Effort to stir passions can seem to benefit parts of a society or even a civilization, but their actuality and their consequence on both the parts in question and the whole on which those parts depend unconditionally through creative participation is to calumniate the parts and thereby subvert the welfare of the whole.

While my memory of the 1968 and 1972 political doings dims noticeably, I do not recall feeling then, as I do now, and keenly, that the welfare of the republic — seen in this instance as long-term viability — has been placed in jeopardy by efforts to stir passions.

Materialism is at the root of this threat. Materialism is what in theological terms of art is known as an ontology, a view of the characteristics of substance or matter. Materialism is the view that matter is inorganic. Materialism defines the essence of matter as inorganic.

On the basis of materialism we arrive at historiography which sees “conflict of cultures,” laws which see life as bundles of atoms and psycho-sociologies which see activities as uncharacterizable and therefore valueless, indistinguishable and equal phenomena.

In our particular civilization, at this time, materialism also empowers us to stir passions insouciantly — or do anything we wish that we can get away with — because materialism asserts that there is valuation neither in the effort to stir passions itself nor in its motivation or consequence. We can say, using today’s parlance, that materialism finds no linkage between thoughts, words and deeds or phenomena of nature and phenomena of history. In fact, there is no history per se, in the sense of teleological existence.  Only events.

Karl Popper and his student George Soros were and are, respectively, capable, fervid exponents of the ontology of materialism. So are our academic economists and the large majority of our professional leadership cadres (clerical, academic, medical and legal). Of our professional leadership cadres — academe/ecclesia, medicine, law, military — only the military remains less that majority convinced by an ontology of materialism. Our non-professional leadership cadres — industry, business and labor — are large majority committed to materialism. Soros’ concept of Open Society means society operating (one could say governed but that word misses the point of materialism, which sees the absence of governing) by commitment to the ontology of materialism.

Our military leadership cadre only — and not by any means by a large majority — is the hold-out.

Why?

Materialism is an ontology of death. Military structures are committed to protecting life — as distinguished from medical structures which are committed to saving life, although they used to be committed also to protecting life. That our military structures are the only structures remaining in our civilization — and in particular our republic — that protect life is the reason I see the viability of our republic and civilization as in jeopardy. Mr. bin Laden (and here) and his leaders see the same jeopardy — and for the same reason — and have concluded, reasonably, that they can establish the structures of 9th Century Arabia and Africa in the place of those that define and support our republic and civilization.

Can our military leadership not only beat down Mr. bin Laden (and here) and his leaders but also instill an ontology of life in the other professional leadership cadres of our republic and civilization?

Should our military leadership resign en masse in face of large majority commitment through all realms of our republic and civilization to an ontology of death?

Barry McCaffrey said in an AOG Assembly interview about two years ago that the JCS during the Vietnam Conflict should have done that, and for reasons which distill to the one mentioned here.

So now here is a theologian’s analysis of the condition of our military leadership in our present situation.

It is a widely-accepted truism, because it is a fact, that wars are not won in the past. All military professionals are familiar with the illustrations of this fact. Changing conditions make this fact a fact. This, too, is widely accepted.

Part of Barry McCaffrey’s analysis of the JCS during the Vietnam Conflict was that their manners and concepts were formed while they were creative young Officers during WWII and the Korean Conflict and had gotten hard-wired, so to speak, during their senior leader development periods between those combat periods. He mentions, for example, their deference to social graces which disinclined them from confronting a destructive SecDef, a case-hardened materialist.

(While it is a side-bar from the axis of this discussion, I want to mention that whereas the current SecDef is widely considered “McNamara on steroids,” he is not a materialist and so a comparison of him with Mr. McNamara is inappropriate.  Putting into practice the analysis of the JCS during the Vietnam Conflict on which Barry McCaffrey and so many other Officers of his generation concurred, CSA Shinseki confronted Mr. Rumsfeld with great personal courage when he disagreed with the SecDef on fundamental policy regarding the welfare of the republic and the civilization of which it is a primary cynosure.  In this and in so many other ways the creative young Officers of the Vietnam Conflict corrected the mistakes or made up for the omissions of their predecessors.)

A phenomenon typologically identical with but materially dissimilar and practically more urgent than that dealt with by creative young Officers in the Vietnam Conflict in relation with their superiors of WWII and the Korean Conflict obtains today between the creative young Officers of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom in relation with their superiors of the Vietnam Conflict and even, to some extent, Operation Desert Storm.

Our Army is not what it was just 14 years ago, much less 35-40 years ago.

