Soldiers, Yes; Warriors, No

Great piece by James Wolcott. I think we should, in fact, have more soldiers & less warriors. I'm pretty sick of this whole warrior thing, anyway. Wolcott's right, warriors don't give a shit about anything but themselves & their warrior buddies.  The country that pays them means nothing to them.

But if historian Peter Robinson is correct, the warriorization that Kaplan advocated and is being inculated into the uniformed ranks doesn't even work militarily. Rather than being too soft , we're futilely beating our hard heads against the realities of what we're facing. In the Spectator UK, Robinson, taking a leaf from the late Col. John Boyd, laments in an article called "The Way of the Warrior":

In the decisive battle for hearts and minds, the moral image an army projects is as powerful as, if not more powerful than, the physical force it wields. From this perspective, a new report issued by the US Army mental health advisory team makes for gloomy reading. According to the BBC, the report, based on a survey of 1,700 American soldiers in Iraq, found that ‘less than half the troops in Iraq thought Iraqi civilians should be treated with dignity and respect. More than a third believed that torture was acceptable if it helped save the life of a fellow soldier or if it helped get information about the insurgents’. If this is true, the moral battle is close to being lost.

And the moral battle is being lost precisely because of the tribalization that's fluffing the military's tail feathers.

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