Air University Review, July-August 1978

a straw man

"The enlisted men subordinate to the officer corps are a part of the organizational bureaucracy but not of the professional bureaucracy. The enlisted personnel have neither the intellectual skills nor the professional responsibility of the officer."

Dr. Samuel P. Huntington

This statement, written by one of the most respected authorities on the military, is taken from his book The Soldier and the State and excerpted in Concepts of Air Force Leadership, a publication used in the Air Force ROTC Program.

Concepts of Air Force Leadership, edited by Major Dewey E. Johnson, is one of the outstanding books available on the subject of leadership and management and has thus found its way into most officer and NCO professional military schools in the Air Force.

NCOs reading this passage usually suffer immediate pangs of emotion, such as disbelief, anger, and sometimes out-and-out rage. It has become such a cause célèbre with some senior enlisted personnel that they have appealed to the Commander of Air University and the Secretary of the Air Force, in an effort to have the article removed from military textbooks.

In this article I would like to examine several issues. What did Dr. Huntington say, and what did he mean? Was this intended, or can it even be construed to be a slander on enlisted persons? What is a profession, and who is a professional? And what of the question of the right of free expression?

The educated, perceptive reader may wonder why a review of Huntington's article is necessary and wonder, indeed, if those who rail against it have read mom than the offending passages. Those perceptive readers will have recognized Huntington's article for what it is, not an attempt to downgrade enlisted personnel but an attempt to show that the military service is a profession, akin to the recognized professions such as medicine and law.

In order to accomplish this task, Dr. Huntington found it necessary to postulate three characteristics that he determines are common to all generally acknowledged professions: expertise, responsibility, and corporateness. For one to agree with Dr. Huntington, it is necessary to accept his definition of a profession. Lieutenant Colonel Zeb B. Bradford, Jr., USA, and Major James U. Murphy, USAF, in their article "A New Look at the Military Profession," (Concepts of Air Force Leadership) take issue with his definition and outline their view that Huntington was wrong. Implicit in the title of their article, however, is the fact that they, too, believe that military officers are members of a profession.

And you give me the choice between a description that is sure but that teaches me nothing and hypotheses that claim to teach me but that are not sure.

Albert Camus

The question of perspective here is all important. Who decides what a profession is? Who decides which occupations will be called professions? Who decides who is or is not a professional? And more important, so what? The facts in this case do not speak for themselves, since there are no facts; there are only opinions. Dr. Huntington defines the characteristics he believes distinguish a profession, then proceeds to fit military officers into the box he has created. To do this he must come up with an "area of expertise" for officers so they can qualify. He says their expertise is "the management of violence." Bradford and Murphy disagree. Officers are members of a profession, but they "engage in a multitude of tasks." There are, of course, other definitions of what constitutes a profession. According to Webster's Third New International Dictionary it is "a calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive [academic] preparation." Utilizing this definition, could we not rule out military officers altogether? What exactly is the specialized knowledge required to be an officer? And how about long and intensive academic preparation? It has been only recently that a degree was required to be an Air Force officer, but that degree can be in anything--English, geography, zoology, fine arts---as long as it is a degree. You can receive long and intensive academic preparation in law, you can receive long and intensive academic preparation in medicine, but you cannot receive such preparation in "the management of violence" or "a multitude of tasks." There is even a trend afoot to move away from the generalist theory in officer professional military education. Army Major Robert M. Shea, writing in the March 1975 issue of Military Review, states, "The officer generalist will join the blocked hat and the technical sergeant as once good ideas now relegated to history by progressive thinking," The thrust of his article is that officer PME must move toward tailoring the education to the individuals' specialty requirements. In other words, officers are not professional officers, but are like NCOs, technicians, and specialists.

How do we define the term "professional"? We can define it as a person engaged in a profession. Or we can define it as anyone engaged in an activity for money, the opposite of an amateur. Or we can define it as a person doing an extremely good job, whatever the job may be. Using that definition, one could be a professional doctor, a professional street cleaner, a professional officer, or, indeed, a professional NCO.

I would like briefly to reexamine the specific charge that Dr. Huntington's statements are derogatory to NCOs. In view of the foregoing paragraphs, it may be noted that Dr. Huntington's article is not derogatory to NCOs but is flattering to officers by attempting to include them as members of a profession. But because that requires a value judgment that people in professions are somehow intrinsically superior to people who are not, then that is a value judgment I am unwilling to make.

To those individuals who take offense at Dr. Huntington's statements, I would direct this question: What, specifically, do you disagree with? Look again at the quote at the beginning of this article. Can anyone rationally argue that enlisted personnel have "the professional responsibility of officers"? Of course not. Enlisted personnel manage shops and sections; officers manage squadrons, wings, and major commands. There can be no doubt that officers have much greater professional responsibility than do enlisted personnel.

And how about the question of "intellectual skills"? We are not talking here about intelligence. We are not talking about education. We are not talking about ability. We are not talking about common sense. We are talking about intellectual skills. Skills are a learned or developed ability.

