innovation (and the mistakes that invariably accompany such a mindset);
• A staffing problem, which shortens command tours of duty so everybody on the bench gets a chance to play, if only for a short period of time; and worst of all,
• A moral problem, in which officers support and perpetuate the status quo to protect their careers--notably a problem the US Military did not have after the Vietnam conflict (according to Mr. Lind).

Certainly these are serious accusations. Mr. Lind's article sparked a great deal of response, too. Several active duty officers penned articles which asserted indignantly that there *is* a great deal of debate in the military regarding staffing, weapons acquisition, force structure, and other 'big picture' issues. What is conspicuously absent from the responses, however, is a critique of the personnel situation--which, as the lynchpin of Mr. Lind's argument, probably deserves the most thoughtful consideration.

Mr. Lind's own history plays a big part in his critique as well. I've never met the man, but if you'll indulge in a little amateur psychology, I would say that Mr. Lind very much has a dog in this fight. He was foremost among what he calls the most recent wave of "reformist innovators," and highly praises his contemporaries Col Boyd (USAF) and Col Wyly (USMC), with whom he generated much of the intellectual foundation of so-called Maneuver Warfare. He also helped introduce and develop the theory of Fourth-Generation Warfare, an extension of Col Boyd's definitive and much-lauded omnibus theory of combat "Patterns of Conflict." Anyone who is a bit startled (and/or stung) by the opening line of his article, "The most curious thing about our four defeats in Fourth Generation War—Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan—is the utter silence in the American officer corps," ought to at least realize that Mr. Lind is aggressively applying the theories of warfare that he developed and championed to his very broad-brush of a statement about our apparently constant defeats.

The predictable--and justified--knee-jerk reaction by junior officers in the US Military is that Mr. Lind is wrong, and that there is anything BUT silence about the struggles and outcomes of these so-called "Fourth Generation Wars." Indeed, in my own experience there is a lot of debate about technology (drones, bombs, tanks, and their efficacy) and tactics regarding the most recent conflicts in the Middle East. That is all very good. But I think Mr. Lind hits the nail on the head when he criticizes the military--particularly the officer--personnel system. And while there is a lot of debate about that issue as well, it's usually conducted in hushed voices and away from field grade and higher officers.

Complaints about personnel issues usually center around field grade officers focused on achieving the next rank (and running their subordinates into the ground to get it), or general officers trying to maintain their reputation to their civilian masters with an increasing administrative burden of annual training and paperwork accountability. To the uninformed, it just sounds like bitching, but hearing enough of it reveals that both types of anecdotes coalesce around one central issue: today's officer cadre does not have either the time or resources to focus on warfighting.

How has this come to pass? At the danger of theorizing ahead of data, I have some suggestions:

• First, during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts we created a whole sub-combatant-command for each location, complete with Joint Force Commanders, Functional Component Commanders, Service Component Commanders, and associated staffs. This effectively doubled the requirement for staff officers in each of the four major service components. In addition to being top-heavy, it prevented the whole coalition from having any true cohesion as a unit, because new units were revolving in and out under a joint commander who, in addition to directing the whole campaign, also had to administer the vastly increased relief-in-place and transportation requirements of such an ad hoc system. Imagine if Patton had new armored and mechanized units rotating in and out of the 3rd Army throughout 1944 and 1945. Would he have been able to build such a successful and dynamic fighting force?
• Second, as a corrolary to the first, there are career requirements for officers appointed to joint commands. The demand for those officers has forced the services to cut career billeting corners to get enough qualified officers to meet the demand. That is a recipe for "check-the-box" leadership and careerism from start to finish.
• Third, most services made a decision to shorten deployment times in order to ease the burden on servicemembers' families. This was a social decision, and it may not have been a bad one. However it did create a 'revolving door' in nearly every unit in the military, as whole combat units turned over from year to year and had to be assigned places in the supporting establishment, which in turn was bloated beyond needs and suffered the same 'revolving door' effect. The Army alone experimented with year-long deployments in the hopes that more time in country would allow greater innovation and success in the counterinsurgency fight; I'd be curious to see if there were any positive results.
• Finally, Congress has micromanaged the benefits of servicemembers to the point of restricting officers from shaping their force. I doubt anyone in the military, including me, would complain about pay increases, money earmarked for better base gyms and housing (including 'in country'), and a reduction on sexual assault and/or suicide. The problem is the way Congress has enacted these changes. Forcing them down the military's throat creates a culture of 'yes-men' who must "support and defend" the Constitution by bowing to each new decree of a prime Constitutional institution, Congress, no matter what that does to already scarce military resources. Sergeant Major Barrett's comments, while tactless and insensitive, demonstrate the frustration of many military leaders that servicemembers need meaningful combat training, expensive as it is, more than they need administrative sexual assault training and fast-food joints on base.

The prevailing sentiment among junior officers is that the military is directionless, or maybe more specifically suffering the pull of too many 'missions' at once. There's Congress, forcing social changes and shutting down government. There's the so-called "War on Terror," which carries real danger but no real reward--neither Congress nor the Services themselves seem to care much about it anymore. There's the Administration, preaching a "pivot to the Pacific" and a drawdown, which ominously promises more tasks for the military to accomplish with fewer people, and there's the innate sense of honor in the services themselves that expect the officer cadre to keep all these masters happy and still field fighting units.

In this context, I will speak heresy to the die-hards and state that there's small wonder junior officers in particular keep their heads down and try not to screw up (i.e. bring all their servicemembers back alive with comparatively little regard for 'the big picture'). It also explains why so many veterans of the recent conflicts look back nostalgically on the simpler world of their combat tours, when they had a single direct mission and a feeling of accomplishment.

So what sort of reform would make Mr. Lind happy? I'm not sure, as he simply bemoans US Officers' lack of creativity and moral fibre, but I have some suggestions on that score as well. But first, I'll point out that some of the best ideas have come from much more creditable sources than me. Go there, and explore.

My ideas are pretty simple. There is a romantic conception floating around that the military is a meritocracy--in other words, the officers who are best at their jobs should be the ones that get promoted. The shortened command tours, vast administrative requirements, and glut of officers in the services effectively obscure the good officers from the mediocre, lowering moral and motivation. I believe that the best leaders in today's military truly seek a chance to lead and to show their mettle, so I propose the military make a few structural changes to recover a merit-based promotion system.

• Lengthen command tours, including the tours that are required for command screening, to 3 (or 4) years. This would first of all require existing commanders to put a lot of thought into the junior officers they promote, knowing that the officers they evaluate highly will eventually control a combat unit for three years (instead of 18 months), and would allow existing junior officers a lot more time to develop and lead their troops under the guidance of one Commanding Officer. 
• Longer tours help mitigate the 'zero-defect mentality,' a colloquialism which refers to the reality that one mistake in an officer's career is enough to prevent him/her from making it to the next step, because he/she will always be compared to other officers with no such mistakes. It's a lazy way to evaluate, because the positive effects of the officer with the mistake may be greater than those of his/her peers, and may indicate greater potential. But at least with a full 3 years of observed time, officers will be able to recover from mistakes--and their seniors will be forced to consider which of their subordinates are best suited for further opportunities, knowing that maybe only one will have the opportunity.
• Longer command tours also permit greater unit stability, which will increase esprit de corps, has been shown to reduce things like suicide and sexual assault, and will certainly increase combat effectiveness.
• Increasing tour length will be essentially meaningless if officer staffing remains high, because right now it seems like every officer gets the chance to move on regardless of his/her performance against peers. As part of the draw-down, the military as a whole should reduce officer staffing to the minimum level required for service administration, starting with Generals and working down the rank structure (and this reduction should occur before any enlisted personnel cuts, in accordance with good leadership practices). The military should also eliminate the additional joint force staffs located in Iraq and Afghanistan. This will be an unpopular step, as many generals will be forced into retirement, many more field grade officers will be forced into early retirement, and many junior grade officers will not have the opportunity to continue in the military past their first tour. It would help ensure, however, that only the best officers in each rank will remain--reinforcing the idea of the military as a meritocracy.

Actual, active duty officers have much more specific lists of things which need to change, most of which revolve around their ability to train their servicemembers. And we should listen to them. But we can't force current officers to change their way of thinking--most of them have been shaped by the questionable leadership environment that Mr. Lind notes for the entirety of their career. We can, however, collectively change the game--we can stop playing that 'everybody gets a chance' and start giving our officers the space and responsibility to fully lead their men and women. That's why most of them sought a commission in the first place.

These kinds of changes will force leaders at all level to focus on quality, not qualifications; it will force officers to make tough evaluation decisions after years of watching their subordinates develop. Ultimately, only the top 20-30% will have a career each tour, which will ensure that only the most effective officers run our military.

When our nation's security and American lives are at stake, isn't that what we want?

A critique of modern scientific thought

The theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) has caused a great of discussion in the past 30 years. There have been books, and award-winning movies, and Nobel-winning personalities, and most significantly millions (if not billions) of dollars dedicated to educating the public about this theory, and to stopping it. I personally have participated in debates about, mostly with my friends (on Facebook), and I have been surprised at how religiously the belief in the verity of the theory is held. It is one of the defining issues of our epoch, equal to the subject of the Vietnam conflict in the 1970s and perhaps eclipsing our on-going Middle Eastern conflict today.

