America’s Warrior Class … an historical question (fwd)
January 2nd, 2009 From
>X-Authentication-Warning: ecom7.ecn.bgu.edu: mslrc owned process doing -bs
>Date: Sat, 15 Nov 1997 17:33:16 -0600 (CST)
>From: “Louis R. Coatney”
>X-Sender: mslrc@ecom7.ecn.bgu.edu
>To: Mahan@microwrks.com
>Subject: America’s Warrior Class … an historical question (fwd)
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>Reply-To: mahan@microworks.net
>
>———- Forwarded message ———-
>Date: Sat, 15 Nov 1997 17:23:52 -0600 (CST)
>To: [a military history list]
>Subject: America’s Warrior Class
>
>On Fri, 14 Nov 1997, [imbecile omitted] wrote:
> > How does one define a warrior class? What are the > characteristics? Is it the
> > Samurai and their code of Bushido? Something more or less? I find > it hard to
> > make the case that the United States ever had a warrior class. In fact, the
> > idea of a warrior class seems quaintly anachronistic in the 20th Century,
> > where warfare has been dominated by armies of mass conscription.
>
>Well, for those unfamiliar with our military history, we do have a
> warrior class… obviously: our national and domestic security
> communities.
>
>(While this post won’t address domestic security, the cinematic
> portrayal of police as “The New Centurions” is entirely valid.)
>
>A … the? … primary wellspring is the U.S. Military Academy, with its
> uncompromising warrior’s code of Duty, Honor, Country … *service*
> … however quaint or extreme an ideal that may seem to some.
>
>To quote the final address of one of our most illustrious warriors
> … whose words still echoed the halls, when I reported to the
> Academy on 1 July 1964 (for my half-year there):
>
> … From your ranks come the great captains who hold the
> Nation’s destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds.
> The long gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a
> million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray,
> would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words:
> Duty, honor, country.
> ….
> In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry,
> the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening
> of my memory I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and
> re-echoes: Duty, honor, country.
> Today marks my final rollcall with you. But I want you to know
> that when I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of
> the corps, and the corps, and the corps.
> I bid you farewell.
>
>Even Plato would have been impressed … and gratified to see the
> ethos of the guardian class so clearly yet passionately expressed
> by Douglas MacArthur. Of course, Patton expressed *his* warrior’s
> code far more … tersely … and believed his memory was immortal.
>
>Many of those kids in the Cadet Dining Hall with me … the August
> day when the Officer of the Day came on the public address system
> to announce that North Vietnamese torpedoboats had attacked our
> destroyers in the Tonkin Gulf *and the President would speak to
> the Nation* … are now only italicized entries in the REGISTER
> OF GRADUATES. Even in the 1980s, USMA scribes were still writing
> Corps obituaries for the young graduates who died on
> the Bataan Death March and in the Hell Ships.
>
>As to the Esprit du Corps of the Marines … which the ignorant and/or
> vicious might mock as “extreme” … it is all that has … at times
> … kept them going … in such remote American outposts as Wake,
> Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Cho’Sin, and countless besieged
> embassies.
>
>As to conscript armies, Argentina and Iraq have been utterly defeated
> by smaller, high-tech, professional military and naval forces in
> recent times. Mass military mobilization is now secondary … even
> counter-productive … in an era of high-tech mass destruction
> … just with “conventional” weapons. A thousand longships
> vs. one LA-class attack sub??
>
>I have known a U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant’s son whose dad was too
> proud to go on food stamps (in the ’60s) because his pay was so low.
> (My friend is an authority on the varieties and consumption of beans.)
>
>But not just neglect and ingratitude, but mockery and betrayal …
> of prisoners of war … of the ideals and causes … and symbols
> … men (and women) have dutifully, *faith*fully fought and died for
> … of the military’s moral values … martial virtues … which are
> essential to the warrior class’s social health and self-esteem …
> hurt — and destroy — far more deeply and permanently … to our
> ultimate doom.
>
>*Has* such contempt for the warrior class and ethos occurred before …
> in our society? … to such an extreme and calculated degree?
>
>This is the *historical* question which should clear the acceptability
> criteria of [that list] … and thus be confronting us.
>
>Lou Coatney, mslrc@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
> www.wiu.edu/users/mslrc/