America's Army As a High School Education Platform?

GamePolitics reports on a recent press release from the US Army which says they will be partnering with various military, education, and non-profit organizations to bring an education curriculum to high school students via America's Army. Quoting the press release: "The partnership ... will incorporate Army technology, gaming and simulation resources to enhance student achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The platform for the new curriculum is the America's Army PC game, a free online game that provides civilians with a virtual role in the US Army by introducing them to Army technologies, Rules of Engagement, training and missions. Used as a communications tool, the game has also been adapted for use within the military to produce effective and engaging virtual environments that enhance Soldier training in a number of areas including force protection, convoy survivability and nuclear, chemical and biological detection."

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Re:Just what every American high-school student ne

[hey!]

Well, let's get out of the realm of the abstract for a moment. Anybody who is reasonably educated knows that an order to do something illegal, say to murder a prisoner, is not valid. So you don't have to feel so injured by misunderstanding. There's always going to be a few or course.

On the other hand, the principle that soldiers should not obey an illegal order is really only good as the ability of a soldier to distinguish between legal and illegal. There isn't always a clear line, say between legal, aggressive interrogation techniques and illegal torture. One of the benefits of ROTC is, hopefully, and officer corps with greater critical thinking skills. Still, by in large troops and the officers who lead them are not lawyers, they have to use their ethical common sense to get them through dilemmas.

The real danger when you give a man a lethal weapon and put him under orders is not particular to the military. It is group think. And don't say that isn't a problem. Every military person I have talked to has plenty of stories of bureaucratic pigheadedness on a massive scale.

I have known many military people over the years, and one thing that I think is fair to say is that good soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors have a can do attitude. That contributes to the both the dynamism and dysfunction of the military. Survival may trump that, but the first response to an order to take a fortified position is to view it as a solvable problem. This takes an implicit trust in the competence and judgment of your superiors, and that habit means going along with things you know are damnably stupid -- so long as they aren't illegal or immediately fatal.

Trust and a willingness to go along with anything short of illegality are good things in a soldier, but bad things in a citizen and especially a civilian leader. A good citizen has to question the competence and judgment of the leadership. When political mistakes reach the military, it's too late to question. One military saying I've heard is that shit rolls downhill, and it's the military's job to deal with the politicians' shit. A politician's ought to avoid handing the shit down to the military by being skeptical.

Skepticism is not a military virtue, which is not to say anything negative about military service. No profession is the beginning and end of all virtues. One of the problems I see of certain political viewpoints is that they like to promote the military as the entire repository of American virtue because obedience or rather willingness to get behind the mission, is so useful to them.

Look at Colin Powell, a great soldier, a top notch military leader, and a bad Secretary of State. He brought his military values of duty and loyalty into the job, and ended up being a catspaw. It wasn't that he accepted an order to lie; he accepted the mission he was given and took ownership of it, the way good soldiers do. It made him both useful and an object of scorn within the administration. By giving his superiors more than they deserved, he gave his true masters less.