[Ailist] Changing Military Perspective

[Lionel Boxer]

I have been thinking about this for some time.

Throughout history there have been cases of individual soliders, leaders of soldiers, and politicians who "have run amok".  These isolated cases of running amok is not a reason to reframe soldiers in a way that compromises their ability to 

There are cases we could consider.  For example, the Canadian army Somalia incident, where a commander has been shown to have run amok.   The American experience of the Vietnam war has several examples.  Hitler certainly ran amok.  Could the same be said about George W Bush?

The professional soldier, who is well trained, well led, and appropriately deployed by a sane political master will do their job with a level of precision and appropriate force as defined by orders.  That is, the professional soldier will not run amok.  Running amok is the antithesis of military discipline.

I think the incidents of running amok do need to be dealt with.  Start at the policitical level, cascade through all levels of command, and then consider the morality of the soldiers with bayonettes on the ends of their rifles and their experiences or war.  With that in mind, preventing people who have experienced the horrors of war and the cruelty of humanity from running amok requires strong and ethical leadership from the head of state through to the corporal who commands a section of ten soldiers.  It also requires the same sort of strength and ethics from the staff throughout all levels of heirarchy; political staffers, government department civil servant staffers, and uniformed staffers.

Of course, the reality is that politics, government and military is full of self interested careerists.

Lionel Boxer CD PhD MBA BTech(IndEng) - 0411267256
Associate of RMIT University - lionel.boxer at rmit.edu.au
Graduate School of Business
my "Assessment of Quality Systems with Positioning Theory" 
now in a googe book - see link at http://intergon.net
>>> Cheri <cheri at mobileteamchallenge.com> 25/06/09 12:32 AM >>>
Lionel,

I woke this morning with another thought about your comments "search and destroy".  This may well be the mission, but when allowed to run amok untethered by the higher goals--such as allowing civilians to live without violence--you end up potentially being less successful.  Making sure civilians live without violence does not mean that infantry do not "destroy the enemy", it means there is a new way of understanding how to do so.  Living without violence is not just the violence of the war, but the violence done by "the enemy" to the civilians.  

I think the military will be more successful when it operates within a higher frame of consciousness.  This command is not about "not killing", it is about holding the end outcome in mind as you plan for achieving it; it's about aligning actions with outcome.

Cheri
-----Original message-----
From: Cheri Torres cheri.torres at gmail.com
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:16:58 -0400
To: Lionel Boxer lionel.boxer at rmit.edu.au
Subject: Re: [Ailist] Changing Military Perspective

Lionel,
Perhaps that is only one definition of the infantry.