The Moral Responsibility of the U.S. Military
Officer in the Context of the Larger War We Are In
Robert Hickson
This essay proposes to consider the
long-range effects of a gradually implemented educational reform
within the American military culture – a form of re-education
that was slowly introduced by the psychological and social
scientists after World War II. In a more mitigated form than the
German military’s Umerziehung (i.e., re-education) after
World War II, the American military culture seems to have
undergone its own transformation and “instrumentalization” in
order to become a more useful, non-authoritarian professional
cadre in the service of a modern, often messianic, and
increasingly imperial democracy.
It would seem that the traditional, more or
less Christian, American military culture had to be re-paganized
and neo-Machiavellianized and made more philo-Judaic – or at
least less patently (or latently) anti-Semitic.
The Freudian-Marxist “Frankfurt School”
doctrines could further build upon the educational reforms which
had already been implemented by John Dewey’s own theories of
pragmatism and instrumentalism. These combined innovations in
military, as well as civilian, education would seem to have
weakened the intellectual and moral character of the American
military officer, and concurrently inclined him to become more
technocratic as well as more passive and neutral as an
instrument in the service of his civilian masters in a “modern
democracy” or a new “messianic imperium” with a
“globalist, neo-liberal ideology.” Indeed, some of these
innovations were introduced when I was first being formed as a
future military officer.
It was in the autumn of 1960, after Plebe
Summer and the test of “Beast Barracks,” that I first heard
about the revisions that the West Point academic curriculum had
recently undergone, and which would be experimentally applied to
our incoming class of some eight hundred men. Colonel Lincoln’s
Social Science Department, as it was presented to us, was to be
much more influential and more deeply formative than before upon
the education of officers. There were to be several more classes
now in military psychology, sociology, and leadership, and fewer
in strategic military history and concrete military biography.
The long-standing and ongoing process of replacing the
Humanities with the academic and applied social sciences would,
we were told, continue and increase.
At the time – especially at 17 years of age –
I had little idea of the implications of these curricular
revisions, nor of their underlying soft “logic of scientific
discovery,” much less an awareness of the growing “soft tyranny”
of the Social Sciences and their subtly relativizing “sociology
of knowledge” (as in the work of German sociologist, Karl
Mannheim). But I do remember reading two mandatory books: Samuel
Huntington’s The Soldier and the State and Morris
Janowitz’s The Professional Soldier. Both of these books,
we were told, were to help form the proper kind of officer that
was needed in “modern democratic society.”
Janowitz had an intellectual background
rooted in neo-Marxist “critical theory” as it was first
propagated by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno at the Institute
for Social Research of the University of Frankfurt in Germany.
(This school of thought became more commonly known as “the
Frankfurt School.”) This internationally networked school of
Marxist-Freudian thought – indeed a well-armed ideology – was
likewise active in conducting various “studies in prejudice” and
quite intensely concerned about the dangers of the
“authoritarian personality,” especially because this character
type supposedly tended to “fascism” and “anti-Semitism.” The
Frankfurt School “critical theory” claimed to detect and to
unmask “anti-democratic tendencies,” perhaps most notably in
traditional military institutions and their more autocratic
cultures – especially because of the recent history of Germany –
but also in traditional, well-rooted, religious institutions of
the West, i.e., Christian institutions in general and the
culture of the Catholic Church most specifically.
The Frankfurt School theorists and activists
claimed to want to produce the “democratic personality” –
although they had originally (and more revealingly) called it
the “revolutionary personality.” This purportedly “democratic
personality” was to be a fitting replacement for the
inordinately prejudiced and latently dangerous “authoritarian
personality,” which allegedly conduced to the disorder and
illness of anti-Semitism.
The combination of Karl Marx’s earlier
writings and critical theories and Sigmund Freud’s psychiatric
theories would be a special mark of this “neo-Marxist critical
theory,” not only in the writings of Wilhelm Reich and Herbert
Marcuse, but also in the “anti-authoritarian” psychology of
Erich Fromm.
Morris Janowitz was at the time (1960) a
sociologist at the University of Chicago, and he seemed to want
to form a “new kind of military professionalism” and a new kind
of military officer. That is to say, a military officer who
would be a “suitable” instrument to serve those who are truly
“governing a modern democracy.”
