A few years ago, I was interviewing the outgoing Deputy to the Commanding General of one of the U.S. Army’s premier mission support commands. This individual was an SES level 1, the civilian equivalent of a 1-star general, and had retired from the Navy as a Captain. I asked him, what does he like to read? He thought for a moment, and then noted that he liked the writings of Jeane Kirkpatrick. I said nothing.
For the uninitiated, Kirkpatrick’s heyday was during the Reagan years of the 1980s, and she passed away in 2006. Simply put, this SES couldn’t cite anything recent… like in the last 15-20 years… that he had read.
Another SES from my command retired prior to our Navy guy, and delivered to my Historical Office a collection of materials that he had stashed away in a box. Included was a copy of British General JFC Fuller’s Generalship: Its Diseases and Their Cure. It was a little booklet about disastrous military leadership and how to fix it, and was given to him when he attended the Army War College. I have most of Fuller’s writings, which I have heavily highlighted and annotated, including this particular book. In contrast, his copy of Fuller’s 100-page booklet was in pristine condition, the binding tight. Obviously, he had never read it. And this highlights a key problem of many of our so-called “betters” and “leaders.”
Outside of their daily briefings and read aheads, our leaders just don’t read… and thus, they are not contextual thinkers.
In a letter to his son on the day the Allies landed in Normandy in 1944, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., wrote that, “To be a successful soldier you must know history. Read it objectively–dates and even the minute details of tactics are useless. What you must know is how man reacts. Weapons change, but man who uses them changes not at all.”[1] Not only was Patton a voracious reader, striving to gain historical context, he also read works by opponents. He did not necessarily like them, but he respected them.
As an Army historian, one of the things I did was to run down the War College papers of my newly appointed commanders and chiefs of staff… full colonels and general officers. The War College is supposed to be the equivalent of a Masters program, and usually a Masters thesis is at least 80 pages. But these papers typically amounted to about 50 pages of double-spaced text, and with the exception of one, these were at best mediocre, and many were downright awful.
Not long ago, the War College announced that they would no longer post student papers online, save for a select few. The reason for this is obvious: these “higher educated” military students were producing dreck.
This state of affairs bodes ill for our nation. Our so-called “leaders” are not readers, and therefore not contextual thinkers.
And thus, not intelligent doers.
Russ Rodgers has several books published on Amazon.
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[1] Unfortunately, Martin Blumenson’s The Patton Papers edits out most of this passage. One can find the entire quote either online, or in Charles Province, The Unknown Patton. New York: Bonanza Books, 1083, p. 101.