Interesting takeaway. Kohn made his reputation and virtually his career off of one book, ‘Eagle and Sword, the Beginnings of the Military Establishment in America’. Published in 1975 it was a big slash at the time and was, i think, a main selection of the ‘History book Club’ back when that organization counted for something. It is still virtually the only long and detailed narrative and analysis of the founding of the US Army (in spite of the title the Navy and Marines are virtually ignored). The only other book length treatment is the straight narrative history Maj, James R. Jacobs wrote back about 1938.
While most of the book is outstanding, Kohn flirts with sensationalistic conspiracy theories. I suspect to spice up the narrative and get publicity for his book.
Since then he has mostly worked in the USAF Office of History and as such has his name on several bureaucratically produced collective effort volumes. He recently has published a study of the armed forces under the Constitution, which i know nothing about. Kohn should possess an encyclopedic knowledge of US military history. He appears, to me, to have some rather odd notions about the armed forces and US history.
Right. Which is exactly what I felt was wrong. He does know that some elements or concepts are not new, and have historic ancestors, but I felt like he was treating them as if they were new, which had a dissonance to me.
I know the book, but not the author. Now I understand why. He appears to be one of the symptoms of the problem. We once filled influential positions like Chief of History with experienced and capable combat leaders who could apply their wisdom and understanding to help shape the service. Now we fill these jobs with technocrats and bureaucrats, many of them civilians and they set out to make the service in their own image.
We took our personnel system and turned it into a modern HR system, designed to select people for promotion based on their CV's and demographic profile. The result is that we are selecting the wrong people for the general officer ranks, IMO. They are the ones who have learned how to succeed in the HR system. They look good on paper and have a record of apparent success. Their briefings are the best, their organization achieves all of their goals, they change their colors to match the fashion of the day within the organization.
These people are not selected for their courage, their integrity, or for their honesty. These attributes are given lip service and not much more. Those things don't count in our society and they don't count as much as they used to within the military. We are starting to look more like the politicians that we serve.
That said, the military is still the best institution in our society, by far. Compare it to any other profession or sector of society and the military will look very good indeed. The liberals have yet to work their magic as they have done in the law, education, public service, and politics. But,the effects are there, primarily because of the influence of educators especially in the social sciences. Our author advocates that we do more of this, but of course, he is one of them, isn't he.