These last few words in quotation marks were
taken from a recent essay by the candid Irving Kristol (the
neoconservative patriarch and patronus and former
Trotskyite) who has for some years been writing about, and
promoting, “the emerging American imperium,” first in the
Wall Street Journal in the mid-1990s.
In the 25 August, 2003, issue of the
Weekly Standard, Kristol wrote a forthright article
entitled, “The Neoconservative Persuasion.” In this essay he
uses words that could also be retroactively applied to the
larger, long-range re-education and cultural project of the
Frankfurt School, of Morris Janowitz, and of his kind of
“neo-military sociologist.” Kristol speaks in somewhat elevated
but bluntly candid language as follows:
The historical task and political
purpose of neoconservatism [and also of the “new”
military sociology and psychology?] would seem to be this: to
convert the Republican party, and American conservatism [and
also the American military culture?] in general, against
their respective wills, into a new kind of
conservative politics [and hence a neo-imperial American
military and its Global Expeditionary Force?] suitable to
governing a modern democracy.[1]
In the article Kristol further argues that,
“like the Soviet Union of yesteryear,” the “United States of
today” has “an identity that is ideological” (though he does not
specify the content of this purported ideological identity).
Therefore, in addition to “more material concerns” and
“complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest,”
the United States, says Kristol, “inevitably” has “ideological
interests” and “that is why we [sic] feel it necessary to defend
Israel today, when its survival [sic] is threatened.” (Israel
Shamir, for slightly different reasons, also thinks that Israel
is now threatened, at least as a “Jewish supremacist state” or
as an “exclusionary, apartheid state.”)
However, is it conceivable that after our
anti-authoritarian re-education in America’s purportedly
tolerant, new “democratic military culture,” any active-duty
military officers would now be permitted – much less long
tolerated – to make any critique or have any moral reservation
about this pre-eminent “ideological mission” for America, either
for the protection of Israel or for the further expansion of, in
Kristol’s own words, “the emerging American imperium”? It
would seem not. The culture of tolerance would seem to be a
fiction, especially when truth is taboo. Furthermore, a sign of
real power is who effectively controls (or is intimidating
about) what is permitted to be discussed and critiqued in open
public discourse, and what must not be spoken.
Indeed, to what extent could any general
officer or flag officer today even make a strategic argument –
much less a principled, moral argument – that such “ideological
interests” and permanent missions for America actually undermine
true U.S. national interests and the common good? If any younger
military officers were openly, or even privately, to make such
critical arguments, or were known even to have such principled
views, would they not likely be “weeded out” before they could
even become general or flag officers? Nonetheless, the American
military officer, in his Commissioning Oath, still accepts a
high moral obligation when he solemnly swears to defend the
(clear and plain, i.e. un-“deconstructed”) Constitution of the
United States “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Therefore, from the vantage point of “the
emerging American imperium” in 2004, and in light of our
seemingly intimidated military culture, one may now better
consider the strategic, longer-range cultural project of
“anti-authoritarian re-education,” which was gradually
implemented by way of a reformed “military sociology and
psychology.” This cultural project was, in fact, slowly
implemented, even back in 1960 during the so-called “cold war,”
and was intended, it would seem, to be part of the quiet and
unobtrusive “re-education” (Umerziehung) of the “updated”
and “progressive” military officer, so as to make him more
“suitable” and docile for helping his civilian superiors in
governing a modern democracy – which is also now seen to be an
emerging American imperium more and more “governed” by
inaccessible and seemingly intractable oligarchies or new
elites. In Antonio Gramsci’s terms, a new “cultural hegemony”
has been attained, replacing an older, traditional military and
political culture with a new ethos and orientation. While the
United States was fighting the “cold war” against the more
conspicuous revolutionary socialism of the Soviet Union and Red
China, the culture was being quietly, indirectly, and
“dialectically” captured! After seeing these fruits from the
vantage point of 2004, we may soberly ask: To what extent were
we cadets being prepared, even back in 1960, to be compliant
officers in a “modern imperial democracy,” or even a new kind of
Praetorian Guard for our new elites and their Proconsuls?