What kind of training do officers receive to learn and develop intellectual skills? First, they must have obtained a college degree, and colleges are devoted to the development of intellectual skills. Then, during their careers they have the opportunity to further develop these skills through the officer professional military education program: Squadron Officer School, Air Command and Staff College, Air War College, and Industrial College of the Armed Forces. The enlisted person may or may not have a high school diploma; and the total time of all NCO professional military education courses added together is less than half that devoted just to the Air Command and Staff College. It is true, of course, that them are many enlisted personnel who have more intelligence, more education, and indeed more intellectual skills than many officers But taken as a group, enlisted personnel have neither the professional responsibility nor the intellectual skills of officers. Therefore, despite our gut reactions of anger and rage, we must, in the cold, hard light of logic, admit the obvious--Huntington, in these statements, is correct.

To those enlisted personnel who do not buy this argument and who feel they are indeed the professional and intellectual equal of officers, I pose this question: Why are you not writing for your professional journals? Isn't that something professionals do--write for publication in their respective professional journals? I have searched in vain for your articles, your ideas, your arguments. We are reduced to depending on officers like Major Pember W. Rocap ("The Unknown Professional Soldier," Air University Review, January-February 1977) to take up the banner for us. Major Rocap; however, is forced to defend us against ourselves. He says,

Within the Air Force, the exclusion of the subject of the NCO from the deliberations of the professional mainstream has also been noticed and commented on by NCOs. In a 1973 study for the Air Force Senior NCO Academy, "The Air Force NCO, Motivation or Complacency," Senior Master Sergeant Michael L. Farino and Chief Master Sergeant Carroll E. Vaughn wrote that [the] "professional military publications such as the Air University Review and the Air Force Magazine have largely ignored the NCO."

They state that attempts to collect authoritative background for their study were fruitless.

If NCOs have been excluded from the professional mainstream, we have only ourselves to blame. If we want to be included, we will be included. The plain fact of the matter is, we have defaulted. The Air University Review and Air Force Magazine cannot conjure up articles by NCOs. NCOs must speak for themselves. We cannot complain about the absence of articles if we do not write any. If intelligent, concerned NCOs had published articles, instead of decrying their non-existence, perhaps researchers would have been able to find some. In May 1977, Lieutenant General Raymond B. Furlong_, in a letter to General Louis Wilson, then Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Air Forces, stated that Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Thomas N. Barnes had raised the issue of the Huntington article with him, and that it was suggested to Chief Barnes that some NCO write a rebuttal of Huntington for publication. Chief Barnes has reportedly presented this suggestion to many groups of NCOs. The response? No takers.

Where men cannot freely convey their thoughts to one another, no liberty is secure.

William Ernest

Now let us turn to the serious issue of freedom of expression and freedom to know. Those who have read history can readily cite examples of people like Galileo and others who are scorned and persecuted for views and ideas held to be unpopular or heretical, views that contradicted the conventional wisdom of the time. Unfortunately, intolerance seems to be one of the universal ills that still beset us.

To those who would have the Huntington article exorcised from military texts, I suggest they consider the implications. Are we to deny people the writings of one of the most respected authorities on the military? I suggest that Dr. Hunting-ton has an absolute right to his opinions, and I have an absolute right to know what his opinions are. Intellectual freedom dictates that ideas be opposed by other ideas, not by censorship. To those who want Huntington's article ringed with interpretations and rebuttals, I say that we are seriously questioning an individual's intellectual integrity when we make him read several articles before he is capable of evaluating a particular article for himself.

Finally, there is the larger question of perspective. So what? People have been writing articles about professionalism for many years. The Huntington article, for example, is twenty years old. Yet in the January-February 1977 issue of the Air University Review, there appeared the article by Major Rocap, who feels that Huntington's issue "clearly must be confronted and thoroughly examined." Why? Many very talented, indeed very professional, NCOs have made it through twenty or thirty years of military service without caring what Dr. Huntington or anyone else thought about their professional status.

There are many serious, important, relevant questions that need to be confronted and examined, however, such as the growing military strength of our enemies, the problems of recruiting and maintaining a quality force, the problems of doing more with less, of accomplishing the mission better, of taking care of our people, of drugs, of alcohol, etc.

The issue of professionalism is a bogus one that cannot be resolved and has no real bearing on anything. So let us get with the business of being professionals and leave the debate to those with nothing better to do.

Pacific Air Forces NCO Academy

Senior Master Sergeant Roger P. Schneider (B.S., University of Maryland) is the Director of Education, Pacific Air Forces Noncommissioned Officer Academy, and earlier served as Commandant of the PACAF NCO Leadership School. He has been a first sergeant at Whiteman AFB, Missouri, and Osan Air Base, Korea; NCOIC of the Recreation Services Division, Headquarters Fifth Air Force; and a command post controller at Phan Rang, Vietnam. Sergeant Schneider is a graduate of the PACAF NCO Leadership School, SAC NCO Academy, USAF First Sergeants School, and USAF Senior NCO Academy.

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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