In the run up to Marine Gen. James
Mattis' deployment to Iraq in 2004, a
colleague wrote to him asking about the "importance of reading and
military history for officers," many of whom found themselves "too
busy to read."
His response went viral
over email.
Security Blog
"Strife" out of Kings College in London recently published Mattis'
words with a short description from the person who found it in her email.
Their title for the post:
With Rifle and Bibliography: General Mattis on
Professional Reading
[Dear,
"Bill"]
The problem with being too
busy to read is that you learn by experience (or by your
men’s experience), i.e. the hard way. By reading, you learn through
others’ experiences, generally a better way to do business, especially in
our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for
young men.
Thanks to my reading, I
have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss
for how any problem has been addressed (successfully or unsuccessfully)
before. It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a
dark path ahead.
With [Task Force] 58, I had w/ me Slim’s book, books about the Russian and British experiences in [Afghanistan], and a couple others. Going into Iraq, “The Siege” (about the Brits’ defeat at Al Kut in WW I) was req’d reading for field grade officers. I also had Slim’s book; reviewed T.E. Lawrence’s “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”; a good book about the life of Gertrude Bell (the Brit archaeologist who virtually founded the modern Iraq state in the aftermath of WW I and the fall of the Ottoman empire); and “From Beirut to Jerusalem”. I also went deeply into Liddell Hart’s book on Sherman, and Fuller’s book on Alexander the Great got a lot of my attention (although I never imagined that my HQ would end up only 500 meters from where he lay in state in Babylon).
Ultimately, a real
understanding of history means that we face NOTHING new under the sun.
For all the “4th Generation of War” intellectuals running around today saying that the nature of war has fundamentally changed, the tactics are wholly new, etc, I must respectfully say … “Not really”: Alex the Great would not be in the least bit perplexed by the enemy that we face right now in Iraq, and our leaders going into this fight do their troops a disservice by not studying (studying, vice just reading) the men who have gone before us.
We have been fighting on
this planet for 5000 years and we should take advantage of
their experience. “Winging it” and filling body bags as we sort out what
works reminds us of the moral dictates and the cost of incompetence in our
profession. As commanders and staff officers, we are coaches and sentries
for our units: how can we coach anything if we don’t know a hell of a lot
more than just the [Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures]? What happens when
you’re on a dynamic battlefield and things are changing faster than higher
[Headquarters] can stay abreast? Do you not adapt because you cannot
conceptualize faster than the enemy’s adaptation? (Darwin has a pretty good
theory about the outcome for those who cannot adapt to changing
circumstance — in the information age things can change rather abruptly
and at warp speed, especially the moral high ground which our regimented
thinkers cede far too quickly in our recent fights.) And how can you be a
sentinel and not have your unit caught flat-footed if you don’t know what the
warning signs are — that your unit’s preps are not sufficient for the
specifics of a tasking that you have not anticipated?
Perhaps if you are in
support functions waiting on the warfighters to spell out the specifics
of what you are to do, you can avoid the consequences of not reading.
Those who must adapt to overcoming an independent enemy’s will are not
allowed that luxury.
This is not new to the
USMC approach to warfighting — Going into Kuwait 12 years ago, I read (and
reread) Rommel’s Papers (remember “Kampstaffel”?), Montgomery’s book
(“Eyes Officers”…), “Grant Takes Command” (need for commanders to get
along, “commanders’ relationships” being more important than “command
relationships”), and some others.
As a result, the
enemy has paid when I had the opportunity to go against them, and I believe
that many of my young guys lived because I didn’t waste their lives
because I didn’t have the vision in my mind of how to destroy the enemy at
least cost to our guys and to the innocents on the battlefields.
Hope this answers your
question…. I will cc my ADC in the event he can add to this. He is
the only officer I know who has read more than I.
Semper Fi, Mattis
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