Indeed, it was Samuel Huntington’s The
Soldier and the State which was the second mandatory book
for us to read as cadets in 1960 as part of our new curriculum,
in addition to the writings of Morris Janowitz. Huntington’s
book also promoted the ethos of an unquestioningly obedient,
properly subordinated, and docile military officer as a
compliant instrument in the service of a modern State and
“democratic society.” Huntington’s concept of “civil-military
relations” clearly implied that there was not to be a keen
intellectual or strategic culture in the U.S. military, and
certainly nothing resembling the German General Staff concept of
well-educated, strategic-minded, far-sighted, and thinking
officers who were to be not only indispensable senior staff
officers but also field commanders with high qualities of moral
and intellectual leadership. (Even the post-World War II German
military culture was permitted to retain the German General
Staff concept in its educational system for future officers, but
the American military culture was, ironically, not permitted to
imitate – or even to know much about – this brilliant
achievement. I never learned about it during my studies at West
Point except when I was abroad among the German military as an
exchange-cadet in the summer of 1962.)
Two other men made indispensable
contributions to my deeper understanding of strategic
psychological warfare and modern cultural warfare, as well as
the historical instances of Kulturkampf and the
re-education of an enemy: Colonel (later Lieutenant General) Sam
V. Wilson and Theodore Ropp.
During the early 1970s, when I studied
military history under the Austrian-American professor Theodore
Ropp at Duke University, I realized that this great teacher,
scholar, and author of War in the Modern World,
understood not only “battlefield” military history but also the
relation of war and society and the subtle influence of war upon
larger civilizations and cultures. And he understood these
matters in a very profound way. Professor Ropp, who taught many
West Point officers in graduate school, cultivated and
disciplined the eager minds of his students to take the longer
view of various profoundly differentiated military cultures. He
especially illuminated these different traditions by way of
counter-pointed contrasts and a finely nuanced comparative
cultural history of long-standing military institutions, to
include their specific martial effects upon civilization as a
whole.
Under the instruction of Professor Ropp, I
realized for the first time that something serious, important,
and substantial was missing from my formative military education
at West Point. Although I had been on the exchange trip with the
German military and their cadets, I was then still too young and
callow to have a deeper appreciation of the formation of the new
German military culture after World War II, in contrast to its
earlier history – and not just its Prussian military history.
But Professor Ropp helped me and so many other students to
understand and savor these deeper matters, for which I am so
grateful.
Another important influence in my deeper
education was Colonel Sam V. Wilson, who in 1969 and 1970 was my
mentor. He was also during that time (and during the Vietnam War
years in general) the director of studies at the John F. Kennedy
Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Sam Wilson
was a deep-thinking military officer, especially in the field of
irregular warfare and strategic special operations. He, too,
made me realize, though in an incipient way, the deeper
strategic, moral, and cultural factors in the waging of modern
war. West Point, I then realized, had prepared us very little to
take this longer, truly strategic, view of military culture,
history, and war, even though the Academy had been in fact
founded to form and cultivate the discerning mind and moral
character of a future strategos (the Greek for “general
officer”), like the historian Thucydides.
Irving Kristol and Professor Sidney Hook were
both involved in “the cultural cold war” as part of the
CIA-supported Congress for Cultural Freedom, in which they tried
to influence and capture the culture of the so-called
“non-Communist left,” and to increase its active resistance to
the increasingly “anti-Semitic” Stalinist form of Soviet
Communism. In like manner, there seems also to have been a
quieter “cultural project,” by way of the social sciences, to
“update” and “transform” the traditionally authoritarian and
rigid American military culture into a more “dynamic” and more
“democratic form of society.” For, as the argument went, a more
authoritarian and explicitly Christian military culture also had
the danger of being at least latently anti-Semitic.
Professor Joseph Bendersky’s recent book
supports this suggestion and intuition. Published in 2000, his
book – which contains ironic or sarcastic quotation marks even
in his title – is called: The “Jewish Threat”: Anti-Semitic
Politics in the U.S. Army.[2]
Bendersky shows how the “Officers’ Worldview,
1900–1939,” as well as their dangerously “elitist” views, had to
be corrected and transformed, especially in light of “Officers
and the Holocaust, 1940–1945” and in light of the “Birth of
Israel, 1945–1949” (the quoted periods being also the titles of
three of his chapters).
When one finishes reading Bendersky’s lengthy
and learned (but not entirely intelligent) ideological book, one
realizes that a very intelligent psycho-cultural project had
been designed and conducted, especially after World War II, to
remove and to chasten the “dangerous” propensities of the
“elitist” American military culture – especially its sometimes
“racist” (and “eugenicist”) and un-democratic propensities
toward “anti-Semitism.” (Bendersky never sharply defines,
though, what he means by anti-Semitism, although he implies that
it constitutes a kind of summum malum – i.e., the
greatest of evils.)