AGW is depressingly obscure, I've found. There are those who debate the meaning of the word theory, explaining that it means only an explanation of something instead of a law. A theory is not immutably true, such as the laws that govern the conservation of energy in physics. Of course, I believe that gravity is a theory--the best explanation of why objects interact with this large land mass we call earth (and why other masses in space interact the way they do)--which seems pretty immutable itself. Clouding the issue further is the fact that the theory of gravity has laws that apply within the theory, such as the law that an object in space within the gravitational field of the earth will fall towards it.  So how much trust are we to place in this AGW theory? It appears that the answer lies in one's perception.

Then there are the details of AGW. I generally get the impression from the all rhetoric about "global warming" that pollution causes the world to heat up. That will apparently result in sea levels rising, perhaps several hundred (or thousand) feet. Digging a little deeper, it seems that the warming is supposed to occur because of carbon dioxide, a "greenhouse gas" that traps heat. Where it traps heat is confusing as well: is it in the atmosphere, or on the surface? The most scientific explanations focus on atmospheric warming, proposing that a global warming of the upper air will irrevocably trap heat on the surface, with a host of terrible consequences: mass species extinction, including the oxygen-producing algae in the ocean, and perhaps a catastrophic shut-down of the world's biological equilibrium. I've already noted the possibility of sea levels rising, which (given that most of the world's population lives on the coast) would be a very grave threat indeed. Spreading deserts, making agriculture impossible and engendering a massive famine. Terrible stuff indeed.

I hear a lot about climate models, vastly complicated computer programs which seek to extrapolate a set of data into the future. I could misunderstand, of course, but it seems that many of the terrible consequences we can expect to face are themselves extrapolated from a single set of data, the expected temperatures determined by the climate models. And that is what causes me the most concern.

A very passing and abstract understanding of Chaos Theory and a slightly more nuanced understanding of human experience in conflict has made me very suspicious of linear thinking, which is what those climate models appear to be (in essence). Linear thinking establishes direct relationships between things, such as causes and effects. It works very well, too, in what scientists call a "closed system." We use it with great success in everyday life, when we travel places, cook food, conduct our daily work, and the like. After all, most of us know that if we leave our house at for a familiar destination, it takes a well-known amount of time. For me, it takes 30 minutes, give or take, to get to work. If I set the stove dial to "8" instead of "Hi," my bacon cooks quickly without burning. If my daughter does not have much of a nap, she will have a hard time sleeping at night.

In fact, I would posit that linear thinking is essential to our lives. Almost anything we do which is complicated needs a linear explanation--perhaps in a checklist--that helps us achieve the task. Hunters learn and understand complicated details about their spears, bows, or firearms; parents develop complicated sets of procedures for their children, businesses develop strategic plans (not to mention floor procedures, sales protocols, and marketing campaigns), and individuals come up with life plans that may include college, a specific job, a relationship, and so on.

The success of this mindset, and the almost unconscious way which we collectively apply it, tends to obscure the fact that such linear thinking is partially inadequate. But instinctively we know it. We know that an unexpected traffic jam, or a suddenly malfunctioning burner, or a child's unexpected whim, or a new product (or service), or the weather, or any number of other things can disrupt a linear procedure. We recognize it so easily that we have birthed uncounted idioms describing it: "that's life," "expect the unexpected," "murphy's law," and others.

In fact, in my former profession, there was a great deal of debate about whether a battlefield could be treated linearly. That was, of course, the great dream of the American military starting in the 1960s: as weapons became more and more advanced, and more control was possible via computer systems and advanced radios, military thinkers began to wonder if the terrible uncertainty of war could be avoided. They imagined a great army, with all weapon systems and theaters coordinated and controlled from a central location. Armed (literally) with that dream, and with advanced Command and Control (C2) systems developed at ruinous taxpayer expense, all designed by extrapolating past experience into future conflicts, the American military strode confidently into Vietnam, then into the Persian Gulf, then into Afghanistan, and finally again into the Persian Gulf.

Of course, with the possible exception of Desert Storm (1991), history teaches us that our military confidence was misplaced. Vietnam became a bloody, protracted war confused results and our forays into Iraq and Afghanistan look little different. And yet how, with the most advanced weapons and control technology that humanity has ever developed, did we end up with such debatable success?

One proposed answer is in non-linear thinking. Called in different disciplines Chaos Theory, or "Complex System Dynamics," the short story is that our world is inherently unpredictable. It does not behave according to cause and effect, or set rules. It is subject to "emergent factors," which is a verbally precise way to say that new, unexpected things occur. That accident on the way to work, or the new product that destroys a marketing plan, or the new behavior of a child or an entity. Something that is totally unexpected.

Let me take three examples. The first is falling in love. A great many people fall in love with someone unexpected, for an unexpected reason. Perhaps they knew the person before, and weren't romantically or sexually interested, then something occurred that changed their perception. Perhaps they were surprised by a new person they met. Either way, the encounter and the complex emotions that followed--joy, care, desire, excitement, need, contentment--was unexpected. It was emergent. Though we could try to explain it as cause and effect ("I was always attracted to blondes," or "It happened when I stopped looking"), those causes are not, in fact, causes. They are woefully inadequate causes. If it was blonde hair, or the fact that a person has stopped "looking for love," then what about all the other blondes, or all the other people one meets when they stop looking? Even trying to articulate it aloud is beyond the capacity of our language, and most people in love finally resort to phrases like, "it was just different," or "I just knew." They are recognizing that in their love, there was something new. New about them, new about the other person, new about their life, perceptions, and perspective, literally new about the world.

This example also tells us a lot about our relationship to non-linear thinking. We humans seek love inescapably, if we are to believe the evidence of adolescent behavior, the enduring institution of marriage (whatever it's relevance now), the preponderance of our art and media, and the time-honored tradition of matchmaking (now updated to websites like eHarmony and Match.com). In fact, we don't collectively consider love authentic unless it is non-linear. We are contemptuous of arranged marriages, for example. We expect love to be exciting and unscripted. Spontaneous. There is a deep need for and understanding of dynamic, unpredictable relationships that is at the core of who we are and how we relate.

The second example lies in the twentieth-century conflicts already described. Linear thinking, cause-and-effect perspective taught that a disciplined, advanced military such as our own would protect the Republic of Viet Nam (RVN, or South Vietnam). That proved inadequate because the Soviets armed and trained the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) to a much greater extent. That was an emergent event. So we thought up a linear pretext to accomplish our goal of supporting the allied RVN--we sent our own disciplined, advanced military. Unfortunately, the NVA changed tactics. They allied with the Viet Cong guerrillas and began avoiding open conflict. Even so, they were defeated in every major military engagement, but what Americans did not suspect was that such defeats, which crippled their ability to fight, in fact advanced their cause. They were behaving unexpectedly. They didn't attempt to beat the American military on the battlefield, they attempted to make America as a whole tired and ashamed of the conflict. That was an emergent behavior to which the Americans couldn't adapt, and it dynamically interrelated to other emergent qualities such as the "counterculture" social movement occurring in American universities, the increasing prevalence and social acceptance of drugs, and the increased media access to the world which was provided by Americans themselves, through embedded TV reporters. The true relationship and origin of all these events is (I argue) too complex to comprehend, which is why it is non-linear. But their unexpected, frustrating effect is well-documented in history.

But those first two articles deal with human phenomena. What about "natural" phenomena? The third example of dynamism and emergent behavior is evolution. The theory of evolution has long been lauded as a rigorously scientific perspective. Because it stands at odds with the biblical story of the world's beginning, many rationalists have used it to debunk Christianity (and in a broader context, all religion) despite the fact that many scientists who have contributed to the theory were practicing religious men and women. And there is a nice, apparently linear path from single-celled organisms in vast primordial seas to breathtaking biological complexity in the form of mammals and reptiles (including humans and dinosaurs). Charles Darwin, the scientist who first proposed this theory in The Origin of the Species, explained simply that evolution occurred as a result of "natural selection," positing that organisms best suited for their environment survived, while those more poorly suited were eventually killed off through competition (or by the environment itself.

But "natural selection" is an explanation with many facets. It has been reduced to "survival of the fittest," where evolution occurs to cope with changing environments and the species who are less capable of survival and procreation become extinct. Darwin himself, however, became a household name in the Western world due to his idea of "sexual selection," claiming that sexual desirability was responsible for evolution (a titillating idea, especially in Victorian England). In fact, Darwin's work seems to focus on sexual selection, making me wonder as I read it whether or not he departed a bit from the path of rigorous scientific research and began publishing explanations that continued to draw more attention and publicity. Yet no matter how we choose to define "natural selection," the troubling fact remains that we don't really know how it happened, or why it happened. We can explain that this species became extinct, while that species evolved. But excepting a few instances of evolution or extinction we were collectively fortunate enough to observe (such as antibiotic-resistant bacteria), the natural mechanism of evolution is pure speculation. We cannot explain coherently the cause and effect of it all, we can only guess.

