Quote of the day: Time for the Army to reclaim its professional jurisdiction

1st
Lt. Anthony Formica writes
in the new issue of Military Review
that, "the Army has essentially relayed the messages that it prizes warriors
over soldiers." I think this is correct, and quite damaging to the service.

Formica
continues, "and that if it could rid itself of the burdens associated with
professional soldiering to better pursue the samurai ideal, it would do so,
thereby abandoning professionally critical jurisdictional ground."

The article kind
of rambles around a bit, and then lands on this subject again: "Once
significant combat actions have ceased the Army must begin to regenerate
masters of the profession's abstract knowledge base to reclaim its lost
intellectual jurisdiction."

I suspect he is
probably right. Contractors should not be writing doctrine or teaching officers
how to be officers. Doing those tasks is one of the ways that your next
generation of leaders is created. (Also, as has been pointed out before, having
officers returned from our wars write doctrine means that knowledge from those
wars is injected into current doctrine.)