In the context of strategic, cultural
warfare, Antonio Gramsci, along with Géorg Lukacs, Walter
Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, and the whole Frankfurt School apparatus,
understood the “cultural channels” of religious and strategic
subversion, especially of traditional Western civilization and
its once deeply rooted Christian religious culture. In like
manner, there seems to have been some well-prepared “cultural
warfare” within the United States subtly conducted against the
post-World War II military culture and its Christian moral
traditions (which included formation in the life of the four
cardinal virtues, as distinct from the dialectic of mere
“values” and its mostly emotive and subjective “critical
thinking.”)
Moreover, I am led to make these observations
merely as a “fruit inspector.” For I have seen the fruits of
these cultural and curricular revisions, and I have also seen
what was once present and is no longer. I also see the extent to
which the truth is taboo concerning these matters. Like other
matters of historical inquiry, the matter of the transformation
of the American military culture also seems to be “off limits.”
Investigators are not welcome.
Nonetheless, I have observed the fruits and
shall continue to examine the cumulative combination of the
deeper causes and agents of this transformation of our military
education and culture into something which is more vulnerable to
manipulation; and whose moral and intellectual resistance to
injustice and other disorders is increasingly “dimmed down.”
I have also witnessed – by personal, direct
involvement – how little intellectual and moral resistance there
now is within the military, against our creeping and
technocratic neo-Praetorianism in support of our regional
military Proconsuls and their civilian masters (both inside and
outside of the government). Our military culture is altogether
inattentive to an arguably unconstitutional abuse of power; and
also to our myopically “un-strategic” and thoroughly irrational
involvement in unjust aggressive wars (like Iraq), while we are
concurrently and centrifugally over-extended elsewhere
throughout the world, and “strutting to our confusion.”
The common good of the United States would be
greatly furthered, I believe, if there were even just one
“ferociously honest” man like Israel Shamir within the U.S.
military. This former Israeli commando and immigrant from the
former Soviet Union gives many unflinching “reports from
reality,” which are not easily found in other sources. The
reader of this essay will certainly know what I mean if he will
only read Shamir’s recently published collection of essays
entitled Flowers of Galilee.[3]
In his candid book, Israel Shamir gives more
and deeper cultural and strategic intelligence about Israel than
one will find in all of CIA’s unclassified translations,
available from its gifted, but sometimes overly selective (or
self-censoring), Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS).
Like the now-deceased Israeli writer and “secular humanist”
Israel Shahak – but, I think, even more profoundly so – Israel
Shamir is truthful and candid in his manifold analyses and
presentation of hard facts, many of which are essentially
unknown in the West unless one reads Hebrew.
What Israel Shamir writes gives not only much
“ground truth” about Israel and its strategic operations and
deceptions, but also larger reports about the “political action
of Jewish forces” in the wider world, and keenly vivid
“cautionary tales” plus even deeper “parables” – all of which
will aid our indispensable knowledge of reality and give good
grounds for the United States’ strategic “course-correction” in
the Middle East and at home.
Israel Shamir’s work would be a great example
to our own military and intelligence officers. For it has been
my constant experience over the years – even as a professor at
military colleges and academies, strategic institutes, and
universities – that our military and intelligence officers are
not formed to grasp, nor even to desire, a deeper cultural and
strategic intelligence about foreign countries. That kind of
intelligence (hence understanding) is too often depreciated and
considered as “soft intelligence” rather than “hard” or
“quantifiable” intelligence. As a result, and as we become
increasingly secularized as a nation, we cannot easily take the
measure of foreign religious cultures or gauge the importance of
religious world-views such as Zionism and Islam.
Furthermore, because much of
cultural-strategic intelligence can be reliably derived from
unclassified open sources or OSINT (Open Source Intelligence),
it is often thought to be too vague and untrustworthy compared
to, say, MASINT (Measurement and Signatures Intelligence) or
SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) or covert-clandestine HUMINT
(Human Intelligence).