For example, if evolution was driven by the need to survive, why then have traits evolved in species that have no apparent effect on survival whatsoever? Evolution certainly caused humans to have different eye colors, but it's unclear as to how that was "naturally selected." And why is the absence of a tail (when the tailbone is present) more efficacious to survival? Why have some species become extinct, while others survived. It is not satisfactory to say that somehow such traits must have aided survival, because if we can't explain something then we have no right to believe it (else we make science the same as religion). Sharks and crocodiles, organisms that have survived the dinosaurs, the ice age, and untold other environmental changes--not to mention the evolution of creatures that share their environments--make a mockery of evolution as a response to "natural selection." And "sexual selection" makes no more sense, because the mating patterns of bygone creatures are forever a mystery, absent time travel. We observe that sexual behavior tends to "breed out" weakness within a species, but it certainly doesn't explain the extinction or development of various species.

Further reinforcing the non-linear characteristics of evolution are the the philosophical implications it has inspired. Evolution is random and follows no single discernible pattern, therefore we humans are an accident (with all our art and science and other achievement as well). And while that is a wonderful overarching expression of the unknowability of this great process of biology, geology, and atmospherics that has been the story of this planet's life, it points inescapably at dynamic, emergent behavior. Literally every evolutionary step has been emergent, something new, whether it was the asteroid that supposedly began the extinction of the dinosaurs or the increasing brain size that characterized the transition from ancient apes to our modern human. Evolution may in fact be the most confidently non-linear perspective in the modern world, and evolutionary biologists have by and large ceased offering conventional cause-and-effect linear explanations for the developments they discover; instead they focus on explaining the apparent facts, which in detail continue to be frustrating obscure. For example, evidence suggests that Neanderthals may have used speech and tools, and probably interbred with both Cro-Magnons and Anatomically Modern Humans (AMHs). Was their extinction then "bred out," or did they become extinct through some other evolutionary mechanism, such as persecution and genocide at the hands of more advanced evolutionary cousins (which would itself be an emergent event)? It's not even clear whether they were more or less intelligent, since they appear to have had more voluminous brains than AMHs, which is a crude indicator of intelligence in organisms.

For some reason, it appears that science has given humans the illusion that there is a finite amount of information in the world, and once all information is known--once science and research has plumbed the depths of all mysteries and revealed all--then there will be no more surprises. That attitude is most concretely seen in the repeated, futile attempts by militaries in the last half-century to bring all aspects of the battlefield under control. But with people and with the world, experience teaches that emergent behaviors occur, without precedent and unpredictable by any cause-and-effect extrapolation. And any attempt to neatly package emergent behavior with a linear explanation is pure speculation. No one will ever know why the North Vietnamese martyred themselves militarily, or how why such martyrdom, if carried on long enough, would result in American war fatigue. Certainly the Americans, who ought to have known best, did not predict it; while it might be fashionable to say that Ho Chi Minh and Giap were smarter than Americans, the fact is that their emergent tactic itself occurred to them through a result of unexpected effects and opportunities. Likewise, no one will ever know what happened to Neanderthals. And a guess, even one made by a scientist, is still a guess.

Eastern thought deals with this reality much better than our contemporary Western thought. Since the renaissance, Westerners have undergone a half millennium of constant progress and living improvement. We have mastered agriculture, distance travel, flight, and medicine. To a certain extent we have even mastered weather--hurricanes no longer slam against ships and shores with 36 hour warnings; our satellites allow us to evacuate days before landfall. But for all this mastery, we can't predict. Eastern disciplines such as Buddhism or the way of Lao Tzu take what is to Western minds a curiously fatalistic approach to life, but I argue that there is wisdom in recognizing one's inability to control one's surroundings. The Marine Corps General James Mattis recognized how little he could control a battlefield, despite commanding whole divisions, because of the violent and highly dynamic environment. He took the radio handle "Chaos" to illustrate that he did not seek to control the battlefield but rather to thrive in the unpredictable environment. That is a military tenet perhaps first articulated by Sun Tzu, an eastern thinker.

And speaking of weather, our weather "predictions" are merely speculations based on observed data. The path of a hurricane is projected, and large swathes of coastline are put on alert. Why? Because we simply don't know where it's going. Half the time a hurricane deviates by hundreds of miles from it's projected path. Other weather developments are guesses at what might happen over, say Chicago when system A intersects system B--never minding that weather systems, like hurricanes, are projected in the future with poor accuracy. And the results of weather systems which intersect are unpredictable, too. These systems are emergent, dynamic, and probably respond to variables that are as of yet uncomprehended. Such as land use, as in cities (which tend to be warmer than surrounding countryside).

All of this calls the predicted outcomes of global warming into serious question. While empirical data over the last 200 years has clearly shown a warming trend, and glaciers melting, and growing holes in the ozone layer, the effect of such facts is unpredictable. It is essentially dynamic and emergent. The "El Nino" phenomenon was hailed as a manifestation of the consequences of global warming, but evidence suggests that it has been occurring at two to seven year intervals for 300 years, and perhaps even further back. So we can't be sure if the extreme weather caused by El Nino is due to AGW or not. In fact, while NOAA has identified that the number of anomalous weather/ocean systems regarding temperature has increased, nobody is sure whether that's a new development or not. And the fact that within the broad warming trend of the last 200 years there existed a 30-year cooling trend from 1940-1970 clouds the issue even further.

Because "the environment" is such a complex system, with emergent, non-linear, dynamic developments, I think that all the trouble and fuss about predicting climate change is a mistake. The simple fact is that we can't predict anything--we can only guess. Perhaps a guess or two will be correct, but that will itself be an emergent effect from the whole. Besides, the use of terrifying predictions to stimulate more attention on the issue of AGW strikes me as manipulative, a way for AGW apologists and researchers to increase their support, especially financially. I certainly have no illusions that scientists, like everyone else, are susceptible to stretching the truth to get their way. After all, bankers, businessmen, and priests have done it for years. Ultimately, I think our resources are better spent learning to thrive in this emergent environment, which starts by understanding it. Computer models apply linear thought to a non-linear system, which makes them nearly useless. Rigorous research aimed at knowing instead of predicting is much more helpful.

It is perhaps tempting to think that if our world is so dynamic and emergent, then what use is there for linear, scientific thought at all? What can we possibly do to make a difference if we have no way of knowing or predicting what the effects of our action will be? The fact is that we live in relation to this world, and we always have. Native Americans burned forests and fields to flush game and make the land into something more congenial to them. We have farmed for thousands of years. We have learned to thrive by taking our environment and adapting to it in a way that is advantageous to us. This doesn't just apply to the natural world, either--businesses do it in the marketplace, governments do it in political spheres, and we individuals have done it with every single aspect of our lives. It is a survival mechanism. And if our environment is changing now, I think it's a good bet that we have something to do with it--but simply reversing the processes is unlikely to reverse the effects we've seen to date. The world will continue to evolve, dynamically. That is why I think it is so foolish to think that we can control the "environment" to such a degree that...what? What is the desired solution to AGW? Make the world as it was in 1930? 1830? Does anybody really know when the world was healthier? What about in the Jurassic period (200-150 million years ago), when there was more oxygen in the air (and more carbon dioxide as well), not to mention warmer temperatures?

We should "pick up" after ourselves, of course. We should not destroy if we can help it. Demanding greater energy efficiency is virtuous, and certainly will mitigate the effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not to mention the deleterious smog that existed in Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s, which we have successfully cleaned up, and which exists today in developing cities like Shanghai. Finding better ways to use land than mass deforestation and urban development might slow the warming effect, since scientists point to land use as a major factor in the present warming trend. Of course, that entails a behavioral change, as by and large the population of the world continues to concentrate in the cities. And contamination of water and land with industrial by-products including hormonal, radioactive, and corrosives is still a major threat, and ought be combatted to the maximum extent possible. But whatever steps we take, we should be mindful that they will birth their own emergent effects, and almost certainly will not have the effects that we expect (or not entirely).

Keeping that in mind, we should be careful not to impose restrictions on developing societies that do not have the luxury of guilt over a theory of projected environmental behavior, and struggle daily with poverty. The science behind AGW does not account for the human cost of change, except where it predicts catastrophic results for humanity. That fact is the most suspicious of all.

To thrive in this world, as we have done so far, we must remember that science does not tell us what to do; rather it tells us what is. And that information may help us discern what to do about things, but there is no blueprint. The climate is certainly changing, and the reasons for that change are probably much more complex than industrialization and land use. After all, the earth has already been through three atmospheres and many geologic periods already, and likely will go through more as the earth's evolution continues. How that evolution will be affected by warming, carbon dioxide, or anything else attributed to us is unknowable.

And our evolutionary business is to remain, as the sharks and the crocodiles have. We must learn to thrive.

The Harvard Sin

I read today that the Harvard University Student Handbook cautions students against joining the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) because "the program is inconsistent with Harvard's values."

I am speechless. Choking and appalled, I can barely respond civilly. Rationally, I can understand why someone might regard current ongoing conflicts as disastrously frivolous. I can understand why someone would judge the benefit of current conflicts as corrupt. I can especially understand why someone might regard the loss of life in current conflicts too much to bear. And I can even (barely) understand why someone might regard today's military as a not-entirely-unwilling tool of imperialist, contemptuous, grasping designs by a corrupt institution.

