[The Reaper]

Of course, not all doctrine writers are intellectually corrupt. But a final difficulty we have with the use of historical examples to illustrate or underscore doctrine is that most of us have so few of them in our mental catalog. The study of history isn’t a matter of a year or two on a campus to get a piece of paper and a personnel-file notation. For an officer, the immersion in history in the broadest sense must be a lifelong pursuit. Beware the officer who reads just a little and falls in love with a single book (say, “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”). He’ll cite that book as if quoting from the Gospels, and he’ll insist on its relevance even when the problem facing him is of a profoundly different nature.

We’d be better off having our military doctrine written by officers with no historical knowledge than by those with just a few narrow areas of interest: A little knowledge truly is a dangerous thing.

Of course, the best situation would be to have doctrine drafted by veterans who possess a broad sense of history — and who have no personal theories to validate at the expense of our men and women in uniform. But there ain’t enough of that commodity to go around.

It’s hard to have much hope, given the deplorable state of history studies at every educational level. Wars have been banished from the K-12 curriculum, while universities, determined to discard the West’s intellectual advantages, insist on taking as selective an approach to history as any band of Islamist terrorists (to say nothing of their similar interpretations of the past).

But our military can’t afford to make excuses. We have to get our doctrine right — both because it helps us fight effectively and because it explains to civilian decision-makers what it is that soldiers do. If doctrine creates false expectations, those decision-makers will make flawed choices — and those in uniform will pay the price.

Better no doctrine than bad doctrine. Better no history than bad history. The saving grace of our military — historically — has been pragmatism. Unlike European generals, we never sent our soldiers to die for a theory (at least, not until Operation Iraqi Freedom). If our own history has a lesson for those responsible for military doctrine, it’s that the only admissible criterion is that the doctrine has to work.