Properly conceived and patiently conducted
“cultural and strategic intelligence” would, however, illuminate
the moral, religious, and deep-cultural factors of foreign
strategy and grand strategy. It further reveals another
country’s own strategic culture (as well as its political
culture). For example, in the case of mainland China, one is
thereby made more sensitive to Chinese perceptions of its own
vulnerable geography and its important “strategic thresholds,”
and, therefore, its own historical reluctance to have a large
blue-water navy.
Moreover, because the U.S. State Department
has never, as an institution, had any larger “regional
strategies” or “regional orientations” of its foreign policy –
as distinct from its focus on policies and strategies designed
for individual countries, and to be conducted by our individual
resident Embassies (or “country teams”) – the U.S. military is
placed in an awkward situation, which may even involve it in
Constitutional difficulties and illegalities. The senior
military officers of major regional combatant commands – such as
Central Command (CENTCOM) or Pacific Command (PACOM) – must now
act as if by default as Regional Proconsuls, as was the case in
imperial Rome, thereby producing many moral difficulties for our
purportedly democratic military culture, and its proper
subordination to civilian leadership in foreign policy. These
senior officers, in their effective role as Proconsuls, appear
to be forming, as well as implementing, foreign policy – not an
easy mission for a traditional military officer in our culture.
For example, let us consider the case of
Dennis Blair. Just before Admiral Blair retired from active duty
as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Command (a position
now known simply as Commander, U.S. Pacific Command, or
CDRUSPACOM), I asked him a question after his strategic luncheon
talk at Fort Lesley McNair in Washington D.C., at our National
Defense University (NDU). In its essence, my question went
something like this:
To what extent, Admiral Blair, must you
effectively act as a Regional Proconsul in the Pacific because
our State Department has no coordinated policy and strategy for
the region as a whole? And to what extent are your larger
political and grand-strategic missions compromising your role as
a military officer under the requirements of our Constitution,
and in light of our traditional civil-military relations and
customs of proper subordination?
In response to this question, the audience,
as well as the gracious Admiral, gasped. The audience then
nervously laughed aloud (especially one of Admiral Blair’s own
classmates from the U.S. Naval Academy – an energetic Marine
Major General who was also sitting in the audience)! Admiral
Blair then took a deep breath and said: “How can I give you a
good answer to your serious question – a truthful answer that
you deserve – without getting myself into trouble?” (His initial
response and candor with me produced even more pervasive
laughter in the room!)
What is important in this context, however,
is that our Regional Combatant Commanders (former “CINC”s and
now simply “Commanders”) and our larger global Functional
Unified Commanders (such as our U.S. Special Operations Command
– USSOCOM) actually have not just military-strategic but higher
grand-strategic missions.
But my deeper argument is that our gradated
military educational system – from our formation as cadets up to
our higher education at the National Defense University – does
not prepare officers for such long-range and culturally
sensitive missions, much less clarify the deeper legal and
political and Constitutional issues. These issues are
illustrated by the case of the recently established “homeland
command” (formally known as U.S. Northern Command, or
USNORTHCOM) with its domestic as well as Canadian missions,
and an altogether ambiguous area of responsibility
within the U.S. – and consequent, but very sensitive,
intelligence requirements!
If our military education and deeper-rooted
military culture properly prepared our officers to think in
these larger, grand-strategic terms, they would now also be much
more acutely sensitive to, and discerning of, the moral factors
of modern war (and “terrorism”), including the cultural and
religious factors of strategy, which are always involved when we
are intimately working with other (and often quite alien)
civilizations.
In this context we should be reminded of the
far-sightedness of Lieutenant General Sam V. Wilson. In 1969 and
’70, when he was still a colonel and a formative leader as well,
he saw (and said) what was needed in the strategic and cultural
formation of U.S. military officers. He was, however (I regret
to say), insufficiently appreciated or understood at the time.
Having had many diverse experiences abroad,
Colonel Wilson long ago realized that the U.S. military needed a
cadre of officers who could take the larger (and nuanced)
measure of foreign military cultures as well as the
strategic factors and cultural events of moment in the world. He
wanted U.S. military officers to be able to understand foreign
strategic and military cultures on their own terms and in the
longer light of their own histories and geographies. He knew, as
in the case of Turkey and the Turkish General Staff, that some
foreign militaries had their own uniquely differentiated and
distributed roles within their own societies, and which were in
sharp contrast to the roles of a military officer within our own
society and traditions. He knew that – for the common good of
the United States – we needed to understand these often
radically different and even incommensurable military
traditions.