I vehemently disagree with all those perspectives. I think very nearly the opposite. But raised in an intellectual environment, I naturally assume that everybody with something to say has arrived at their opinion honestly--which is to say, if they view a current conflict negatively or view the military negatively, they've at least arrived at their conclusion through some desire to find truth and application of judgment (though I might find their desire and judgment warped and lacking, respectively).

It isn't just the intellectual environment that conditioned my naivety, however--it is the principle of free speech. The First Amendment to our Constitution explicitly protects an American's right to say and think what he or she wants. It's a question of freedom, and as a place encouraging the "free and open exchange of ideas" a university (such as Harvard) should be eager to protect such freedom by allowing students to come to their own conclusions about social institutions like the military.

But of course that is a matter of opinion. Pacifists are entitled to their opinions as well. Yet there is an aura of exceptionalism about premier universities; there is a tacit understanding by students, faculty, and administrators that a function of the institution is to produce good men and women to do good things in the world, armed with a store of knowledge and more importantly formed with the understanding that there is a right answer to most problems, and though it may not yet be known we collectively can figure it out. Is the right answer to the "military problem" to shut it out? I'm sure there are some Harvard community members who think so.

If that is a "value" of Harvard, well, bully for them. I have great respect for the long and illustrious intellectual history of that storied university, which (it must be said) have produced many warrior-scholars like Teddy Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. I think the strong intellectual and liberal traditions of Harvard might contribute strongly to our military, and that it's "exceptional" young alumni ought to go forth in obedience to their conscience, whether that be to AmeriCorps, the military, or the corporate world. I firmly believe that a good man or a good woman has much to contribute to any institution, provided that institution is well-meaning. And I can't understand why Harvard apparently has tarred the entire military with a wide brush of "misaligned values."

A cursory study of history shows that the American Military has done great things. Twice it has stopped German aggression, the latter of which took the awful form of Nazism in it's industrial ethnic genocide. It stopped the utter savagery and rapine of the Japanese Empire and it bled to keep desperate South Korea from crumbling under unwanted Communist Imperialism. Within those struggles good men and women have stepped forward to lead servicemembers in as near to civilized war-making as this world has ever seen--and incidents like My Lai and Abu Ghraib, inexcusable as they were, stand glaringly as aberrations. Actually, that comparison isn't quite fair, since My Lai was a genuine and horrible massacre while Abu Ghraib was just a sickening episode of bullying. These past nine years our Armed Forces have adjusted their tactics in a heroic effort to spare civilian lives, even when such course ran counter to sound military tactics (and they have paid the price in servicemembers' blood). I think there is little doubt for the disinterested observer that good men and women have served in the military, or that smart men and women have made it a better force for good in the world.

Furthermore, the reviled "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy regarding homosexuals does not originate from the military, it was imposed by a liberal president. I don't see how anyone could fairly blame the military organization for that. If some servicemembers are prejudiced, well, that's bad...but it isn't illegal. Besides, what better place for a talented, well-formed young Harvard alumnus or alumnae to do some good in the world than in the midst of prejudice? That's chiefly, to my understanding, the result of ignorance, which is generally cured by education. And education is nominally the function of the university. In any case, it certainly isn't fair to assume that all servicemembers are prejudiced and damn the organization thereby.

Finally, I can't believe that Harvard would baldly dismiss an institution that counts among it's values "Honor," "Courage," "Commitment," "Service over self," or that explicitly encourages and rewards valor, hard work, and good leadership. It begs the question of what exactly the right values are, anyway. One would hope that Harvard's invitation of radical muslims does not indicate tacit approval of their values enshrined in Sharia law, which allows them to hang homosexuals, mutilate and stone women, and rape adolescent girls. Exactly what are Harvard's values now?

I certainly am biased in this matter. In five years of military service I have worked with the smartest, best people I've ever met--but I've also seen my share of bullies and bigots. Like any institution, the military has goods and bads. But I fail to see how Harvard can with any reason actually discourage it's students to seek a career therein. And to wholesale condemn the Armed Forces, these days comprised entirely of Americans who have promised to protect with their lives the Harvard community (along with the rest of the United States), is the height of ingratitude and indecency. Such a promise is no less valuable for the absence of a credible threat.

I understand that part of free speech and the free exchange of ideas is criticism. I welcome it mostly; how else would we collectively approve. So criticize, Harvard: criticize the military treatment of homosexuals, or the military tactics in the middle east, or even the military recruiting process. But don't dismiss it. We're Americans too, and we deserve better of what once was our greatest university.

Thoughts from Seoul, Korea

In my two Western Pacific Deployments, I have been to Korea multiple times. Without succumbing to banalities, I'd say cautiously that it is a place with particular entertainments, and particular headaches. The entertainments consist mostly of fantastic knock-offs of brand-name goods (purses, especially), exceedingly good clothing (from leather jackets to tailored suits), cheap and plentiful alcohol, and shady "juicy bars" where one may go and have the pleasure of purchasing a drink for some young ladies and enjoying their conversation. On the latter activity I've told you all I know, really. I assume that the young ladies are available for further services, too, but I don't know. I never desired to find out. And to my knowledge, neither did my comrades. But on the whole, in these three things a youthful, deployed, and perhaps lonely servicemember may find in Korea some solace. In my squadron, trips to Korea were regarded as good deals.

The one time it was a bad deal was Exercise Foal Eagle, which I have already described. Over those two weeks I experienced to a very small degree the legendary misery of Korea: the bad weather, the pervasive and light-killing haze, the cold. I say it was a very small degree, because there were hot showers available, and we did sleep in tents, and the food was passable. Really, the only missing "luxury" was laundry, but one can fit clothes for two weeks into a single seabag. It wasn't all that bad. And there were some benefits as well, such as character-building, some decent flying (including a chance to look over the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea), and a chance to live near actual Koreans. Shopping in their stores and using their facilities is a long step from the tourist-centered places we were used to visiting.

But the best glimpse I had of Korea was a visit to it's capitol, Seoul.

I don't pretend to understand Korea very well. From my time in Yechon (during Foal Eagle), I noted a determined aspect to Koreans--an America-like emphasis on success, fiscal and military. I'm sure there are regional differences between South Koreans, but to my occidental eyes Seoul is the center of the nation. Under the guns of the North Koreans it lies, threatened and defiant, and it has reinvented itself during the long years since it last was destroyed--1953--as a center of industry, finance, and culture. Hemmed in by Korean and American military bases and known for having the most exciting nightlife north of Bangkok, Seoul seems to represent the challenge and triumph of Korea. And so I was eager to go.

But before I continue, I should admit that I know embarrassingly little Korean history. Up until 1945, I know, it was traded between and influenced by various Chinese and Japanese empires, both of which hated. Upon the Imperial Japanese surrender which ended the Second World War, it was partitioned as Japanese territory (which it had been for the past 13 years) into two "administration zones," the north part overseen by the Soviet Union, the south overseen by the United States. Unsurprisingly, the Soviet Zone decided to set itself up as a hard-line Communist regime, while the South became a representative democracy. And in accordance with Communist ideals, which mandate that the remainder of the world be brought into the Communist fold by any means necessary, in 1950 the North Korean government decided to use force to unify the divided country. The Korean War began.

Most of what I just related I learned in the National Museum of the Korean War, a remarkable tribute to Korea's struggle for freedom. Monumental statues depict the Koreans who fought and the places they fought, with not a few reminders that the conflict was in essence a Civil War that split families and tore a people apart. Most poignant were photographs of students rallying in South Korea to ask American help in stopping the invasion from North Korea. The war was much more to South Korea than a political stand against an undesirable government, it was a life-or-death struggle for that highest human desire, freedom. This messy, brutal attempt at domination represented the true threat of Communism in that time and tested the American Exceptionalist perspective which promised to aid other nations in their quest for freedom.

Initially overwhelmed by Soviet-armed and organized North Korean military units, the small American units and the entirety of the South Korean military was pushed back to a small pocket in the southeast corner of the peninsula, dubbed the "Pusan Perimeter." It is hard to imagine today, and hard for me to express in words, how frightening this must have been for other small nations around the world abutting Communist states. With one greedy bite, a Soviet-backed state looked to crush a free people into submission to the Communist ideology. Anodyne statements to the effect that "communism is all right in theory" or that "we shouldn't interfere with others' rights to choose their own government"* forget the desperate struggle of South Korea to resist wholesale and brutal colonization by another power. I think it fortunate that the United States rose to the occasion and broke the pressure on the "Pusan Perimeter" with an amphibious landing at Inchon, where along with South Korean units the Marines encircled the invading armies and began pushing them north.

The rest is not quite just history. China came to the aid of international communism, attempting to help the fleeing North Koreans finish the fight they started. The battle of the Chosin Reservoir was fought against overwhelming Chinese reinforcements before the armistice was signed, splitting North and South Korea again into two countries. Wholesale destruction of Seoul and other cities in South Korea as well as hundreds of thousands of refugees strained national resources, and the constant (and vocalized) threat of further invasion from the north made recovery even more difficult because of the need to maintain a modern and powerful military. And yet in the years since the armistice, South Korea has rebuilt their land and their economy, they have hosted the Olympics, and they have sent troops to aid American campaigns in the Middle East.

