On September 11, 2001, I was a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. My teaching assignment was BIOS 101, Introductory Biology, MWF, in a large auditorium. But that Tuesday morning I was lying on a recliner at the Community Blood Bank with a needle in my arm when one of the nurses came in and said “you need to see what’s happening” and turned the television set so we could see it, just as the second plane hit. I’m sure that my reaction was the same as all other Americans: Oh hell! What’s going to happen next?!? What happened next in my classroom three weeks later was that I passed out a typical written assignment to those 260 students but added to it a reading list that I thought was appropriate for what I anticipated happening in the next few months, namely, a war.
This reading list was extracted from the larger one, of books that had made a major impression on me and essentially changed the way that I thought about history, the events of my time, and the people who made monumental decisions in both the historical and current events. The full list is available via the Educational Resources link on my website. Thanks to retired Marine Lt. Col. Gary Sampson, a former student, for a copy of the assignment and book list I passed out to that class in 2001. In general, here’s what you get from reading the list:
(1) Military conflict is highly complex, never the simplified versions you see in the movies or read about in fiction, and when political leaders assume simplicity, like the current ones in this country do, the outcome is never what they expected or hoped for.
(2) Culture, including religion, is a truly major factor in military conflict, and political leaders who initiate such conflict without understanding that fact are simply asking for failure to achieve their goals, whatever those goals might be.
(3) Technology never dies; when we invent something, that something is with us forever, nuclear weapons being a good example.
(4) Wars are not won by bombing alone; in most cases, bombing strengthens the will of the opposition. So, if you start a war by bombing and don’t then send in ground forces, failure to achieve an objective is the rule.
(5) Political leaders who ignore what experienced people on the ground are telling them, or trying to tell them, about a foreign situation are simply asking for failure. Expertise and experience are essential parts of any military organization. Getting rid of experience and expertise, like the current administration is doing, is a formula for failure.
(6) Dehumanization is a prelude to sanctioned violence against other humans and is always a factor in military conflict. The current administration’s dehumanization of immigrants, whether they be legal or not, is a prime example of this principle.
(7) Infectious disease is an enemy against which political genius and high-tech weaponry are useless. That’s a near quote from the Zinsser book.
Here’s the list that was given to those students that fall semester:
Diaz, T. 1999. Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America. The New Press, New York.
Dorner, D. 1996. The Logic of Failure: Why Things Go Wrong and What We Can Do to Make Them Right. Henry Holt and Company, New York.
Dyson, F. 1979. Disturbing the Universe. Harper and Row, New York.
Dyson, F. 1984. Weapons and Hope. Harper and Row, New York.
Fussell, P. 1989. Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War. Oxford University Press, New York.
Hughes, R. 1987. The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia. Collins Harvill, London.
LeShan, L. 1992. The Psychology of War: Comprehending its Mystique and its Madness. Nobel Press, Chicago, Illinois.
Montagu, A., and F. Matson. 1983. The Dehumanization of Man. McGraw-Hill, New York.
Sheehan, N. 1988. A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. Random House, New York.
Tuchman, B. 1970. Stillwell and the American Experience in China. Macmilllan, New York.
Wilson, E. O. 1978. On Human Nature. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Zinsser, H. 1934. Rats, Lice and History. Morrow, New York.
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