He also saw that we needed officers who were
truly competent in strategic foreign languages (e.g., Chinese,
Russian, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, etc.) and who were
desirous and capable of savoring foreign cultures and their
histories as a whole – and not just their military institutions
and their conduct in war: that is to say, to understand their
literature and philosophy and world-view, and their resonant
cultural symbols and aspirations. Yet Colonel Wilson realized
that such officers should also be more than well-educated and
deep-thinking “foreign area officers,” which were then being
formed in our Foreign Area Special Training (FAST) Program. He
foresaw that we also needed officers who could intelligently
connect different regions of the world and take a longer view of
the whole – to understand, for example, “Soviet revolutionary
warfare” as a form of “total war,” whereby even peace was
strategically considered and employed as “an instrument of
revolution” (as Major General J.F.C. Fuller also very well
understood), and to understand the long-range strategic and
religious operations of historic and modern Islamic
civilization, in contrast to the strategic cultures of Great
Britain, China, and Israel, and their uniquely long-range
aspirations.
Colonel Wilson’s personally designed and
implemented strategic-cultural program was called the Military
Assistance Overseas Program (MAOP). The initial formation of
officers in this program was a six-month course for colonels and
lieutenant colonels – and their Navy equivalents – at the
Special Warfare Center. (Colonel Wilson had assigned me to be an
instructor in this new program, and head of the East-Asian
Seminar. He also permitted me, because of my experience with
several foreign militaries, to attend the course and receive the
diploma by way of special exception, because I was then only a
captain in our Army Special Forces.)
Originally, Colonel Wilson wanted to have the
whole program, with its strategic courses, in Washington, D.C.,
and to be part of the National Interdepartmental Seminar for
long-range strategic and cultural education, which then included
the State Department and the Intelligence Community. However, in
1969 – during the Vietnam War – Sam Wilson’s important ideas
were suspect and frowned upon. They were, indeed, too
politically sensitive, even before the development of “the
emerging American imperium.”
Despite support from thoughtful political
leaders, Colonel Wilson’s plan to have the school in Washington
was finally rejected because too many people saw that he was –
or could easily be perceived to be – forming “men on white
horseback,” i.e., ambitious military officers who would
potentially encroach upon, if not actually usurp, the
super-ordinate role of their “civilian political masters.”
Had Sam V. Wilson been more influential, we
would not now, as a nation, have such a passive and unthinking
military, or such an invertebrate military culture, or such a
shortsighted strategic culture. And our military would be much
more intelligently resistant to our neoconservative and
pro-imperial civilian masters.
By way of contrast, the American military
culture was to be, I regret to say, much more formatively
influenced by John Dewey’s “pragmatic education,” in combination
with the Frankfurt School’s “critical theory” and subtle
anti-authoritarian “re-education.” Our traditional military
culture was to be more and more uprooted and cut off from its
Christian roots, and thereby more and more secularized, re-paganized,
and neo-Machiavellianized. This gradually transformed military
culture is now conspicuously acquiescent to its
neo-Machiavellian, civilian masters and mentors (like Michael
Ledeen), in unthinking support of the growing American
imperium and of the grand-strategy of the “greater Israel”
(Eretz Israel) not only in the Middle East but throughout
the world. Our military officers, in my experience, no longer
know, nor reflect upon, nor respectfully consider the criteria
and standards of just war, as revealed in the long, articulate
tradition of Western Christian civilization. It is now their
usual orientation and preference to think and speak in terms of
a vague and unspecified “preventive war” or a war of
“anticipatory self-defense,” both of which concepts are, too
often, Orwellian “Newspeak” for the reality of a war of
aggression – the only specific offense for which the German
officers were brought to trial at Nuremberg in 1945.
Robert Hickson, USA (ret.), Ph.D.
Robert Hickson, USA (ret.), Ph.D., is a 1964
graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, retired U.S. Army Special
Forces officer, and Vietnam War veteran. Following his
retirement he served for many years in the intelligence and
special-operations communities in varying capacities. His degree
is in comparative literature and classics from the University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and he is a founding faculty member
of Christendom College. Hickson has held professorships at the
U.S. Air Force Academy, the Joint Special Operations University
at U.S. Special Operations Command, the John. F. Kennedy Special
Warfare Center and School, and the Joint Military Intelligence
College.
http://www.neoconned.com/
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