Freedom in South Korea is manifestly not simply the state of affairs. It is not something that simply exists. They fight and sacrifice for freedom every day, serving mandatory enlistment and running an economy that can support the military they need to protect themselves and their choice of government. And yet they are still at war, for though the armistice is still in effect, a truce has never been signed.

We say often in America, "freedom is not free." We mean it, I think, and we intend to remember that the path toward human liberation has been contested each step of the way by people and entities that desire power over others. But the simple and stirring truth in the statement came upon me like a conversion as I toured through Seoul's national museum of the war. The bitter and appalling struggle to resist tyranny, the surprising gratitude which venerates those from other countries who fell in their struggle (in the case of the United States, the fallen are recognized by individual state), the triumphal development of modern arms to continue to protect this abstract concept of freedom--there, in Seoul, it is demonstrated just how costly and precious freedom actually is.

*I don't advocate the forcible reconstitution of other countries to American civic structures. I am making no statement here except that it's important to protect countries from any forcible reconstitution of their civic structures, especially totalitarian ones.

"...for those in peril on the sea"

The Naval Service is austere. The proposition--conducting battle on the ocean, a notoriously unpredictable and dangerous natural feature of this earth we inhabit--is difficult. The danger, though it rarely includes face-to-face combat, is both omnipresent and great. If a naval vessel manages to conduct its mission without running afoul of storms and shoals, its crew may yet suffer the effects of an industrial disaster leaving them stranded in open water, possibly on a burning or irradiated deck. In addition, of course, there is the threatening enemy, which may deliver ordnance on the surprisingly fragile and vulnerable ships themselves. All of which may lead to an ignominious death by sharks, starvation, or exposure.

It used to be a lot more dangerous, actually. Before satellite tracking of storms, vessels might easily and suddenly stumble into a hurricane or typhoon. Before the development of the steel-hulled and engine-driven ship, vessels burned more easily and were at the mercy of winds for navigation, including while actually engaged. Before the advent of large guns (reaching out tens of miles), ships often had to engage within 'boarding distance' of each other, requiring crews to find their way across the narrow gap between them and the enemy, taking the dual risk of being shot or carved up as they defenselessly swarmed across a gangplank or crushed between the hulls if the ships collided. Before neatly packaged cruise missiles and air-delivered naval ordnance, vessels had to fire many hundreds of high-explosive shells at each other, each taking a toll both on the firing platform and the target. Don't forget that the crews had to keep their respective vessels afloat despite the often appalling damage wrought by naval warfare, for after combat there is still the danger of storms and industrial failures--not to mention the chance of an enemy coming upon a crippled ship to finish her off.

There is certainly still danger. Missions may require penetrating storms or operating in shallow waters (like the Persian Gulf). Aviation operations are complicated and unforgiving, and the unwary sailor may be run over or sucked into a jet intake on a crowded carrier deck, cut in half by a split arresting cable, or blown off deck by jet exhaust just as the complacent pilot may lack the incredible required precision to put his or her aircraft on exactly the right spot on the pitching carrier deck on every landing to ensure a safe arrestment. Neatly packaged cruise missiles launch with a rocket booster, threatening their launch platform with rocket exhaust, while the radars required to guide them over long distances are powerful enough kill small birds (and presumably humans) who are too close to their emitters.

None of this danger takes into account the additional strain exerted by a life on the ocean. In order to be survivable, naval warships are not built for comfort or recreation. They are honeycombs of steel, built to sustain damage and yet function, with living and working spaces worked in around the armor, weaponry, and engines (and aviation paraphernalia, if the ship happens to be a carrier). The manpower requirements of operating the myriad systems for a complete twenty-four hour schedule require that as many sailors as possible live in the cramped quarters. The younger sailors won't even have their own bunk, often--they'll share it with a comrade on another shift. The ship must be kept free of rust, which means chipping paint, and tidy to allow for maximum efficiency in combat. There must be constant drills which pull crewmembers out of bed during their few hours of rest to prepare for possible disaster - firefighting, man-overboard recovery, and impending combat. Because it is a vastly complicated piece of machinery, often utilized to its design envelope or strained by the vagaries of the sea, things constantly need maintenance and repair. Because any crew-member may be killed or lost, the crew must conduct training so as many sailors as possible can perform a given job. All of which, of course, must be taken care of whenever free time comes up between the more important task of conducting the mission--whether that mission is a simple sea lane patrol or active combat operations.

The sailors who run these risks and suffer this difficult lifestyle are by necessity a disciplined and professional bunch. They bear the thankless burden of protecting the world's oceans, ostensibly for our own merchant shipping as the movement of goods is necessary to our economy. They do so in trying conditions and much danger, ready if required to protect our assets (and people) by force or to quickly take the fight to our enemy, restricting their movement of materiél and threatening their coastal cities. It's a valid threat our Navy poses to potential enemies, considering that most of the earth's surface is water and most of the population of the earth lives close enough to a coast to be within naval striking distance. It has probably never been calculated how much real deterrent a capable navy provides. It certainly isn't often considered in general society or the halls of power, where the vast movement of goods that brings cars and electronics and clothes to local stores is taken for granted and where the Navy, chiefly operating far from the eyes of the media and the world at large, seems to be considered little more than an expensive and probably unnecessary military toy. These sailors perform their tasks and exercise their values--honor, courage, and commitment--in the strained and difficult confines of small ships, alone upon the great and wild seas. They are often remembered only by their loved ones, who hope and pray for their safety without the comfort of constant telephone contact, a more recent luxury afforded to ground forces. They compete for our funding and resources with more visible brethren, whose service is evident in airplanes flying over our cities and soldiers living in our neighborhoods. And they often fail to get the money they need.

Due to military cutbacks the Navy has had to decrease the amount of ships it builds and maintains. In a response to the shrinking demand, the naval shipyards have cut production ability. Now the USS Enterprise will not complete its required overhaul on schedule, which will in turn require two ships to extend their deployment two more months. Instead of six months at sea, those crews will serve eight. It is perhaps not particularly significant, for there have been longer and more difficult deployments in the history of the service. The sailors in question will no doubt follow their esteemed forefathers and continue to serve with dedication, perfection, and without asking for pity. Their families will no doubt swallow their sadness and frustration and continue living a little longer without their loved ones close. Such is the reward and virtue of those Americans who decide to give their youth and maturity to a difficult service. But it seems a pity that we as a nation value our security and their sacrifice so little that we can spare so little of our vast resources on their vital mission, which requires them to spend even more of their own selves executing that mission anyway. For the mission must be accomplished. There is no compromise on that, either in the ethos of the service or the unforgiving evaluation of the nation.

Elsewhere are the details of how a modern military is essential to a nation's health and survival, and how it must be built upon foundation of public support and industrial capability. Yet we blindly continue to withdraw our public support, focusing generally on what we want instead of what we need, and we continuously shrink our industrial capability because we aren't willing to accept the expenditure. And the burden of our national defense and sustenance grows heavier, and falls upon fewer shoulders. Meanwhile, right now, the high and stern task of the Navy has become a bit more difficult. It is sad for those sailors and their families, and we should be mindful that the debt of gratitude we owe them is growing.

Betrayal in Language

For the last several years, much has been made of "the insurgency." In the immediate aftermath of "combat operations" in Iraq, many were dismayed to see an insurgency develop, made up mostly (we were left to believe) of disaffected Iraqis unhappy with the erstwhile US Military occupation. Much ink was spilled comparing the insurgency to the American Revolution, where the US Military figured as a typically oppressive analogue to the Redcoats of legend. Incidents like Abu Ghraib contributed to the perspective of Revolution and freedom fighting versus tyrannical occupation. "The Surge," President George W. Bush's ambitious plan to stamp out the insurgency, was met with amazement and ridicule. How, the standard questioning went, could the solution to Iraq's collective wish for our occupation to end be to inject more US troops? Yet the evidence shows that the Surge worked, most notably the fact that only a few days ago US forces pulled out of Iraq's urban areas completely and left the security of that newly peaceful and marginally prosperous nation to indigenous units.

An insurgency is not a new problem, as I feel we have been led to believe. It is not some phenomenon that is attributable to US meddling in the affairs of other countries. The growing insurgency in Afghanistan is, likewise, not a new problem. The insurgents are a contemporary incarnation of a shameful historical institution. Such men (and women) have been called partisans, guerillas, and terrorists long before they were called insurgents. They are, as far as I know, a fixture of modern wars, the first of which is arguably the American Civil War. In that long and bitter struggle, small irregular bands of "bushwhackers" from one side or the other conducted a brutal campaign of rapine against the farms and homesteads of their enemies, which included burning dwellings and salting fields, lynching, horse thievery, and torture. Their aim was fairly straightforward: to break the Confederate (or Union) will to continue the struggle. Most of that activity was concentrated away from the large and famous military battles, in the western part of the then-United States, and is mainly responsible for the cultural tensions that still exist between states like Missouri and Kansas. Sherman's well-documented and ruinous march across the South to sack Atlanta was a classic Bushwhacker tactic, though it was of dubious effectiveness.