35-40 years ago our Army was essentially a fighting force. Our young Officers were trying to cope with insurgency warfare as well as with large unit warfare conducted *as* insurgency warfare, which was a novelty for our Army’s experience. Their superiors, who had solved the problems of an earlier era and were not in general responding creatively to the new problems, tended to operate as if they were in large unit warfare opposing an enemy also operating in large unit warfare. Those same superiors also were fatally hampered by civilian control which saw military force as a tool of civil courts and administrators, that is, as a police force.

14 years ago our Army was transitioning from essentially a fighting force to essentially a Civil Affairs force backed by fighting force. That this transition was a work in progress at the time of Operation Desert Storm accounts for the persistence of the Iraqi Baathist Party after that Operation as well as the atrocities committed by that Party in consequence of its persistence. A future Barry McCaffrey may argue that both JCS and CENTCOM, responding to the known omissions of their superiors during the Vietnam Conflict, should have demanded, during its planning stage, that the objectives of Operation Desert Storm be to take down the Iraqi Baathist Party and establish democratic structures in Iraq.

Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom show fruits of our Army’s transitioning into a Civil Affairs force backed by fighting force. Violence-propagating regimes have been taken down and democratic structures are being established in their stead. And more importantly, the long-term viability of democratic structures is being fostered by the only means that accomplish it: the establishment of universal education.

The conceptuality of this transition originated mostly, although not entirely, among Officers and civilians who did not participate in the Vietnam Conflict. This follows the general trend of history to more or less preclude from relevance for solving current problems older individuals who succeeded in solving problems current during their younger years. The reason, as already noted, is that solutions to problems tend to get hardwired in individuals, thus gradually reducing their utility for solving emerging problems. This phenomenon occurs despite the fact that all problems, of any moment of history, have identifiable common characteristics. The novelties, real or apparent, that are introduced into circumstances by constant, numberless potentialities cause every problem to be unique and ultimately incomparable. Thus all problems require fresh starts at their solution. Some individuals can do this over a long span of years but their numbers are small.

In every conflict, Company and Field Grade Officers and their corresponding NCOs tend to be the real problem solvers because they are fresh to the problems. This much is known. But it is so much more intensely the fact for Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. The time-lines in these Operations are more fore-shortened, the communications more rapid, pan-optic and catholic, the affect and the effect of actions more broadcast and, in consequence, the action-reflection cycles are more compressed than has been our Army’s experience at any time previously. Our Officer Corps is successfully responding to the challenges of these Operations and so are our Enlisted Soldiers.

An outcome of this analysis is that people who did not serve in combat or in our military force during the Vietnam Conflict are more likely to be able to understand and act in our current situation — provided so poignantly by Caliphism — than are people who did. Not only is it true that Officers and senior NCOs  from the Vietnam Conflict probably do not understand our current military force, it is also true that only Officers and NCOs from that Conflict who remained in the Service after that Conflict to help solve problems identified during that Conflict could be regarded as even potentially able to understand our current military force, much less command it.

The transition of our Army to a Civil Affairs force backed by fighting force has been accomplished mostly by Officers, senior NCOs and civilians who were too young to serve during the Vietnam Conflict or did not enter military service. One recalls in this regard the work of BG David Fastabend, USMA Class of 1974, and COL Eugene Palka, USMA Class of 1978, who declined a star in order to facilitate this transition directly through a Professorship at West Point.

Now, as long planned, comes a claim of authority to oversee our military force and our republic’s welfare based on maybe 4 months of conflicted service as a Junior Naval Officer commanding a few Enlisted Sailors on a coastal and river patrol boat during the Vietnam Conflict — a claim from one who requested early separation from active duty in order to run for Congress. The character of such a claim is what theologians designate invita minerva: against the life of the mind.

Mr. Kerry and his current spouse are materialists. The passions stirred during this political season are no surprise. Stirring passions is intrinsic to the ontology of materialism, which is an ontology of death, of which stirring and stirred passions are indicators.

Bill Coffin, McGeorge Bundy, John Kerry and the Georges Bush are fraternity brothers. To the best of my memory, Bill did not personally attack McGeorge. John personally attacks George Jr.

Our military force, especially our Army, will continue to serve, and successfully, as humanity’s van for creating structures of democracy in those areas of the globe which are chaotic for lack of them. These areas are mostly in the Middle East and Africa but include also areas of Asia. Civil Affairs, not Infantry, leads the way.

My theologian’s counsel in this situation is: What we talk about we should do and what we cannot do we should not talk about.

Update 1: CENTCOM politicizing intel?

Update 2: How Desert Storm Destroyed The US Military

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA