For lack of knowing what to do, we do what we know.

We are a sharp nation and possess a sharp military. The old Vietnam term the “best and the brightest” could readily be applied to our military today, the American citizen military. Mostly the “best and the brightest” term reflects many citizen’s resolve to “serve” our country and “personally contribute” to our country’s future.

Education levels count. As a former recruiter, education levels show resolve and hard work as an indicator of the ability to succeed. Add in the actual education, and the bad guys are in trouble.

Watching a History Channel show recently about our medical people serving in Iraq and taking care of our heroes who have been hurt so badly by the bad guys, just makes me proud to be an American. I am proud of the heroes, their families, wives and kids, and the medical people who serve over there, in Germany, and here.

I also know to ignore the media reports about the bad news in Iraq. I hope you do the same. There are better ways to find out what is really going on, and where.

Our military and other militaries of the world all have created officer corps for a good reason. While the real gunfighters of the military are led and motivated by Staff Non-Commissioned Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers, regular Commissioned Officers also serve a purpose. Military air and naval forces have their similar versions, by the way.

It is tough being a Commissioned Officer in the Marines. Those who serve under the officer in the chain of command often look in a derisible way upon whether he is up to their standards. This is fair, by the way.

But standards, and military education, do apply. And at this time I can say that having officer corps’ and educating them is not an “elitist” idea where power and ideas are a means to control. This is more simply another case, where we are all working together to accomplish the mission, and in this we all serve in our own way.

The preceding is all-basic, so far.

Our officers go through a career path process that includes much education paramount to advanced college educations. We the country are the beneficiaries.

But as in the old days, then and now, our best educators deliver the past, the educational fad of the decade, or often some other last war principles.

And often these schools have educated their officers to prosecute and fight wars, and not lesser levels of politics and war, often called small wars or even counter insurgency. Later our officers during a campaign reflect this in often doing what they know and are trained for. We dance with who we brought.

All of our military officer schools are different. They should and do reflect their service culture, missions, and histories. One service cannot do it all.

At the expense of over generalizing, in the past the Army has had a heavy mechanized and European defense focus. The Air Force has had a focus on strategic missions. The Navy and Marines have focused on third world littoral missions locally, and a world mission globally. And this is in the past.

All services are constantly changing for the better we hope as we continue to educate our officer corps for the future. This is where the expression “for lack of knowing what to do, we do what we know” applies.

Our Naval and Marine Corps’ schools have been and still tend to be more third world oriented, and their graduates will benefit when appropriate.

The catch is that the people we assign to lead our militaries went through this school education process in their past. We can only hope they are better prepared for the future conflicts they get involved in. And then there is much we learn out of school, and we expect learning during this time also. Another example of learning out of school is the Professional Reading Lists of each of the services.

Of course, the schooling process is not everything, thank goodness. But as always, for lack of knowing what to do, we do what we know.

I just wish we had education schools for our President, the Secretaries of Defense and State, their appointed minions, and national political and media leaders. I’ll bet most of them wish that, too. I think JFK even said this, in his words.