Americans (and Europeans) chiefly remember World War I for the pitched military warfare that dominated German, French, and English involvement. But insurgency existed in that war as well. In the fighting centered around Asia Minor bands of Christian Greek insurgents and bands of Islamic Turkish insurgents carried out parallel irregular warfare against settlements comprised of opposite nationalities. That kind of irregular warfare is the chief reality for those two involved nations. In World War II, similar insurgencies raged in occupied Europe as a "Resistance," while Nazi Germany conducted it's own appalling irregular fight with the Einsatzgruppen, who ravaged the Soviet countryside for Jews and other undesirables in order to murder them wholesale. On their side, Soviet "partisans" resisted the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia and the Balkans by torturing and murdering accused fascists and their families, with the aim of having those nations join the Soviet Bloc in the war's aftermath. Communist guerillas used the same tactics in Viet Nam, Central, and South America in the late 1960s. They continue to do so in Colombia and Bolivia today.

That insurgencies are often motivated by ideology (nationalism, communism, Islamic fundamentalism) makes them Romantic. Che Guevara, a Communist guerilla leader, is has often been romanticized. But insurgencies are uniformly brutal and destabilizing. Whatever they're called, insurgents promote their particular ideology by forcing a populace to submit through terror and humiliation. The will or desire of said populace for that ideology is not relevant. The insurgents in Iraq were motivated by a desire for a Sharia Law, Islamic theocracy, and the humiliation of America. To accomplish that end, they committed suicide with bombs designed to kill civilians, they ousted people from their homes to make strongholds, and they punished "collaborators" who assisted or worked with American troops. They often conflicted violently with US forces, and as often lost (like the Viet Namese before them). The Taliban insurgency springing up in Afghanistan will probably experience the same.

Yet despite their cowardly tactics, insurgents can be deadly to soldiers. That the enemy blends so well with a foreign society which is difficult to understand in the first place means an unbelievable strain as the soldiers must be constantly watchful. In urban environments, where insurgent conflict often takes place (and which may just as easily occur in a two-street village as a metropolis), the fighting is physical demanding and often very personal, with firefights occurring within the confines of a room. With a world-wide and well-stocked arms market, insurgents often have access to sophisticated and effective weapons, to include machine guns, mortars, propelled grenades, and nearly unlimited small arms. In a word, conflict with insurgents is just as much combat as more traditional combat between professional armies.

Which is why the drivel about a "counterinsurgency contingency operation" instead of something called a "war" makes me so angry. Whether a conflict is called a war, an operation, or whatever else is a political decision. It doesn't make much difference to the individual soldier or Marine except as regards the support he or she gets from America, measured in logistics and affirmation of the mission. To rename operations in Iraq and Afghanistan something that sounds less warlike is to demean the forces in theater from their status as the best we have to offer and our ambassadors of freedom (roles that US forces cherish and desire) to mere mercenaries, forgotten paid civil servants doing a dirty and difficult job. Defeating insurgents is a noble task, for insurgents are responsible for most of the non-military suffering from the many wars that have blighted our world. Why are we collectively so happy to deny our troops, born of our citizens and our society, even this justified satisfaction; why are we so eager to forget what is probably our only greatest contribution to the world so far this century?

Politics is often a war of words. Language shapes our thought because it is the architecture of our thought. Poetry and literature have long been considered among the greatest of artistic pursuits. Generally, we value language when it describes reality. But the sword cuts both ways: words can distort reality too. The reality is that our conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan is tough and dangerous armed fighting, against an evil and oppressive enemy who would force a specific and evil ideology (Islamic fundamentalist theocracy) upon the citizens of those countries. That does not appear to fit the ideology of our current zeitgeist. The language being applied to our troops and their effort steals the righteousness and nobility in arms they crave and for which they struggle their entire career under arms. They deserve far better of us. And if we aren't careful, our collective diminishment of them whom we admire will diminish our own selves.

The state of Notre Dame in April 2009

The controversy regarding Notre Dame's selection of an aggressively pro-choice politician as the commencement speaker for the 2009 ceremonies has raged for several months now. I have read many opinion pieces supporting and condemning the decision, and I have read some weak defenses and affirmations of the same decision from university officials. So far I have avoided writing about it, if only because the staggering magnitude of Notre Dame's betrayal has been too painful to examine. So I have contented myself with explaining (as patiently as possible) why the invitation of such a speaker, who enthusiastically supports the availability of abortion and stem-cell research, and who has threatened the very mission of ministry and service of the Church by calling for removal of the "freedom-of-conscience clause" from regulations governing the disbursement of federal funds to charities and hospitals, effectively denying such institutions that are Catholic-affiliated needed operating funds if they comply with the dictates of their conscience and refuse to support stem-cell research or refuse to provide or procure abortions, is opposed by so many in the University and the larger American Catholic Community as a whole.

Recently, however, two things happened. I read the text of a speech given at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, which admonished the University for its decision to host this politician so opposed to Catholic teaching on the sanctity of life and called for students, faculty, and alumni alike to stand up and provide a witness for the pro-life cause; the next day, I watched the movie Rudy.

The speech, given by William McGurn (text here), was truly inspiring. Calling attention to a recent advertising campaign of the University with the tagline "What would you fight for?" which references the school mascot of the "Fighting Irish" and shows students working for social justice or making advancements in science or medicine, the speech asks why the wealthiest and most successful Catholic university in America--and perhaps in the world--won't use its resources and national visibility to defend the unborn. Recalling ND's sometimes prominent role in the Civil-Rights movement, when the University President at the time, Father Hesburgh, linked arms with Martin Luther King, Jr. at a demonstration, Mr. McGurn called the pro-life movement "the defining civil rights issue of our age," and urged the school as a whole to bear witness as Father Hesburgh once did. The speech reminded all present (and all who read it) that Father Sorin's dream was to raise a University dedicated to Mary, the universal God-Bearer, in the wilderness of northern Indiana to be, literally, a "light unto the nation," illuminating by the truth of Catholic teaching from a dome of gold.

The movie Rudy, though it has more to do with football than it does with the University's mission or the issues at stake, is a story of a time when Notre Dame was chiefly known for its football program. As a Catholic University that supposedly taught chiefly basic theology and vocational skills, it was excluded contemptuously from the club of premier American universities (the "Ivy League") and from lesser, "pretender" universities alike. Yet the excellence of its football team made it impossible to be ignored. And so the University made it's presence and Catholic identity felt across the nation, and thereby served as a beacon to Catholic immigrant communities, mostly blue-collar, who lived and worked in every major city of the nation. That is the reason why still today, despite the continuous, incredulous and condescending surprise of sports broadcasters, Notre Dame football draws supporters from many places outside Indiana.

The excellence of Notre Dame football in those days also served as an inspiration to the students and the faculty present at the university, and by the 1950s and 1960s Father Sorin's dream had perhaps come close to fruition. The University's academic curriculum had made great advancements and stood above all but the very best in the land. The struggle of "Rudy" Ruettiger to attend Notre Dame (and play football there) resonates with thousands of high-schoolers from Catholic schools who dreamed of attending that University. It represented, essentially, the best that Catholic America had to offer: strong faith and moral foundations, the pursuit of excellence in all facets of university life, and a constant exa ple of Catholic truthto what was (and still is) a largely Protestant nation. That is why it represented such an achievement to Rudy and his family, and why Rudy worked so hard to become a part of it.

I discovered the stature of Notre Dame when I was seventeen. Almost carelessly, I chose to attend Notre Dame after deciding that the medical waiver required for attendance at the Naval Academy was too unsure a thing upon which to risk my college acceptance. I was totally unprepared for the overwhelming and positive response from my Catholic family (and the larger Catholic community). To them, I had been selected by the best for the best, and was clearly on the road to greatness--I was not only to be well-educated, I was to be formed as a good Catholic. Their reaction mirrored the reaction of Rudy's father and brothers, the former of whom called a stop to production at the steel mill he managed to make the announcement: "my son's going to Notre Dame!" The pressure only mounted when I arrived on campus, for I felt there a vague but palpable conviction among the students--or at least the best of them, the ones everyone admired--that we all were being formed for something special that required the utmost commitment. The disappointment from my peers when I inadequately completed an assignment, or when I failed to discharge the minimal duties of my stated and claimed Catholicism, was much worse than the admonishments of my professors and mentors. That pressure, when I finally let it inspire me, shaped me into a better person, and contributed to my decision to pursue a career serving others in the Marine Corps.

It is the loss of this consciousness of being elite that hurts me so much about Notre Dame's commencement speaker selection. When the university publically acts against the explicit direction of it's own Bishop and the U.S. Bishop's council at large and provides a "bully pulpit" to a figure who has so prominently contradicted and denied essential truths--which are no less true for being Catholic-taught--it abdicates it's hard-earned role as this nation's foremost example and defender of truth and morals. I suspect that no longer will so many Catholic teenagers dream of attending Notre Dame to "fight the good fight" or more deeply form their faith; I doubt now that any non-Catholic teenagers will seek admission to Notre Dame out of curiosity or a desire to be as good, as righteous, or as unashamedly committed to truth as true Catholicism is. Notre Dame has ceased to be unique and has joined ranks with so many of the "academically rigorous" but softly relativistic universities (among which are some who call themselves Catholic) that make up the fabric of American higher learning. Graduating from Notre Dame now merely reflects on my academic ability. It says nothing at all about my moral character.

