Disclaimer: The blogster feels like a rant. It* fully understands that a rant may not be a good instrument of discourse, especially at a time when rants is almost all you get on various TV channels. Also, if the mere mention of patriotism makes you invariably praise the military, this post may not be for you.
But, hey, there is always our old standby Disney. To expand your choice, here is a link to international Disney, so you won't feel stuck with the American site.
To the blogster, "warrior-scholar" is one of the creepiest concepts ever.
To prevent any misunderstanding, let's be clear that the blogster vastly prefers educated soldiers over uneducated ones. If a guy with a gun is bad, a moron with a gun is certainly much worse.
The main aspect of the perceived creepiness of "warrior-scholar" is that we are being sold candidates for high profile jobs as warrior-scholars.
In the blogster's 20th/21st Western century mind, the warrior is the old timey, somewhat mythical fighter, the scholar the more desk bound academic mind. The brawn and the brain.
In Western war mythology, one man probably symbolizes the warrior-scholar like no other, Carl von Clausewitz, the gentleman who brought us "war is an extension of politics by other means" around 1800. Question for philosophy majors: Why should the opposite be any less true?
This aphorism sustained supposed warrior-scholars and humble gunners for a good while until the grand awakening to lands outside of Europe/America made Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese general and philosopher from around 500 BC, fashionable.
Sun Tzu beats Clausewitz hands down. His work is older and better, more attractive to non-soldierly people like computer programmers and managers. Also, there was a time in the 20th century when German military thinkers faced some perception issues.
Sun Tzu's work, especially The Art of War, is really all you need in the area of highly organized political violence.
But, of course, even wide dissemination of Sun Tzu has not prevented generals from writing books. For the Germans, there is the old standby Rommel, for Americans there is Patton, and the list goes on and on.
Again, a general writing a book is fine. They have every right to pen memoirs and treatises, or children's books that feature no violence at all.
What the blogster thoroughly hates is the fact that the authors and their works often permeate society so deeply. To the point that we see calls to elevate the warrior-scholar even further, as in this piece:
At present, there is no distinct ‘warrior-scholar’ designation or career track—which means no strategic oversight of a scarce resource.
What exactly does the "scholar" in warrior-scholar mean, as academic training and qualifications go?
Look up any of the much lauded warrior-scholars of recent public acclaim, and here is what you find: they went to colleges, whether military or civilian, got a couple of degrees, did some more military schooling as required by their career paths, and maybe got themselves a PhD.**
Like every modern career, pretty much.
Why, then, is there no such thing as the programmer-scholar, for example. Or the MBA-scholar?
Soldiers go out and shoot at things or people.
Programmers go and write code.
Okay, a programmer may occasionally shoot up a computer out of frustration, but that's not it.
A feeling of inferiority***, maybe, the nagging feeling that the uniform and medals or participation badges are not enough in life? An almost comical need to achieve levels of education general society values to the extent of taking them for granted?
Make no mistake, the concept of "warrior-scholar" is a political device, yet another device by those in power.
You see it if you look at the boundary of the concept of "warrior-scholar" in modern usage.
Name a warrior-scholar who has become a peace activist.
The reason why you probably can not is that these scholars become largely marginalized or forgotten.
* Gender neutral for fun and definitely not for profit.
Bonus feature: the blogster knows quite a bit about military matters and only occasionally regrets not having pursued a job offer by an institution that is commonly referred to using three letters.
** The blogster has not performed a comprehensive study of the phenomenon but looked at the subset of "most famous" in the past two decades. It appears that the vast majority of the warrior-scholars of that period are somewhat light on the scholar part, with very soft degrees, like American History, international studies, or the booming natsec studies, often capped by an equally soft PhD (history, natsec). Contrast this with the many unknown military personnel who major in engineering or medicine, and you get the picture.
*** If you don't believe this feeling exists, you either have never been in the military, or you joined a highly specialized field with little contact to "the other ranks".
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