Yet the true tragedy here is found in the prospective and current students of Notre Dame who will see in this invitation that the university condones ideas contrary to Catholicism. These young men and women are told by nearly every facet of society that abortion is not wrong, and those who oppose it are ignorant, bigoted, or worse; to a lesser extent they are given to understand that the Church is irrelevant and historical rather than present and alive. They are in the formative stage of their life when they most greatly feel pressure to conform to with the ideas and actions of the rest of the nation and "fit in." These teenagers and young adults need to hear a strong voice for truth. They need to see and hear a vigorous defense of the sanctity of life, which informs all other Catholic teaching. They need to know that abortion isn't merely one issue among many on which the Church opposes mainstream society, but the central issue on which no compromise is possible. Above all, as prospective Catholic witnesses and apologists, these young adults need to understand that in this case the fundamental, inalienable right of our most defenseless citizens to live is not some archaic and obsolete idea of the Church, but rather a practical cornerstone of society (which cannot survive if it allows citizens to kill other citizens for convenience). In that it has this effect, Notre Dame's selection of a pro-life commencement speaker makes it part and promulgator of what Pope John Paul II called "the culture of death."

My condemnation of my Alma Mater is harsh, but I believe justified, and it is certainly not final. Even now the University could rectify matters by rescinding their invitation in order to witness the sanctity of human life so clearly unshared by their original intended speaker. It could "clean house" and remove those officials and faculty who are so out of touch with the truth proclaimed by the Church that they would consider such a selection. In doing so, the University even might put some integrity and conviction into the otherwise good Catholics within the University community who stood timidly by and let this invitation happen, knowing (one hopes) within the depths of their uneasy hearts that such an action would contradict all the university aspires to stand for. Better yet, such action would provide an unashamed and unequivocal example of right to Catholics young and old across the nation it was founded to serve. Only then will Notre Dame will reclaim as reality the image so stirringly and imaginatively proclaimed by its architecture: a university dedicated to Our Lady, the immortal presenter of God to the broken human race, preaching truth to Americans just as her image gleams in gold across the heart-land of our country.

The Military-Industrial Complex and the Cost of Nationhood

That humans need to live in community is indisputable. A family is the smallest human community, and the biological facts that drive division of labor within the family indicate the biological need for a community in the first place. In order for the family to survive, it needs to be protected and sustained. Happily, a grown male is tailored specifically toward doing this. In order for the family to be sustainable and continue surviving, it needs to procreate and that it's young are nurtured. Happily, a grown female is tailored specifically toward these tasks. Yet a single family is vulnerable, so communities exist of multiple families where the division of labor is expanded. Large communities can even support practically useless labors, such as art and religious worship, which sustain a metaphysical need in humans. The largest such communities are nations, which ideally comprise a State--defined as an entity with a monopoly on violence (to protect, deter, and punish)--and a culture, which yields collective values and ambitions for citizens.

A much more lucid way to to define nationhood, or at least the purpose thereof, is found in C.S. Lewis' writings:

[W]e must say that the sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a man alone reading a book that interests him; and that all economies, politics, laws, armies, and institutions, save insofar as they prolong and multiply such scenes, are a mere plowing of the sand and sowing the ocean, a meaningless vanity and vexation of spirit.

We know intuitively that in order for people to be happy, they need to satisfy other needs first. Maslow's Hierarchy categorizes them nicely: first physiological needs like food and shelter, then personal needs like companionship and belonging, then finally metaphysical needs like self-actualization and morality. That final set of needs is what C.S. Lewis correctly identifies as the pinnacle of human life, from whence spring the drive to create great works of art and music, the drive to dare great deeds and perform feats of service and compassion. And tellingly we tend to judge cultures (including our own) by such achievements. We Americans, for example, take pride in our achievements in the Second World War, where at great sacrifice and individual risk we helped defeat ruthless, unjust, and evil totalitarian states. Other cultures take justifiable pride in their own art, science, or historical achievements.

Yet with C.S. Lewis we must also acknowledge that we can only reach our pinnacle if lower-order needs are met: personal safety and sustenance, for example. Sadly, humans and the communities they form can be selfish, which usually results in someone taking an item of value from another, often by violence. Whether it is a schoolyard bully exhorting lunch money or Nazi Germany's desire for liebensraum at the expense of the Soviet Union, it is the same ugly story. Furthermore, there is a darkness to the human heart that defies normal comprehension, a darkness manifested in events like the Holocaust, or the genocide in Rwanda, or (on a smaller level) the rampage of a serial killer or school shooter. In communities which are constantly living at the mercy of threatening or violent neighboring communities, fulfilling those "high-order needs" is prevented by the struggle to survive and protect loved ones and important possessions, like homes and businesses. So within our communities and nations we have developed governments and institutions for preventing intimidation and violence. One such institution is the Military.

The chief purpose of a Military is to protect the sovereign land and people of a nation. It does so by providing a credible threat of violence to those who would violate the nation, and if necessary by executing violence on those who threaten it. Because threats in this modern age come in sophisticated and flexible forms, and threaten from all environments (land, sea, and air), we must maintain at least a comprable level of sophistication and flexibility in our own Military, which requires a lot of support.

A military term much in vogue is "force-multiplier," which is a label applied to anything that increases the combat power of a unit beyond its "nominal" amount. It's a vague term, because the "nominal" combat power of a platoon might simply be the combined strength, aggressiveness, and will to win of 42 young men. In that case, rifles are a combat multiplier. However, the term is often applied to things like esprit de corps and advanced weapons. The former is a combat multiplier that is been used by Militaries since war began. It refers to tangible and proven professionalism, discipline, loyalty, and a belief in the purpose of the unit. The success of Roman Legionaries has been historically attributed to their unit cohesion, experience, and dedication to warfare--they had more esprit de corps than any other Military they fought. Modern militaries develop esprit de corps through challenging training designed to force members to work together and rely on each other (e.g. "boot camp"), rigorous training in the actual conduct of fighting (e.g. marksmanship and "war games" training) and demanding adherence to "core values" such as the Navy and Marine Corps' honor, courage, and commitment. But alone esprit de corps cannot guarantee a military can fulfill its mission, as was demonstrated in 1939 by the utter defeat of superbly trained and motivated Polish Cavalry in the face of Nazi Panzers. The technological gap was too wide. No matter how motivated or skilled he is, a man who proverbially brings a knife to a gun fight will probably be killed.

Technology is simply a subset of the support structure which enables a military to fight. Obviously, if a nation expects their military to fight well for them, the nation must provide it simple things like sustenance, recompense for the service, and ideological support. In addition to those things, the nation must also provide weapons. In the middle ages, those weapons were swords and spears provided by blacksmiths, who were in turn furnished with iron ore provided by miners. But today the threat is sophisticated and flexible, and consists of advanced weapons systems like tanks, cruise missiles, and airplanes--which must be countered with like weaponry. Therefore, a to ensure its protection a nation must commit the industrial resources to provide and maintain a modern military. This requires steel, rubber, and other industrial supplies for the building of military equipment, electronics to operate and control advanced weapons (such as the AEGIS missile defense system), money to operate and maintain the equipment for training purposes, and provision for research and development. This conglomeration of industrial, financial, and military resources is called "The Military-Industrial Complex."

Certainly the necessity of creating a Military capable of presenting a sufficiently credible threat has made the Military-Industrial Complex a comparatively large percentage of our own national endeavor. As such, the parties involved (from corporations to the Military organizations themselves) have been able to wield increasing amounts of influence in the halls of our Government. There are some segments of society that have resented and still resent this trend since the first great rise in influence of the Military-Industrial Complex in the aftermath of World War II, questioning whether the national resources devoted to supporting our large modern military might not be excessive, and better used in bettering the fabric of society, such as by offering better education or more medical care. In his 1960 Farewell Speech, President Eisenhower uttered a warning: "[W]e must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

There are many examples, both apocryphal and documented, of such "misplaced power." The congressmen who control military spending, the contractors who befriend such congressmen to ensure that defense dollars are paid to their corporations, and the Military services themselves have all at times irresponsibly used our national resources. This justifiably angers those who see a need for better infrastructure such as schools and hospitals, or simply for a government that demands less from its citizens. "Misplaced Power" in the hands of the Military-Industrial Complex is particularly frustrating in times of financial difficulty.

Yet though instances of "misplaced power" demand renewed focus on Military oversight (after all, our forefathers subjected the Miltary establishment to civilian masters for a reason), they should not result in the drastic cuts so often proposed. While our society might benefit greatly from diverting resources from the Military and associated industries toward endeavors like education and medical care, it cannot be denied that such endeavors are higher-order needs, and a nation cannot focus on them if it is occupied with survival. The cure for cancer is not much of a concern when people more often die from bullets.

Now manifestly our nation is not under much of a threat--but the possibility of such a threat exists. There are other powerful nations in the world with vibrant, advanced technology and industry and sufficient population to logistically and realistically engage in total war. While such nations exist, there is an imperative to have a Military capable of handling the threat they could pose. To do anything less is to gamble very survival on convenience. A similar criticism is that too many resources are dedicated to supporting the Military when in a time of peace. In such times, the argument goes, a less robust military is required, and the resources thereby saved might be put to a nobler use. But again it is an imprudent nation that gambles its safety on the whim of its neighbors, for they may suddenly decide for expediency rather than peace or morality and simply take what they want, if they can.

There is yet another reason besides current safety that a significant military draw-down is unwise. For just as the skills required to make swords were perishable if not taught to succeeding blacksmiths on down the generations (along with the skills required for mining), the vast and intricate knowledge required to produce today's advanced weapons is perishable. That knowledge can only be maintained fully through execution, or namely in the continued production of such weapons ("book-learning" alone leaves proven gaps). Industrial production is the result of much labor and planning: the very manufacturing machines and processes that produce advanced weaponry at any kind of scale must themselves be designed and built. The supply lines and economic relationships that provide the steel, manufacture the rubber and fiberglass, and supply the electrical components and computer chips to the actual assembly lines must be established and negotiated. Above all, the resident intelligence in the defense industry that spends its time designing the best equipment for the Military and constantly improving it to meet advances from threat militaries is something that grows organically as systems are built, tested, and utilized. To halt even a large portion of that cold is to lose it forever--it will never be recovered as it was, and if the nation has need of it in the future (such as war might require), it must rebuild all that engineering prowess, all those business relationships, and all that industrial capability from scratch, and at ruinous cost. An example of this was found during the rapid American mobilization following her entrance into the First World War, when for a while there were so few rifles that entire Army units were sent to France without ever having been trained.

While it is indeed a gamble to withdraw a nation's support for it's Military, it also has a negative effect on the fabric of the nation as a whole. The economic and industrial relationships begotten by the Military-Industrial Complex employ many civilians. The process of developing and building advanced military equipment begets advanced technologies with civilian (commercial and industrial) applications. And in no small way do the members of a Military so supported and maintained contribute to society.

In the first place, they fight and will die for it. They will risk grave danger for the opportunity to fight and die for it. Seafaring and Aviation remain profoundly dangerous occupations, as seen by the recent crash of a F/A-18 Hornet into a neighborhood of San Diego or the recent shipboard fire on the USS George Washington. Yet the members of our military volunteer for such danger. They serve in hostile environments, work long hours in substandard spaces, and endure training hardships that cannot be legally wrought upon prisoners. They do all of this for mediocre pay, at best, and a lifestyle that all but denies them the abilitity to start or participate in a family. Their spouses, often left alone for months at a time, must raise children and keep house alone, all while perhaps worrying for the safety of their loved one. All this is chiefly the result of esprit de corps, and it is sad but virtuous. The men and women a Military produces are more often diligent, thrifty, and honorable than average. They are no strangers to hard work and tough jobs, and participate in the processes of democracy in greater percentages than the rest of the population. They learn not only the difficult skills of their Military trade, but also the social skills required for a close community. They learn teamwork and self-discipline. And in their conspicuous display of these virtues in their communities, the members of the military may inspire their fellow citizens.

These virtues (these virtuous men and women) a Military gives its nation are arguably the result more of esprit de corps than national resource support. But it is not so. Without the aircraft, ships, tanks, rifles, ammunition, ordnance and host of other gear meant solely for training at it's disposal--namely, the equipment provided by the Military-Industrial Complex--the institution of the Military could not make the sacrifices necessary in times of peace possible. When an infantryman leaves his home and family for a week in the woods, training, that builds esprit de corps and military virtue. When a ship goes underway for a month, training, its crew suffers a similar sacrifice. When an aviation squadron deploys halfway around the world simply to demonstrate its own nation's commitment to an allied country, the sacrifice is proportionally greater. Yet without actual war to execute, this is the only adversity a Military can create to achieve esprit de corps. And it is therefore necessary. Even in times of peace, the Military-Industrial Complex helps support everything positive a Military can provide it's citizenry.

There are few former soldiers who become great artists or writers or engineers (though they do exist). But a Military, and the support structure required for it's maintenance, is necessary to the survival, growth, and essential fabric--social and economic--of a nation. However expensive this all may be, it must not be neglected at the risk of becoming the victim of some more powerful neighbor. While it is reasonable to scale back the military to a certain degree, it must be done cautiously and in the full knowledge that the support of engineering and industry are essential. Inasmuch as we wish to remain a great nation, we cannot afford to let languish an institution that contributes so much positive to our society.

A Crisis of Character

On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. stood in front of the memorial to Abraham Lincoln and addressed the vast crowds surrounding the reflecting pool. He spoke words stirring and inspiring, words that epitomized a piece of the so-called "American Dream," words that we have remembered as a credo. "I have a dream," he said, "that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Many people in America today have expressed their belief that after 45 long years, that dream is finally realized. A partially black man sits in the White House--judged, apparently, by the content of his character rather than the color of his skin. He is indeed to be admired: when he was born, to be a "half-breed" was to incur derision, insult, and perhaps injury; from that to have risen through the mostly-white society of Columbia University and the Ivy League and made it to the Presidency is a testament to will, determination, intelligence, and charisma.

It has been my luxury to watch the national (and international) euphoria at his inauguration from some distance, stationed as I am on a foreign military base and insulated from the day-to-day zeitgeist that has seized my countrymen. Though I regret not being able to enjoy in person the real hope Mr. Obama's election has given so many Americans, it seems oddly irrational and misplaced, in which it has much in common with the widespread contempt and hatred for his predecessor, George Bush.

Much ink has already been spilled regarding Mr. Bush. He has been portrayed as a tyrant and a dictator both for his part in allowing our government to spy on us in an effort to catch domestically-based terrorists and for his seeming eagerness to go to war; he has also been portrayed as a Paladin, courageously protecting America in spite of the obvious hatred of his citizens. An article in The Economist explained his controversial nature best, I think, positing that he was excessively and fiercely partisan, shutting out quality opposition politicians in favor of "his boys" (good repulicans all)--whether or not they had the talent to do their job well. The best-remembered instance of the resulting and depressingly wide-spread mismanagement was his Defense Secretary's failed plan for post-conflict Iraq, where insufficient American troops were unable to stop growing sectarian violence that nearly tore the fledgling country apart.

There is no question, I think, that this particular criticism of Mr. Bush is justified. Yet I wonder: will no one say a word about his sincerity? will no one give him credit for a demonstrable and unwavering commitment to defending his nation? will no one recognize that despite his many (and perhaps unforgiveable) offenses he tried as America's leader to do right by the world? will no one even applaud his temperance and apparent devotion to his family? He had moral courage: in accordance with his values he opposed abortion and gallantly championed the cause of freedom--even with the lives of Americans. He called fundamentalist Islam by its true name: Evil. He had character and integrity, best demonstrated by the many times visited the men and women he sent in harm's way in order to show his concern for them and tell them face-to-face that he didn't hold their lives cheap but rather truly believed in the cause he had made their own. Sadly, his mistakes show that though he was a good man, he fell short of the greatness that his term as president demanded. I don't, however, think any honest observer could say he lacked the kind of character Rev. King was talking about.

Mr. Bush's very vocal detractors did not judge him on his character, at least not his personal character. They apparently didn't much care about his personal character. What of his character they judged they interpolated from his politics, which disagreed with their own. Their idea of a "good man" was not necessarily one who developed and stuck with convictions, or one who struggled to be a good husband and father, or even one who went out of his way to show his people that he cared about them. Their idea of a good man was one who respected women enough to give them the right to choose abortion, one who made the institution of social justice a top priority, and one who went out of his way to co-exist with neighbors, even at the expense of compromising values. In essence, their idea of a good man was one whose values agreed with their own, and they taught our nation that one's character isn't formed in his or her personal life, but rather in the public life. Mr. Bush's politics were arrogant and bourgeois, and therefore so was his character.

Now, of course, they declare with equal vehemence that the nobility of Mr. Obama's character. His values agree with theirs and he displays in his public life all the indicators of good politics, and for those politics he won the election. Thus Rev. King's words have indeed come true, for between the Presidents Bush and Obama America has made judgment, and found the content of Mr. Obama's character to be greater than that of Mr. Bush. This essay is not the place to discuss the contradictory values of these two men, nor does Mr. Obama's personal character need any defense. But to judge the latter on his politics and call that his character is unfair and deprecating. Surely, despite his politics, we might take heart in his idealism and charisma. Surely, we can see that his apparent success as a community member, husband, and father bodes well for his Presidency. And surely, to disagree with his politics does not preclude appreciating his other attributes.

It is well that so many Americans hope for a better future shaped by the ideas of our inspiring new President. But those ideas are at best the product of his character and not its substance. I also have high hopes for Mr. Obama and his adminstration and yet I mourn the departure of a good, sincere, courageous, and caring man who, despite mistakes, has over the last eight years displayed great "character" in guiding America's unequivocal response to the threatening circumstances of his time.

Rev. King's famous words still reverberate in our souls, the more so because they are not yet realized. We have so far advanced in social justice that we have a mixed-race president, and that is very good. How sad, then, that in our treatment of Mr. Bush we have shown ourselves still very far indeed from Rev. King's idealistic and inspiring dream.